The Danger of Deep Training for Startups

Beyond the conventional knowledge and skills acquisition from physical and virtual classrooms, employers also expect employees to improve the knowledge and skills through hand-on trainings and seminars. In most cases, both the employers and employees work together towards bridging knowledge and skill gaps in their establishments.

Over the years, several reports and scholarly results have indicated that training increases efficiency and productivity. Arguments have also been that employees with better training have the tendency of having better performance outputs in all ramifications Also, there would be less wastage of scarce resources when personnel are trained properly. Failure to train employees properly and constantly, according to a number of sources and experts, will lead to poor job performance and increase levels of work-related stress.

These two schools of thought have arguably led to increase in training spending across organisations throughout the world. Among the varied categories of organisations [profit-making and non-profit making], startup businesses have been found to always train their employees. This has largely been premised on the fact that startups need to constantly refine their processes, reskill and upskill people towards sustainable value creation, delivery and capturing. This is important in markets where competition is high and essential that employees improve on their leadership, communication, collaboration and role-specific skills.

A source has it that “training and development is most effective when implemented strategically, which involves content development, method of delivery, and integration of technology.” Our checks reveal that businesses use internal and external training approaches. When the internal approach is adopted, team leads and heads of departments oversee reskilling and upskilling of their junior ones.

In some situations, junior ones also train themselves on hand-on skills. We have also seen Chief Executive Officers leading training sessions. This is not a bad idea as long as it increases institutionalisation of corporate culture and eliminates senior employees’ norms and traditions of creating a toxic environment for the junior ones.

Our analyst notes that it is expected of the Human Resources Department or any department assigned with the responsibility of ensuring the skills development and growth of every employee to identify gaps in knowledge and skill application before suggesting training programmes or courses.

However, too much of training for employees, according to our analyst, without piecemeal application before another training is not healthy for startups. Experience has shown that entry level employees usually have challenges in comprehending training outputs and applying them when trainings are not done systematically using distance schedule method [DSM].

Our analyst suggests that startups need to consider quarterly, bi-annually and yearly training when it is highly imperative for the process reengineering and people’s reskilling and upskilling. The expectation is that companies that follow a quarterly schedule would be able to grow in terms of lead generation, revenue increase and profitability in another quarter when it is obvious that the previous quarter growth in the contexts of these variables was not encouraging. This also applies to using bi-annually and yearly schedules.  According to an expert, “getting into the habit of training [our emphasis] and not applying will make employee go down the slippery slope that leads to procrastination,” which would have severe impacts on value creation and delivery processes.