Worrying About ‘Busyness’ Innovating Through Training and Education Too often in business, we believe that training and education is a cost rather than an investment. As small business owners get increasingly busy making their company a success, the ability to take an hour, morning, or full-day from their schedule becomes a challenge. Although most small business owners acknowledge that training and education is beneficial, making it part of the way that the company operates is neglected. The need to ensure immediate customer and financial demands are met takes priority. The ability to act strategically – how education, training, personal and professional development will help the organization both now and in the future – is neglected through a lack of time, resources, as well as the need to be busy. ‘Busyness’ seems to be the most important strategic objective of most small business owners and entrepreneurs. However, focusing on ‘busyness’ may mean that the company does not have the ability to engage in the necessary thinking and planning to be innovative as well as take advantage of opportunities in the marketplace. The philosophy of ‘busyness’ (meaning owners don’t have time or the resources to engage in training and education because they are too busy) usually flows down to staff. Owners are reluctant to allocate time to training and professional development for staff because that takes away from operations – whether it be meeting a deadline, following up on a customer need or ensuring a financial goal has been met. Moreover, the old fear seems to underlie most training and education decisions; if we train staff and then they leave, we lose that investment. However, this fear should be mitigated by the fact that there is a real cost to employees leaving. Training and education may help mitigate this cost to the company1. There are also
Training on the SmartICE SmartBUOY (photo by Michael Schmidt)
wider societal benefits to having well trained and engaged staff because they make the human resources pool available to all companies more competitive and compelling. Moreover, training and education increases the capacity that the organization has to get things done. It makes the ‘busyness’ more focused and effective. At SmartICE we believe in developing all the members of the organization – whether they be staff, students or board members. This development comes in many forms, but it is also giving the time to recognize, in our ‘busyness,’ we need to maximize the benefits to the communities that we serve. Training and development help us to continue to focus on our strategic goals as well as enable individuals. It is those individuals that grow the capacity of SmartICE as a social enterprise, help deliver on our mandate as well as help empower everyone within the
organization whether they are on the board, staff, trainees and communities. ‘Busyness’ should not be the major driver for avoiding personal and professional development for small business. Innovation emerges from education and training as well as implementing that learning once returning to the workplace. Moreover, strong arguments can be made that investing in training and development can improve staff morale, health and wellness, as well as adding to the overall bottom line of the company2. Avoiding a complete focus on ‘busyness’ and instead using training and personal development to think of how to adapt and change is an important not only for organization success but for that of the wider communities we all live in.
Dr. Tom Cooper Board Member, SmartIce www.smartice.org
Hinkin, T. R., & Tracey, J. B. (2000). The cost of turnover: Putting a price on the learning curve. Cornell hotel and restaurant administration quarterly, 41(3), 14-21. Hubbard, G. (2009). Measuring organizational performance: beyond the triple bottom line. Business strategy and the environment, 18(3), 177-191.
1 2
VOLUME 33: #3
I 21
