When it comes to business, it’s hard to think of an area that is more neglected than employee development. Companies, in general, just don’t seem to care about their employee’s future, despite the fact that helping workers to ensure their future is a great way to get them to work hard in the here and now.
Many people in business have long suspected that there might be something amiss with the way that companies are managing employee development. But it’s only recently, with the publication of a study from the Harvard Business Review that their suspicions have been confirmed. In a review article on the topic of why young managers are constantly looking for a job, researchers found that even the best and the brightest talent weren’t getting the training they needed. It seemed as if companies were willfully ignoring their own stock of skilled people, preferring instead to try and source new talent on the open market.
What was more, this state of affairs actually made incumbent employees unhappy about their jobs and their work. They want to be challenged, and they want their careers to be taken to the next level. But their employers, for reasons unknown, appear to want the precise opposite, paying a massive premium to get new talent in the open job market rather than developing their own in-house.
Here are some reasons why your business might be ignoring employee development
You’re Focused On The Present, Not The Future
All the best entrepreneurs in the world are future-focused people. They understand that they need to position themselves for the world of tomorrow if they’re going to capitalize on all the opportunities. But run-of-the-mill businesses don’t think like this. Instead, they’re focused on the present and maximizing shareholder value without thinking about the long term. It’s a problem that training organizations, such as Ellis Whittam, run into all the time. Companies seem more concerned with having internal reshuffles every five minutes than they do with positioning themselves strategically for the economic environment of tomorrow.
