Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Employees Come First?

This article which appeared in the FT this morning brings a refreshing insight to the way some employees are being treated in the workplace. Whilst at Inspirational Seminars our credo is to train in communication skills, this presupposes that the management want to invest in their staff in the first place.

So where are the priorities in today's cash sensitve environment? Stephan Stern of the FT Writes;

The talk is all of hard-headed realism. So when I received some news about a corporate programme called “Employees First”, I presumed that it must refer to some sort of harsh but honest cost-cutting measure.

I was wrong. HCL Technologies, the Indian IT services company, takes pride in rejecting the “customers first” principle, instead putting its faith in what it calls an “employee first” approach, which “places the needs of employees before the needs of customers,” the company explains.

HCL says it has won both greater customer loyalty and higher revenues acting in this way. “By treating employees as partners and participants in the company’s success, every individual within the company becomes responsible for transforming, thinking, and providing value to customers,” the company says.

Among an array of progressive HR practices, HCL offers its employees the chance to take part in a weekly online opinion poll on key management decisions – those that have been taken already and those that are still to come. (The votes are unlikely to halt or reverse any decisions, but people do get a chance to register their views.) HCL has received a seal of approval from the technology research firm Ovum, confirming its view that “strong customer relationships start with strong employees”.

Hogwash, you may be tempted to respond. Who has time to consider employees’ finer feelings when cash flow is tight? If the staff want reassurance then they should work harder and do better. A greater sense of job security can only be achieved through a healthier commercial performance.

The sort of idealism expressed by HCL or, in the UK, by the John Lewis Partnership will strike many business leaders as bizarre. These businesses will surely have to consider cutting jobs too. Yet the JLP constitution states that its primary purpose is “the happiness of all its members through their worthwhile and satisfying employment in a successful business”.

That is all very well for a non-listed, employee-owned business, but can a public company survive with this apparently inverted order of priorities? One that has – for more than 100 years – is the US pharmaceutical and healthcare company Johnson & Johnson.

Its company credo, which dates back to 1943 and was written just before J&J went public, makes for a challenging read.

J&J is a “customers first” company. “We believe our first responsibility is to the doctors, nurses and patients, to mothers and fathers and all others who use our products and services,” it begins.

While “we must constantly strive to reduce our costs in order to maintain reasonable prices,” J&J also argues that “our suppliers and distributors must have an opportunity to make a fair profit”.

Employees come second. “They must have a sense of security in their jobs,” the credo states. “We must provide competent management, and their actions must be just and ethical.” The wider community comes next. “We must be good citizens – support good works and charities and bear our fair share of taxes ...We must maintain in good order the property we are privileged to use, protecting the environment...”.

And only now, fourth, do we get to the small matter of investors. “Our final responsibility is to our stockholders,” the credo says. “Business must make a sound profit...Reserves must be created to provide for adverse times.” And the punchline? “When we operate according to these [above] principles, the stockholders should realise a fair return.”

Customers, employees, community, shareholders – in that order. Not the usual run of things. Not the rather simpler and more direct model that puts “shareholder value” higher than any other concern. Does the J&J order of priorities work? Last month this paper’s Lex column described the company as “typically reliable”, and “balanced” across several sectors.

When banks stop lending and customers are struggling to pay invoices, cash is everything. If you have too many staff and not enough revenue, something has to give – and it is almost certainly headcount. That much is clear.

But it is also clear that, right now, some businesses are better placed than others to see out the next couple of years, and not simply because they have a bigger pile of cash. They have long-term strength and resilience because of their market position, which they have achieved thanks to that costly balance sheet item, their people.

Management’s responsibility is not simply to slash and burn to achieve short-term survival. It is to lay the foundations for future success. You will need to pull off both these tricks to get the cash flowing healthily again.

Thanks to Stephan for this bit of refreshing news. Investment in People is not just a slogan, it needs commitment from managment and input from training professionals to effect the sort of cultural change that this article is suggesting. Management and staff both need training to achieve these goals.

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Expensive Business Training Needs to be Good, but Good Training Needn’t be Expensive

A new type of training seminar offers the high quality companies are used to but at a truly affordable price. Inspirational Seminars Ltd is using the medium of seminars, which they have branded ‘Quick & Dirty!’ Instead of asking companies to book their staff on a 2 or 3 day programme, they have encapsulated the ‘real meat’ of these programmes in seminars just 3 hours long.

Training staff and management in the ‘Soft-Skills’ is seen as an investment in people however when the economic outlook is bleak, what was previously thought of as an investment becomes seen as a cost. But how can a company be fit to weather the storm if for example they stop motivating their sales people and line managers with good training? Companies shouldn’t be as much concerned about the economic outlook, as much as they should be on the look-out for good training that will continue to build their business.

Inspirational Seminars is a training company that is offering companies a new way to continue development of their staff but at a very affordable price. The ‘Quick & Dirty!’ concept allows organisations to continue with the essence of vital training whist allowing them breathing space to recover. When the budget allows, more in depth face to face training can take place using the same world class trainers and course writers to maintain continuity.

In recent years, the training industry has seen quite a lot of seminars that are really only vehicles to sell companies and individuals longer and more expensive courses; they contain very little in the form of usable information. The ‘Quick & Dirty!’ seminars offer people a stream of ideas during the 3 hours that people can go away and use immediately. These seminars will be rolled out over the UK and Europe after a series of pilot schemes starting in Oxfordshire.

John Burke, a director of Inspirational Seminars Ltd says; ‘the benefits to companies who take advantage of this type of training is that they get high quality training with low investment, they do not lose people from the office for more than half a day and there are no hotel costs involved. But perhaps one of the most important benefits is that both the material and delivery are of the highest quality because the seminars are run by very experienced, world-class trainers of international acclaim. Another benefit that companies find is that this type of training fills a gap until they are in a situation whereby they can undertake more in-depth training’.

He continues, ‘since people are the ‘life-blood’ of any company it is of course important for companies to continue the learning and development of people within the organisation. Most HR Departments are inundated with information from training companies and so the process of making decisions as to which company to use can be very much like a minefield these days. What companies should bear in mind is this: although expensive training needs to be good, good training needn’t be expensive’.

For additional information on the availability of these seminars, please send your email to info@inspirational-seminars.com or visit http://www.inspirational-seminars.com and visit the ‘Quick & Dirty!’ Seminar text at the top right hand side.


About Inspirational Seminars Ltd

Inspirational Seminars (ISL) is a consortium of trainers who have all worked with well established training companies over the last 20 years. These are people who have worked closely with each other and have now come together to provide unsurpassed quality training programmes to companies in the UK and Europe. Some of their trainers are psychologists, some are NLP Practitioners and all have personal experience in every subject in which they train.

Inspirational Seminars’ team of dedicated professionals aim to bring to companies first class, world-class results-oriented ideas that will improve the performance of individuals thus improving the overall performance of a client company. This is done with well developed and established methodologies and close working relationships with customers.

Inspirational Seminars offers Public Courses and Seminars throughout the UK and parts of Europe covering a wide range of sales, management and personal development. And because these programmes can be adapted for individual customer needs it means ISL can provide around 80% of most companies development requirements.