Why Training When It's Cheaper to Recruit New Staff with the Necessary Skills: A Discussion

WHY TRAINING WHEN IT'S CHEAPER TO RECRUIT NEW STAFF WITH THE NECESSARY SKILLS: A DISCUSSION

We will never agree to the statement which says that training is unimportant. In actual fact, recruiting new staff is rather easy said than done. Recruitment requires an extensive process with huge budget allocation. Furthermore, when staffs are hired, salary and benefits in a compensation package would have enormous financial implications on a company.

Why recruitment is difficult and cumbersome to do? Here are the reasons:

1. Expensive

Advertisement for a vacant position is one method that is popular among the business community. But cost of putting an advertisement in any media stream is not cheap. Normally, a company would only invest in an advertisement if the position is critical to it's operation. When a suitable candidate is found, a salary and his/her benefits should be fixed. The person has to undergo an expensive medical check-up to determine his/her health condition for the position. In total a huge sum of allocation would be involved in just hiring for one small position.

2. Long Process and Duration

A step-by-step process of recruiting a position normally took lengthy time consuming process. Vacancy starts with a request from the department that requires it. An approval is sought for sourcing of potential candidate. Advertising a vacancy further requires approval of budget allocation. Searching for potential candidates through bundles of applications is time consuming. Holding an interview requires sourcing for suitable venue, date and time. When a suitable candidate is found hiring them will undergo process of medical check up, briefing on terms and conditions of employment, salary negotiation, grace period for consideration and accepting the offer from the candidate and notice period from current place of employment.

3. Uncertain outcome and Unsuitable Candidate

Recruitment starts with a vacancy followed by sourcing for potential candidates. This can be done through word of mouth, advertisement in a media and the unethical way of pinching of employees from similar or different industries. Word of mouth has no certain outcome. Chances of finding a suitable candidate through this method would vary depending on the location. This method may rather suit the rural area where the population is small rather than big cities. Advertisement is normally the preferred choice if the position is critical to it's operation and if it is certain to find it's dream candidate through this way. Pinching under the pretext of 'head-hunting' is gaining popularity nowadays but this would normally create conflict in the industries.

Nightmare of any organisation is hiring a wrong person for a position. It is easy to hire but it is not easy to fire. Most of the times, it is difficult to judge a person's character by an interview. An organisation may find itself in a difficult and delicate legal situation just to dismiss a person hired wrongly.

If recruiting a new person is full of risk then we have to go for an alternative lesser risk solution that is to train our existing staff. Why training is beneficial and important to an organisation, here are the reasons:

1. Right skills, knowledge, experience

If performance is an issue then training is one of the right solutions in closing the gaps between current performance and expected performance of an employee.

2. New Staff

It is untrue to say that an experienced new staff hired for a position requires no training.