Skills Training is Important When Times are Hard

When times are good and business plentiful the problem is finding personnel who have the right skills and experience. With a shortage of skills and we cannot always find the candidate that totally satisfies our specification and we have to compromise.

Recruiting skilled candidates may be a headache but nothing compared to the difficult decisions made to cut budgets and reduce staff numbers. Second guessing future requirements and reducing the salary bill to make the books balance is a very difficult task. Worse still, as soon as business improves you will need the very people with the skill set that you have just parted with!

We could of course recruit a new member of staff but there is always the risk that any upturn is temporary. Maybe an Interim will be the answer but when hiring a contractor there is a premium to pay and the question has to be addressed as to whether the project can absorb that cost.

During times of plenty we do not always take the time to appraise the skills of the staff we have. Naturally the emphasis is to use their time to satisfy the demands of the business coming in and guaranteeing there is new business in the pipeline to maximise resources and increase revenue and profits.

The time when budgets and people have been trimmed from a company is the time to consider making better use of the resources available. The fact that decisions have been made as to which members of staff remain should imply that we have retained some very capable people, many of whom have the capacity to learn new skills. This entails training. However, training is one of the first things cut from a budget in hard times, the cost of which is certainly less than a new hire.

There are so many forms of training available to us now, the Internet has afforded up so many possibilities that we do not have to leave our offices or indeed be invaded by trainers. Begin by ascertaining what business issues need addressing, review and analyze the requirements and develop a training plan. The next step is to look on the Internet to determine the courses available and their costs and timescales.

Developing those skills now will not only help to ride the rapids during turbulent times but will leave the company in a better shape when the good times return.