Employee Development - A Leadership Responsibility

I would like to thank all those who read my articles and honestly it has really given me new wings to fly, read more and learn more.. You must start your Journey one day, why not today? Kabir, a saint, a poet, a philosopher said " Kal kareso aaj Kar aur aaj kareso Ab", its now we must start doing everything. According to Swami Vivekananda" Education for him means that process by which character is formed, strength of mind is increased, and intellect is sharpened, as a result of which one can stand on one’s own feet". 

There has been great amount time and money spent on developing leaders in every organisation. A recent research on employee development says that almost every company spend more than 20% of thier profit on developing employees, even though they spend huge amount of money, resources and time.. The success story of these employee development programmes are very minimul.. Great organisations are built by great, relentless workers Intellect, knowledge and Wisdom. In ancient India our spiritual and great leaders laid a lot of emphasis on gaining knowledge, they knew even before us the secret of Transformation of any state, country, organisation is by knowledge of employees and their will to use.

As per the CLC Genesee research shows that shifting an individual employee from low engagement to high engagement can increase discretionary effort level by 60%, improve employee performance by up to 20%, and significantly reduce recruitment costs.

Attrition will dramatically reduce if an organisation has an effective employee development programme, which inturn helps you to increase the profit. Salary.com's Employee Job Satisfaction and Retention Survey" reported that development activities are an important factor in an employee's decision to stay at a company or to seek another position. Employee development is also important for an organization's succession plan, since qualified individuals are being produced within the organization to fill any upcoming vacancies.

In this article I would like to point some of the key reasons why these intiatives doesn't yield great results. Recently I was talking to one of my colleagues about why employee development doesn't work at all some times.. In my experience working with some of the corporates, the tag line goes like this " Employees are our assets, employees are our utmost social responsibility". You name it and they have a tag line which can demostrate wonderful intentions.

 

Chanakya the Tactician and master of management said these words on 4th century about Training a new King" An ideal king is one who has the highest qualities of leadership, intellect, energy & personal attributes". He lays a great emphasis on Importance of self-discipline, Discipline is of two kinds – inborn and acquired. There must be an innate capacity for self discipline for the reasons given below.

• Instruction & training can promote discipline only in a person capable of benefiting from them, people incapable of (natural) self-discipline do not benefit.
• Learning imparts discipline only to those who have the following mental facilities – obedience to a teacher, desire and ability to learn, capacity to retain what is learnt, understanding what is learnt, reflecting on it and (finally) ability to make inferences by deliberating on the knowledge acquired. Those who are devoid of such mental faculties are not benefited (by any amount of training) One who will be a king should acquire discipline and follow it strictly in life by learning the sciences from authoritative teachers.

The Training of Leadership and development programmes for employees will never succeed if it doesn't have definite goal to pursue. A sculptor has a clear idea about what he wants to shape out of the marble block; similarly, a painter knows what he is going to paint. Every company big, medium or small, they spend money however they do not have clear goal.

Swami Vivekananda a great thinker defines education ( Employee development) as ‘the manifestation of the perfection already in man.’ The aim of education is to manifest in our lives the perfection, which is the very nature of our inner self. This perfection is the realization of the infinite power which resides in everything and every-where-existence, consciousness and bliss (satchidananda).

He also said that the Education( Employee development activities) should help the employee to identify the skills, employer must help the employee to uncover the hidden treasure. He refers to growth of plant, one cannot do anything apart from watering the plant. Employers and leaders need to find out the area of interest and help the employee to attain the highest knowledge and wisdom.

Mentioned below are some the most commonly used activities to employee development programmes and why they don't work?

Succession Planning - Why it doesn't work? Succession planning doesn't work because of the Leaders, they do not drive it effectively. I worked in a company which said that we will have succession planning for all the employees, we had posters, mailers everywhere but we hardly did anything to drive it. Everyone is so busy that they don't find time to develop employees!!!!

Leadership Development Programmes - The Story of Ram

Ram owned a stud farm, he was happy that laxman the horse was like a tree in a strom that never goes down, he stood strong against all odds like a weatherd rock, won almost all the races. However he was getting old and other horses in the stud farm felt as if they were ignored. Other horses were unhappy and they felt no importance. So Ram thought he should conduct a training programme to develop a horse which can replace Laxman.. he had a master trainer who was well versed with all the tricks of the trade and an intellectual man. asked all the horses to gather and said "as you people know.. we need to develop ourselves so to compete in championships. I have decided that we must conduct a Training programme and whosoever fares well in both theoritically and practically will replace Laxman...

To do so whosoever wants to participate must go though an elimentary test and only 10 out 30 horses will be selected for the training programme. I would like you guys to take this opportunity as the golden one to touch the sky and fly high!!!

Once the training is over, he looked at each horses progress report and he found that Raavan, black, tall, and superb looking horse is much quicker, smarter and can comprehend the competition well. His determination never stoped flowing and his fondness for learning was unbelievable. In training he never left any stone unturned and he was admired by fellow horses, and he was addressed as "the beast" who can fly!!!!!! was happy that he had found his man however instead of making Raavan to run small races, he never used him till Laxman left this world one day.

It was one of the worst things can happen to Ram, He was sad, he could not take this and he said to himself " Now what do I do? I m feeling like I m out of place, he weeeped and weeped... How stupid can I be? I have Raavan but he has never participated in any race... How can I bank on him to win at this big stage?? if I have to retain this championship I must win the game?

Now after reading above mentioned story, do you think Ram will retain the championship? If you think he will or he won't then state the reason?

I m sure these leadership development programmes are similar to above mentioned story, once the employee is out of the class room, the implication of these programmes are nill........... Once you are out of the class room, your collegue will say "welcome back to the reality". -

Mentoring - Mentoring is a noble word, Chanakya is called the great mentor of all time, he mentored Chandra Gupta Maurya and history is proof, how efffectively mentoring can be used. Here are some of the reasons why mentoring doesn't work .....

• Ego.
• conflict of interest.
• 99% of Managers think that if I make him the next king then he might bypass me.
• They don't want to spend time sharing knowledge and to develop employees( I don't know about you guys but I really did feel.. Till I realised if I upgrade myself even Google and Apple can't bypass me).

Individual development Plan - I suppose IDP has never been understood properly for quiet a lot of Reasons. IDP has a reason to be in place, It has purpose which serves both your employees and organisation in long run. Companies have very innovative and exhaustive IDP plan and the format but the impact still remains very low.

　

References

University of California : Employee Learning and Development

Salary.Com : Job Satisfaction and Employee Retention Survey

Chanakya Arthashastra and Chanakya on Training.

Swami Vivekananda's views on Education.