Welcome to Discuss HR, the HR blog written by Human Resources UK.
The latest Discuss HR is written by one of our newest editions to the blog. Jane Malone is a training and development specialist and a budding blogger and her debut post for us is well worth reading. (Ed Scrivener)
Why there are no real bargains in the sales
As January gives way to February and the January sales draw to a close, there are likely to be few bargains to be found in the remaining sales rails hidden at the back of high street stores.
As high street retailers suffer mixed fortunes, they employ increasingly sophisticated sales techniques to tempt us to part with our hard earned cash in their quest to shift unsold stock. Items are so heavily discounted that we are tempted into believing that even the most hideous items are ‘must-have’ bargains. Who cares that that gold sequinned designer dress is just a little too tight, and that most of us would never have occasion to wear such an impractical item that would languish (with the other sales ‘bargains’) unloved at the back of our wardrobes? Rationality seems to momentarily dessert us as the reduction from £200 to £20 for what is, after all, a designer dress seems to be a real bargain. As rational thought returns, however we are reminded that there is a good reason why that dress is still languishing unwanted on the sale rail.
Throughout January and February, I find myself bombarded with similarly packaged ‘bargains’ in the workplace as I face a barrage of phone calls from training companies offering incredible training solutions (a particular pet hate of mine is offers of’ MBA in a day’ or other such ‘equivalent’ qualifications in equally unrealistic timeframes) at knock-down prices . From the second week of January onwards my email inbox is clogged with last minute offers of heavily discounted training courses ranging from companies choking my inbox with offers of solutions to manage emails effectively, to generic soft skills training, all making implausible claims to provide a panacea for organisational ills.
The common theme throughout this annual telephone and email sales assault is the encouragement to ‘spend the remaining training budget’. In austere times, I find myself perhaps more irritated than in the past at the assumption that the training budget is a pot of money which has to be spent before the end of the financial year rather than funds which have been earmarked for the purpose of improving organisational effectiveness.
This year, as austerity cuts bite deeper and organisations are increasingly being encouraged, or rather demanded, to ‘do more with less’ we need to keep a tighter rein on both our personal finances as well as organisational budgets. Whilst heavily discounted last-minute training deals may seem tempting, like that gold sequinned designer dress, they are unlikely to be a good (organisational) fit. At the end of the financial year, if faced with a training budget which has not been totally exhausted, I will not be tempted into panic buying– which will almost certainly be regretted a later date, but rather look at how funds may be reallocated to improve other areas of the organisation.
In determining which interventions to invest in to improve organisational effectiveness, the real bargains are most likely to be found through effective diagnostic work, market testing and careful planning rather than through an off-the-peg impulse buy.
*****
Discuss HR is the HR blog written by members of Human Resources UK, the 10,000 member strong LinkedIn group dedicated to the HR professionals in the UK. Discuss HR is published twice weekly and looks to take an insightful, informative and sometimes irreverent view on the world of HR – all with the purpose of generating a discussion.
*****
If you would like to be a guest writer for Discuss HR, you can find more information here. Our next guest writer week is the week commencing 29th April.
Any source
No comments:
Post a Comment