How an Educated Workforce can Boost Your Business

There can be no reasonable doubt education and training are the key to improved performance, lower costs and higher revenues at nearly any place of business. Leaving aside the performance gains for personnel in sales, manufacturing and customer service, the accumulation of institutional knowledge and the strategies made possible by expanding the knowledge and experience of key employees and departments forms the basis for any organization to advance its effectiveness and create a long-term foundation for future excellence.

One need only look to the military to see the results possible with continuous training and a commitment to being ready to face any challenge. Airlines, construction crews, specialized manufacturing and medicine all come in a close second, followed by teachers and professors and technology workers. All of these vocations require the discipline to improve through training and the accumulation of additional knowledge.

But of all the people who recognize the value of education and training, it is teachers who set the standard and challenge others to achieve their potential

Advance and Achieve

Career professional educator Thomas Gaudreau is one of the most well-known advocates of long-term training in both business and education. His voluminous experience has given him a unique perspective on the practical effects and the realities faced by both students and teachers in a huge variety of settings from the Boy Scouts to middle school literacy to union leadership.

What Thomas Gaudreau discovered is what most educators and business leaders have known for some time. The path to success rarely strays far from training, education and continuing professional development.

Leadership

Every organization benefits from better leaders. The reasons are relatively simple. Leaders are the people who take personal charge of a project. They are the ones who inspire others to greater accomplishments. They are also those who accept responsibility if their work comes up short, and they are almost always the first to pick up the pieces and try again. Leadership is one of the first things any business should add to its training curriculum.

Leadership habits are endemic to successful organizations and individuals. They spread through business and bring a positive energy to any work environment. They give people a context for understanding their own contributions and their strengths and weaknesses and they insist on teamwork above all else. Ask any athletic coach which side he would rather join: The one with the star player or the one with the better teamwork. That coach will join the team that understands how to work together every time, because they recognize that winning doesn’t happen without a team effort.

Teaching leadership is the first step towards inspiring a workforce, a management team or a group of students to want to learn. Once they recognize what’s possible through education and training, they will pursue the benefits on their own and in the process, they will dramatically improve the company, product and bottom line.

Good Financial Advice

If a worker, manager, salesperson, consultant or even new employee applies to an organization to cover the expenses of additional training, it should be approved without hesitation. The returns on even basic training in business subjects is without question the most lucrative and easiest to preserve. Even if employees take that training to other organizations, once it becomes clear your business is dedicated to improving the lives and employability of its people, it will gain and cultivate a reputation for being the right place to work.

It will also attract the right kind of employees: Those who want to learn and want to improve themselves. Having a staff comprised of those kinds of employees is its own reward, and it will position your company nicely against competitors who do not share your commitment to making your workers better, faster and more experienced team members.

Education is the key to everything, claims Thomas Gaudreau. Without it, human beings can neither build nor maintain a healthy civilization. The exact same dynamics apply in the workplace. Your workers are without a doubt your most valuable asset. Helping them improve is helping yourself and your business improve as well.