How to Keep Top Talent

Patti Gilchrist, PMP, is a Senior Technical Manager with more than 20 years of IT experience. Visit her website at www.freepmstudy.com

  Career Development  

For over the past decade, many companies have increasingly cut training and development programs in their organizations. While employers view this as a relatively easy way to reduce costs, does doing so undermine an organization’s ability to attract and retain creative top talent and ultimately impact their ability to remain competitive through innovation?

Since the recession, companies have dramatically cut training programs and expect new employees to hit the ground running. “They don't want to train anybody,” according to Wharton School management professor Peter Cappelli. Forbes explains this unwillingness of employers to train employees in their article Why Employers Fail to Retain Top Talent: “Employers are understandably reluctant to make big investments in workers who might not stay long.”

And in some cases where training and development programs have in fact survived recession cost cuts and still exist as a coveted company benefit, the high demands of the workplace environment do not permit workers to take advantage of training offerings anyways, leading many companies to ask: “Why bother”?

While such justifications appear reasonably sound on the surface--convincing more and more companies to adopt this mindset--many question the long-term impacts and hidden costs to the organization. Forbes acknowledges that…

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