Two thoughts strike me, and these aren't entirely new, but yesterday I had a chance to tour a large business here in Halifax. I was walking a client through, and the HR person who was walking us through made it really clear to my client that they would pay the cost for any employee who works there who wants to engage in any form of training or education that's directly related to the performance of their business. My client's eyes just lit up, as did mine, because my employer doesn't even do that.
But when you look at it, and you ask who drives that--and I didn't ask the direct question--it's very much driven by the people at the top who have recognized that the value in their company and the people they need to do their jobs and do them well and keep them as one of the top one hundred or top fifty in the country are the people who are actually sitting there. They are their human resources, and if they don't do it, they're going to lose them.
Obviously, I think that yesterday I was visiting a very progressive company. If you have the person at the top saying that this is what we expect, the people at the bottom have to adopt it and practise it. The managers, the line managers, can't guard it. A lot of companies are running around that are relatively lean. There are some that don't have a lot of resources, so when they look at the first thing they can cut, it tends to be that.
I did a tour of a not-for-profit, and if I can just say so, they did the exact same thing. When they hired a staff member, they said, “if you want to work in our organization, then you need to know how our organization works.” And what did they do? They bought that person a ticket and sent him or her across the country to see how their not-for-profit works nationally. When that person came back in, you have to believe that they had a really motivated person who began to innovate in their company, and they got a return on that investment. I don't think people see the return on investment.