The Hidden Cost of Employee Training

I am a huge proponent of employee training, which is why – along with emergency plan development and exercise and drill facilitation – it is a core element of my company’s service offerings.  Yes, effective training costs money, but a lack of training can be even more costly.  One case in point is the story of a chain store that increased its profit margin from 34% to 48%, simply by training sales reps to sell the company’s products more effectively.  What this implies is that the company was previously losing millions of dollars in potential sales because its employees were not properly trained.

Employee Training for Emergency Situations

Scenarios like the one above can also apply to the expense side of the equation.  Simply put, inadequate employee training will inevitably lead to inefficiencies that increase costs.  This is the reason for conducting exercises and drills – to practice and refine the information conveyed to employees via formal and informal training.  In the absence of this, employees may not have a clear picture of the proper processes and protocols /standard operating procedures SOPs to follow during outages.  The likely result would be an degradation in restoration metrics, which not only increases the cost to restore, but also often results in a surge in hidden expenses such as increased time dealing with customer complaints and regulatory scrutiny.

The bottom line is that emergency planning in and of itself can only take your company so far – if employees are not properly trained on emergency processes and protocols, much of the value of being prepared is diminished.  Simply put, you will pay for training one way or another – you can either pay for it up front, or you will pay for it via additional costs brought about by poor execution.  The choice is yours.