When employees don’t know enough, it costs their organization.
In my early days as a young manager, my idea of an effective manager was the one whose only responsibility was to grind out results from the team. I worked with that approach and was getting some results but after a while, team members began to resign and attracting new ones from within the organization was difficult.
Having not been exposed to any leadership principles then, I didn’t know that instead of just enforcing performance, there’s need to be developing team members. Also, my leadership approach was one-size-fits-all since I didn’t know about the concept of situational leadership.
As a result, my organization lost hard-to-find good employees. Time was spent hiring new employees, then more time was spent letting the new employees get acclimated to the organization’s culture. And during this transition period, the organization was not moving forward as it should.
In another instance, few weeks ago, one of our clients complained that their sales results were poor despite the fact that they increased their sales workforce about 4 months earlier. I asked whether it was every sales person that was doing poorly or only some of them. The client said that the older ones were doing better than the ones they hired newly and that her concern was that they “have no hope of any major sale soon.”
The last phrase in quote gave me a clue. On probing further, we found out that the sales people hired newly did not know how important prospecting is, nor how to do it effectively, and so were neglecting it. The cost was poor sales results.
And this last one: Sometime last year, while in the banking hall of a VI branch of my bank, one of the people ahead of me on the queue was a potential customer who needed to open an account.
Here’s what happened:
Customer: Good morning, I want to open a business account.
Bank Staff: Good morning, Sir. Ok. Please fill this account opening form [handed the form to the customer].
Customer: Thank you [moved to a nearby desk to fill the form].
Customer: [done filling the form after some minutes] I’m done. Please check so it can be submitted. I also have other documents that are required.
Bank Staff: [accepted the completed form, and looking through] Ah, you used small letters?
Customer: [surprised] I don’t understand. Please what is it about small letters?
Bank Staff: You’re supposed to use capital letters. And it’s boldly written on the top right corner for anyone to see.
Customer: Sorry, I didn’t see it.
Bank Staff: [sighed, and reluctantly asked for the other documents] Give me the other documents.
The customer handed the other documents to the bank staff and left. But just after about a minute, the customer returned.
Customer: Please can I have those documents and the form [the bank staff handed them over to him].
Customer: I am not interested anymore [he left].
The bank lost a customer because their employee was rude. She was rude in two ways:
1. Sighing
2. Making the customer feel bad about not knowing he should use capital letters
There’s a better way to tell the customer he should have used capital letters, and sighing was unnecessary.
Rudeness is hurtful. And apparently the customer couldn’t bear it, so he ended the relationship and left.
The point is that the bank employee may not know that her behavior qualified as rude. In other words, she didn’t know she was rude. And the cost was a customer lost with all the revenue the bank would have made serving that customer.
In the three cases highlighted above, one thing that is common is that each time the employee didn’t know enough and performed tasks to their understanding, it cost their organization. And that’s how it is in day-to-day operations of every organization.
Having employees who don’t know enough for their role costs organizations.
While some organizations consider employee training an unnecessary expense, others fear that employees might leave after they are trained.
In any case, the fact remains that, for any period the employee who does not know enough for their role is in your organization, it’s costing your organization.
This is buttressed by Zig Ziglar in his widely held axiom, “The only thing worse than training an employee and having them leave, is to not train them, and have them stay.”
Employee training is indeed essential. And it can come in many forms – having employees take formal training, having employees coached in their workplace by more knowledgeable colleagues, and having employees ‘shadowed’ on the job by more knowledgeable colleagues.
