When budgets get cut, how do you handle investing in your people?

Our reader poll today asks: When budgets get cut, how do you handle investing in your people?

• All training and development is the first thing we cut: 15%
• We cut some training and development but leave critical stuff in place: 28%
• We cut some “nice to have” training but really protect the core offerings: 40%
• We cut elsewhere because people are truly our most important resource: 16%

Continue investing in people. It’s encouraging to see a strong commitment to training even in the face of economic challenges. Your people always need to grow and develop. You made a commitment to help them do that on the day you hired them. They see it when you take those things away and it enters their decision-making process as to where they want to work the next day. Understand there is a huge cost to pulling back on their development. Their performance will eventually suffer. That will spill over into your business’ performance. That will lead to worse economic performance and more budget cuts. The downward cycle is obvious. Do all you can to protect your investments in your people. Your competitors are. They’re also telling your people to come join them in an organization that continues to invest in development. Investing in people is one of the wisest decisions you can make.

Do you agree with these poll results? Let us know in the comments below!

– Mike Figliuolo at thoughtLEADERS, LLC

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These results were originally a SmartPulse poll in SmartBrief on Leadership which tracks feedback from more than 240,000 business leaders. Get smarter on leadership and sign up for the SmartBrief on Leadership e-newsletter.