The world turns and words turn with it. In archaic English, ‘let’ meant 'to
hinder or delay', a polar opposite of its modern definition and one that only hits
home when a tennis ball hits the net. The moniker ‘geek’, aimed at derided
outcasts in the days of the pocket calculator and ZX Spectrum, is now worn as a
badge of honour by the post-millennium iPod generation. Language evolves.
Meanings change.
So when did ‘training’ become a dirty word?
For the May issue of Printing World, we’re talking to the
industry’s training advocates. And what they say is at odds with printers’
trepidation to embrace the dreaded ‘T’ word. Forget skilling up purely for
skilling up’s sake – for those fighting the training corner, it’s all about
benefits to your business, often quantified by frank financial facts. Surely
detractors can be wooed when training is defined in terms of the bottom line?
Vision in Print’s Richard Gray says a third of the 230 courses it has run can
be measured monetarily, and the average added value for those programmes is
£128,000 in year one.
Better yet, Gray said the programmes also offer a 10 for one
payback in the first year. How many printers are so overcapacity that a machine
investment, even to clear the most stubborn bottleneck, could provide a 1,000%
return on investment in just 12 months?
We’ll also look at how Polestar has not only embraced
training, but pushed the boundaries, moving training out of the classroom and
the shopfloor and into the ether of the internet. Students from its Print
Dynamics programme don’t lug around heavy textbooks – all the coursework is
stored on an iPod that fits snugly in the pocket.
Critics might point out that for every mp3 player loaded
with information, there’s one less unit on an educational book printer’s order
book. I’d say that’s a small price to pay if the workers of tomorrow have a
handle on making print more profitable.