Study after study has shown that the performance differential between your top performers and average performers is substantial. Whether you measure productivity, revenue, profit or innovative contributions, your "A" players can really pay off in the short and long term. In earlier articles in this series we focused on how to re-engineer your recruiting and hiring systems and I hope you gained valuable insights into this critical process. But once these "A" players are employed, your focus must be on leveraging their capabilities and of course retaining them over time.

"The performance differential between your top performers and average performers is substantial."

Training and coaching is the fuel that drives your business's growth and the people that work within your organization. The purpose of this article is to provide some insights into how you develop effective training and coaching programs.

Training Overview

As your business transitions through the different stages of maturity, dependence on more skilled and knowledgeable people becomes essential to your success. As you become focused on increasing productivity, efficiency, business expansion, profitability and customer and employee loyalty, it becomes increasingly clear that the knowledge, capability and skills of your team members will either be a limiting factor or a source of unlimited opportunities.

Experience has demonstrated that well designed and executed employee training programs will strengthen employee recruiting programs, increase productivity, improve quality, reduce employee turnover, increase efficiencies resulting in superior profitability and minimize the need for direct supervision or micro managing. In fact, when employees have the capabilities to perform their best, the company performs at its best.