According to experts, though the connection can seem distant or indirect, proper training has a clear impact on quality, just as it has a clear impact on every aspect of business.
As business process design and ISO 9001 expert Chris Anderson noted in a blog post on the top ten root causes of business problems, poor training is the number one source of business issues. Two decades of business management led Anderson to place poor training ahead of poor methods, poor employee placement and poor engineering and design on the list.
“People don’t make mistakes,” Anderson insists in the post. “Systems make mistakes.”
And just as product and service quality issues arise from systemic deficiencies, employee performance — and its impact on quality — is correlative to the integrity of training management systems.
Training and quality are best thought of as peas in a pod — inseparable elements that should always be mentioned in the same sentence. Even if an organization feels it is 100 per cent where it needs to be from a quality perspective, training is essentially what got it there.
Best-in-class companies have thorough, streamlined training management programs (most often leveraged by software) that deliver measurable results. For those that overlook thorough training, it might be due to lack of time and other resources. However, such an oversight often leads to harsh ramifications: product recalls, brand damage, injuries, fatalities and bankruptcy.
