Learning to value training

Written by Gerry Mulvaney | 14 October 2011

My forty year selling career started because an Italian company, Olivetti, invested in training me in the early 70’s. I went from being a bank clerk to an office equipment salesman via a month’s residential course at their Hampshire training centre. Over the next few years, I spent several more months at the centre, at Olivetti’s expense.

I mention this because it would be rare for a company to spend that sort of money on new recruits these days. Olivetti believed that investing in their staff would pay them dividends in the long run. Their staff would be more productive, would stay longer and enhance the company’s reputation if they had been properly trained.

My present employer is also a big investor in training. We have a graduate recruitment programme which provides a route into sales management and also an engineering training programme at our academy in Lincoln, where all our field engineers are taught their skills. The company has invested a lot in its staff and continues to do so. You will understand therefore why training is a subject close to my heart and one that is often a subject of debate with my customers, who are sometimes loathe to invest in it.

The traditional route into the graphic arts industry has been through apprenticeships and college based education. This was fine while the lifespan of traditional production methods were measured in decades, rather than years or months. Now apprenticeships are a thing of the past and college courses are becoming rarer than rocking horse excrement. Manufacturers and suppliers of digital equipment are taking on the training mantle and providing the education needed by their customers staff to operate digital equipment.

The problem is that customers are not putting a value on this training. They expect it to be provided for nothing and then hassle the trainers to get it completed so the staff can get on with their current work. It is no surprise that many of the service calls placed with suppliers reportedly have more to do with training or lack of it, than with a machine malfunction.

Now PICON, the industry body that represents manufacturers and suppliers, has partnered with Proskills, the training body that covers the graphic arts industry, in an attempt to put a value on the training that is provided to operators. A number of the PICON members are having their training assessed by Proskills with a view to seeing if successful completion of training can produce a certificate that could count towards a formal qualification such as an NVQ. There are a number of hurdles to overcome, for example how can you compare training on an HP Indigo with a Xerox iGen, but never the less it is small contribution to the overall debate.

You don’t hear much about Olivetti these days, now part of the Italia Telecom conglomerate, but I occasionally come across their products today and each time I say a small prayer of gratitude for the start to my career they gave me.

Gerry Mulvaney

gerry@graphicdisplayworld.com