What happens in the media business during a recession? That's right, budgets are cut, turnover decreases and any remaining business is a fight to the death for agencies and media owners alike. Things get tough and very competitive. This, then, may not be the best time to reduce your investment in developing and motivating your staff, honing their skills and giving them a tangible, competitive edge. But that's exactly what the bean-counters would have you do and, indeed, did do in the last recession. Training budgets are, after all, easy to cut and no one notices the effects until it is too late - usually at the beginning of the upturn, by which time it's too late. You've lost all your stars, you're left with a team of burnt out deadbeats and, to add insult to injury, you're forced to pay over the odds to bring in talent from outside! This makes no sense whatsoever, so here are four tried and tested arguments you can use to stop the accountants slashing your training budgets and removing an invaluable management tool.
First and foremost, training motivates people. It makes them feel you care about their career development and encourages them to stay with you as a result. Your best, most confident people will continue to look around in recessions because they know their worth and are not worried about their ability to continue to be paid, unlike less able colleagues. You need to keep those stars and making training an active part of their career progression will help you do so.
Secondly, recruitment is often not an option you have when trying to fill an identifiable skills gap during recession.
Training an internal candidate can not only help you to fill the vacancy, but also has a number of beneficial, motivational effects as well.
Your company's inevitable lack of expansion during a downturn provides your third argument. It means staff stay in their existing jobs much longer than either you or they had planned or would want.
They can become stale, bored and sloppy - just when you need them to be at their competitive best. A precisely targeted training programme can introduce new methods, techniques and enthusiasm for the job.
And finally, the good news.
When the upturn comes, as it inevitably will, a team able to take on more responsibility and hit the ground running will take an early advantage. You will not find yourself looking outside for talent and skills you could have been training internally, nor will you be paying over the top for it.
So, this time, let's not fall in to that short-term trap of cutting staff investment, let's make sure we stay in good shape throughout. The signs, so far, are good.
If our training company, Intuition, is anything to go by, the lessons of the last recession have been learned by some companies.
We are already training senior sales executives to manage even if their team isn't in place yet; telephone sales people are being given presentation training rather than that role being recruited externally; teams are being put on courses designed to improve their stress and time-management skills, to prepare them for what is to come and managers are putting themselves on to motivation refreshers to make sure they do all they can to keep their staff happy.
Your assets do go up and down in the lift, but some well-timed training will ensure they don't go out of the door.
Gill Hollis is managing director of The Davis Company
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