Continuing Education In All Fields

Many fields require licensed professionals to take continuing education courses on a regular basis in order to keep their license. This is obviously important for the medical field, where everyone wants their medical care providers to be up to date on the latest techniques, drugs, testing, etc. to keep them healthy or make them better. It is also obviously important for your CPA to know the latest changes in the tax code in order to prepare your tax returns properly. But what about all other fields?

Wouldn’t every field benefit from employees taking at least one class per year to learn more about changes, trends and benchmarking in their industry? Imagine the benefits to your organization if every employee took a couple hours (or a full day) to learn about how others do it differently in their same line of work. It is an expensive undertaking to the company both in terms of the cost of the course and the loss of each employee’s productivity for that period of time. However, the payback should more than make up for it if even half of the employees come back more motivated and with one or more great ideas for improvement.

This is also a great way to determine the level of dedication each employee possesses. If an employee is not happy to spend some time learning more about their field, most likely they are no longer mentally engaged in the business. Try it at your company and let me know how it works for you.

The author, Marge Bonura, is the Director of Sales & Marketing for New England Machinery, Inc. (NEM). NEM is a leading packaging machinery manufacturer of bottle unscramblers, cappers, orienters, retorquers, lidders, pluggers, pump sorter/placers, scoop feeders, hopper elevators and much more. The company has been in business since 1974 selling to the food, beverage, pharmaceutical, personal care, chemical, household products, automotive and other industries. For more information on NEM, visit their website at www.neminc.com.