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Any business owner knows the importance of training. In some cases, even just the fact that you offer training could help you appeal to quality applicants. Even once you have the best team onboard, making sure that they’re well versed can increase both their satisfaction and that of your customers. But, is extensive training always a good thing?

Training courses cost in time and money, and those are two commodities which no business can take chances with. Of course, some training is always going to be unavoidable. Sometimes, though, business owners embark on training which may not be necessary. This can lead to both knowledge and money going to waste. The question is, how do you know when this is likely to be the case?

There isn’t a regular use for the knowledge

Before offering expensive training, consider how often your team will use that knowledge. After all, there’s little point in embarking on training which won’t often be necessary. You may even find that your team forgets everything they learnt by the time that knowledge becomes applicable. If you’re training your team in something like programming which will only come in handy during disaster recovery, for instance, you may end up throwing money away. That’s not to say you can do away with essential knowledge like this, but you may find that it’s more cost effective to outsource with companies like Pointivity who specialize in this are and already have the necessary know-how. That way, you can save on wasted training costs, and focus instead on IT issues your team is liable to face daily. 

Costs outweigh benefits

As profits always matter, it’s also important to consider whether training costs outweigh any benefits. The last thing you want to do is to spend on training which doesn’t increase your income. Again, something like IT repairs is an excellent example of this, as are courses in programs which will soon be obsolete. Again, outsourcing can often be a cheap alternative. You may also want to use this excuse to eliminate outdated programs and methods, rather than losing profits on training here.

Downtime stands to do damage

For the most part, training means downtime. That’s because employers tend to train entire teams at once. In some cases, it is fair to say that this team-wide training is entirely necessary. But, before signing everyone up, it’s worth considering how much damage that downtime could do. Think about how long you’d all be out of the office, and how much profit you stand to lose by doing so. When you add that to the cost of the training itself, you may find that downtime does too much damage to deal with. In this instance, it may be worth keeping certain training within select areas of your team. By training just a few staff members on your new security software, for instance, you could reduce downtime altogether while still ensuring that there’s someone onboard who can deal with questions and problems whenever necessary.