“Due to the uncertain nature of the current economic atmosphere, we are immediately cancelling all training in communications and interviewing skills.”
This is a transmission going out throughout the corporate world right now. Companies are seeing, sensing or expecting cash flow problems and earnings shortfalls, and many are calculating that immediate divestment in “soft skills
” training is the way to go. I respectfully disagree, and not (simply) because it affects my business as a trainer.
This is shortsighted, timid, short-term thinking. Certainly, killing the budget line for training people in HR to facilitate more efficient, revealing interviews of new potential hires may seem to make sense right now, especially since the firm may be freezing hiring. Why pay for enhancing the skill of conducting a savvy interview on the hiring side when this skill will not be utilized any time soon?
Part of the reason lies in the overly targeted nature of how we coaches and training consultants market training as a product. If the training is sold as “specifically for X department in Z situation,” then the bean-counters on the client side are justified in advocating for eliminating this highly specialized training when it seems not called for.
The problem is that good communications training for one scenario is usually good communications training, period. It is always a worthwhile investment to train teams and associates to be more articulate and impactful in what and how they communicate. Indeed, crisp, clear communication is prudent and efficient–cheaper than opaque, waffling, muddled communication. Similarly, poor listening is also expensive, as meetings and memos must be re-sent, reiterated, and careless mistakes fixed. Lousy communication costs real money and wastes real-time. So even if we are not making Pitch #6 anymore because of poor current sales, we shouldn’t allow the refined pitch-making skills and follow-up communications skills to wither.
The economy will rebound, clients will return, the pitches and products can again roll out, and the markets will reignite. It will be immensely more expensive, however, by any reasonable comparison, to rebuild and retrain everybody’s languishing communication skills at that point.
Communication training is a worthwhile ongoing (if judiciously reduced) expense. Companies would do well to protect it, even when making other unpleasant choices like cancelling products, closing factories, and freezing hiring.
As an organization that specializes in soft-skills training for technical professionals, we couldn’t agree with you more! However, we’ve noticed an increase in requests for communication, negotiation, and team-effectiveness training as clients know that asking their employees to “do more, with less” it’s imperative that these core soft skills are being developed (not languishing) during these difficult economic times. And, yes, when things do turnaround, guess who is going to be promoted or take on additional leadership responsibilites for that organization or team? The people who can communicate effectively! The teams that are most productive!