Employee training

Lets see if I get it - American business have stopped investing in employees and expect them to arrive fully trained, but some Indian companies are investing in large scale employee training. This article at Fast Company describes one Indian company's efforts to build a world class work force and the amount of time and effort they are investing in their employees.

I’ve watched the transition in American business as employees went from being viewed as creating value to an expense. And as that change took place, many (most?) companies quit investing in training. Is this change in India part of a trend by those companies to view workers as partners in building profits? If so will American business pick up on this new view in time or lag behind as we have with so many other trends?

American business, at least the auto industry, was slow to recognize that continuous quality improvement was key to building world class products. We were slow to recognize rising demand for key resources, like oil,and didn’t invest in developing our resources. By lagging behind we not only have to play catch up, but our costs of adopting the new ideas and methods is much higher because we have to implement the changes as a crash program rather than evolving into them.

Big change made over a short time is almost always more expensive than a measured phase in of new processes or procedures.