Which does greater damage-malfeasance or incompetence-the actual cost of NOT training

June 11, 2010 -What is the cost of training your employees? $ XYZ per year? What if this budget (small in itself in most companies), gets slashed (sorry, optimized is the politically correct word) to $ 0.8 XYZ ? The bean counters that run most companies will tell you that it means a higher operating margin (though not necessarily by $ 0.2XYZ). So far so good, we are looking at the benefits side of the equation.

Now let us look at the costs side. NOT spending the $ 0.2XYZ may lead to employees not equipped with the right skills or right and essential training to do their jobs properly. In technically sophisticated jobs like engineering design or maintenance, this breeds incompetence. This incompetence can cause  a major industrial disaster. The cost of these disasters can reach (for a large company) maybe $100000XYZ.

Is it worth risking employees lives and the entire future of the company, the employees, other stakeholders and the environment for a measly $0.2 XYZ?

It has been proven time and again that malfeasance causes FAR LESS damage than does incompetence. Think of any large industrial accident. There are plenty of opportunities for evil persons to cause accidents by sabotage-however almost always they never actually reach the level of damage caused by incompetent and badly trained employees.

Your thoughts on this would be welcome!

Tags: bean counter, cost of not training, cost of training, disaster, employee skill development, employee training, employees, incomptence, industrial accident, liability, malfeasance, operating margin, operational profit

Category: General