A company in continuing professional development is a company in constant growth

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

We are living in a time where technology is taking center stage. Tablets, smartphones, computers are increasingly more powerful and other game-changing devices continuously appear on the market.

Through them, with their corresponding Internet connections and applications, we manage a huge amount of information and establish real social and knowledge networks.

More and more companies are seeing their potential. Despite the current economic recession, they spend vast sums of money on getting the best, leading-edge technology. They also attempt to achieve a more efficient distribution of work and optimize resources. But often they forget about the true driving force behind it all: human capital.

Investing in technology is necessary, but we cannot forget how quickly it becomes obsolete. Organization of work and an efficient use of resources are essential, but anyone can do it.

Having the best employees, keeping them motivated and improving their training constantly so that they always give their best is a unique value. It is a real competitive advantage with which the company can make an impact and leave the competition far behind.

An organization should never close the door to new knowledge, rather it should be constantly learning. In other words, it should value each and every employee, encourage their intellectual and creative development and build an atmosphere where they can learn and reinvest their new knowledge and skills back in the organization.

In this sense, intelligently opting for technology and other material resources I mentioned previously is focused on strengthening those aspects. Choosing tools that promote the exchange of experiences and points of view, distance learning and the contact and flow of knowledge among employees, tools such as enterprise social networks or applications, foster that collective ability to create ideas and products.

This way, a strong sense of belonging can be established in a working environment: the worker feels happy in their work, as they are valued and given the necessary resources for developing themselves to their full potential.

Opting for continuing, multidisciplinary training—though limiting it strictly to the strengths of our company would be an error—means building a group of capable individuals who are self-assured and confident in their abilities.

The strength of human capital can never surpassed by any technology advance. It is something that no competitor can copy, as it requires time, effort and a corporate culture that truly believes in training.

If you still think that training is too expensive an investment in which no “concrete” results can be achieved, I’ll leave you with a fantastic anecdote that Manuel Campo Vidal quotes in his latest book. At a keynote in the Badajoz Business School, faced with this pessimistic point of view on training, a businessman argued: “Against the drama of training your employees to find that they then leave is the tragedy of not training them and finding that they stay.”

Sandra Bravo is founding partner at BraveSpinDoctors, a strategic communication and political marketing consultancy.