by Markey Read

Wouldn’t it be great if every person you hired came in fully trained and ready to work inside your company? Gone would be the days of training new employees in basic concepts like quality, productivity, and customer service.

Many employers hope that only the qualified apply for every position. Hiring managers dream of the day when they will not have to weed through piles of untrained, unqualified people.

When it comes to providing employees with quality training, however, some of those same employers do not want to invest the time, energy, and money. Whose responsibility is it to train all these people? Does it rest with larger companies to train their people because they can “afford” it? Or with smaller companies to train people because they may not be able to attract and retain highly qualified people?

The days of an employer being the career manager are gone and most people have not fully realized what this means. In today’s economy, it is as much the responsibility of the company as it is of the individual to have a quality workforce. The responsibility, is not 50% and 50%, however, it is 100% and 100%.

Since most employees will be with a company for less than 5 years, investing in training may seem like a losing proposition. If, however, you consider that an untrained employee can cost money in low productivity and higher turnover rates, training sounds more feasable.

Training costs money and time and does not always have an immediate and measurable return. If you have ever trained an employee in a highly specialized area only to have that person take a position with the competition the next month, you may question your committment to paying for employee training and development.

And if you have ever hired a highly trained individual who used to work for the competition, however, you may be think you got a bargain.

It is generally true that smaller companies are the informal training grounds for larger companies and that many people start with a small company with the intention of eventually graduating to a “real job” in a “big conpany.”

With 80% of Vermonters, working for companies with 20 or fewer employees, however, there are only a few very large companies for which to aim.

In a state of less than 600,000 people, Vermont companies employ about 270,000 people, with 85,000 working in Chittenden County alone.

According to a recent survey of 527 companies in Burlington, conducted by The Center for Social Science Research at St Michael’s College, 40% of the companies in Burlington employ 3 or fewer employees. more than half of which were sole proprietorships. And since 1990, new businesses have generated 802 new jobs.

Interestingly, this study noted that “although there is an undercurrent of apprehension with the business community, most respondents were reasonably optimistic about the city’s economic climate. Seventy-five percent felt that the economic environment will either remain the same of improve during the next five years.” The study continues “While the total number of jobs should increase, growth patterns are likely to be uneven and perhaps unsettling at times. Most of this growth will occur in small and medium size companies.” Most small and medium size companies have fewer than 10 employees, according to the study.

If Vermont wants to continue to be a viable competitor in this everchanging world, it is up to all of us to do the hard work of training