Edit Note: Worth Every Penny
October 09, 2008
October 2008
By Lorri Freifeld
inally, a glimmer of good news in what has been a difficult year: Average trainer salaries jumped nearly $5,000 to $86,450 in 2008, according to Training magazine's Annual Salary Survey of 751 readers.
Why the monetary increase for training professionals when there is a burgeoning pool of available workers because of rising unemployment and lots of corporate cost cutting in today's recessionary economy? One reason is that employers must reduce the cost of turnover of current workers, according to ClearRock, an outplacement and executive coaching firm headquartered in Boston. "It costs between two and three times a worker's salary to replace a departing employee, including recruitment, training, lost productivity, and severance costs," notes Annie Stevens, managing partner with ClearRock.
A recent ClearRock survey found that the top ways to reduce turnover of front-line employees (i.e., salespeople, customer service reps, wait staff, and counterpeople) require a commitment to more carefully selecting, screening, and training workers. So training finally is getting its due (see p. 22 for more Salary Survey results and visit www.training mag.com/salary08 to read profiles of respondents' career and salary progressions). Likewise, recent research by Steve Michael, a professor of business administration at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, found that training is the key to franchise restaurants' success (see p. 54).
Another key to ALL companies' success is the ability to turn change efforts into real results. A new study commissioned by Pivotal Resources, a global change leadership consulting firm, reveals that marketplace pressures are driving change projects to be a top priority at most companies, but almost half of the respondents indicate that a significant number of change projects failed to meet their stated goals. In fact, only 19 percent of 564 U.S. respondents thought change "always succeeded."
Two companies that have figured out how to successfully—and continuously—manage and train for change are Wachovia Bank and PNC Financial. With more than 100 mergers in less than two decades, "change management is not an event for us; it's something we do every day," says Amy Lessack, Wachovia senior vice president, enterprise learning. See p. 51 for case studies and best practices from these Training Top 125 winners.
Simulations and serious games can be very helpful when it comes to training for change (and other efforts). By the end of this year, about one in four U.S. companies will adopt serious games as part of their employee training efforts, according to a report by IDC, a research company based in Framingham, MA. More C-level executives are engaging in simulations themselves, leading to greater buy-in and wider acceptance of simulations at all levels of the organization. Check out our Focus on Games & Simulations, beginning on p. 39 for a look at trends and new technologies, case studies, and lessons learned.
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