Anyone who has spoken to a hiring manager has heard the complaint that good people are very hard to find. The secret behind this is that there simply aren't any good people available! Now, there are plenty of highly skilled and qualified employees in the workforce...they just don't go to market. They are just too darned happy where they are. A major reason for this is that they did not necessarily start out as highly skilled and qualified as they have become, but were elevated to that level through constant and competent business and management coaching.

Sure, many CEO's have a Harvard MBA, but well below the CEO level, the fact is that a large percentage of management started out at the bottom. There's not much reality to the old quip "Why back in my day, you started at the bottom - and by God, you stayed there!" In fact, everyone knows that competent training management (often called "on the job training") is one of the chief ways companies have of increasing the worth of their in-house talent. And this worth doesn't just leave the company.

When workers see that a company invests in them, through conferences, seminars, and other forms of training management, they see that they are working for a company that cares about them. This is one of the main reasons that they don't go on the market, looking for another company that probably won't treat them too.

Another dirty secret is that training management works well for companies whose employees don't know exactly what they're worth. Unlike employees holding a Harvard MBA, those with training management do not have a piece of paper that suddenly makes them too expensive to hire. At the same time, though, they are often just as motivated, perhaps even more so, after taking on the paid job training than someone who has just slugged through academia. This is one of the many reasons companies are eager for training management.

Just as important to a company as training management is another function: change management. Would that the market never moved, that once we designed a product, we could keep selling it forever! However pleasant that thought might be, the reality is that change is a constant in this world, and even products as venerable as Coca-Cola get redesigned from time to time - to say nothing of the blitz ad campaigns! A company must be able to keep its workforce fresh and filled with vitality through continuous management.

Although a piece of paper from Harvard never changes, continuous changes are a fact of life for corporations across the world. With the right training and change management, companies can keep on top, turning weak employees into strong ones, and allowing someone with out-dated qualifications into fresh and exciting new areas. And that's something even Harvard is struggling with now.

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Hiring managers tend to say that good people are very hard to find. That is because there aren't any good people available. The highly skilled and qualified employees are very happy where they are, and don't go to market.