How to Train Your People (to perform like a dragon)

Note: How to be a Better Manager starts from 4 Aug 2014
Training is now considered no longer a luxury but a necessity.  It is said that if you don't train your people to be good, you're training your people to be bad.  This is because everyday there are so many bad influence - from market, the media, Facebook, contractors etc that many people have lamented that today's workforce does not possess the core values that workers used to have.  There are 7 ways that you can train your people:

1. You let them learn on the job - that is, purely from work experience. This method is costless in terms of your time, but is extremely costly as mistakes made at work have many repercussions later on.  Highly not recommended, but still beats having no training at all (i.e. you never let them make any mistakes). 
2. You get a senior staff to train them. This On-the-job training is the most common method.   PIC funds up to $10,000 a year for such internal training.  See here for details.
3. You let them learn on their own at their own expense and own time.  This is common in companies where there is no one doing work and companies cannot afford to send people for training during office hours.  Also, even though PIC funds up to $100,000 a year for training courses, some companies that I know of are reluctant to spend a single cent on training as they simply do not have the cash flow to do this.  Unbelievable but true!
4. You send them (and pay for them) for external courses that are conducted during office hours.  You know that you're paying for such training in 3 times: the training fee, the salary cost of the staff while they're on training, and the opportunity cost of doing training during office hours.  Nevertheless, the PIC funds 60% cash for such training or 300% tax deduction.  On top of that, there is the $15,000 PIC bonus that companies can get automatically without applying.  See here for list of courses. 
5. You get an external trainer to come in to your office and customize a course to suit the unique needs of your people.  Typical costs for such 100% customized in-house training ranges from S$2,000 a day (for small groups of 10 and below) to $10,000 a day for large groups of around 50 people . Again you can use the PIC and PIC Bonsus to help you defray your costs.
6. You get a Coach to come in not to train your people, but to draw out from them so that they can reach their full potential.  This long term staff development program entails weekly or fortnightly coaching sessions each lasting up to 2 hours.  The cost is easily $2,000 a month to $5,000 a month.  Sorry there is no PIC funding for such coaching sessions. 
7. You do it yourself, you will invest each week at least 1 hour to train your people.  Reason is that you are the best teacher for your staff as you know them inside-out and you are well versed in training techniques.  Most importantly, you possess the most important element in training: objective mind.  Typically less than 1% of companies do this. The cost?  Zero in terms of payments but plenty of cost in terms of opportunity costs.  You can claim up to $10,000 a year from PIC under Internal Training.

By Andy Ng of Asia Trainers, whose training courses have now reached Surabaya Indonesia and Ho Chin Minh City in the months of June and July 2014.  Click here for sample list of courses or call 8201-4347 for a no-obligation friendly chat.  Related articles:

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• Increase your sales in 7 costless ways
• How some people train seriously but learn nothing
• The last 2 reasons for training will put you last in the competition
• The 7 myths of training exposed
• The importance of trainees that most trainers won't tell you
• Make sure your training program covers these 5 key elements
• The 9 things that all sales trainings must cover
• How to be a better manager in 4 weeks