Failure to train employees is a failure to invest in our own companies. In one case, we saw an incredible decline in unplanned production line downtime when we started teaching the technicians how to do their jobs—what a concept!

If we are afraid our investment will move on to the next company after we have educated them, perhaps we need to ask ourselves why we didn’t take care of them, recognize their achievement, or improve their compensation. Training a team member and then ignoring them is a speedy way to lose the value of our investment. If we think our investment has no increased monetary value, why did we approve the training in the first place?

We can also recognize employees for self-developmental activities like outside service to the community, public speaking, and writing. These are special skills in some cases and should be considered to be assets of the firm. We find it shortsighted to ignore these abilities. Employees generally leave a given employment over many issues, but some stand out:

• “Topping out”
• Poor treatment
• Non-investment in the firm
• Lack of recognition

Some celebration should be in order!