In my previous post about training programs, I presented four reasons to train, not only despite the recent tough economy, but because of it. Here are four more:

1) While you want to encourage divergent thinking among your staff professionals, I think you’ll agree that in today’s challenging environment, all team members must be in lock-step when it comes to understanding agency quality standards and best practices. Training is a highly-effective tool to communicate these standards and practices, and assure adherence to both.

2) Many of your teams are reeling from what they saw going on around them in the past two years. Even if your agency didn’t cut staffers, it’s likely that each of them has peers in other firms who have been laid off.  It’s scary out there. Training is an affordable way to re-assure the troops that you’re confident about your agency’s ability to weather the storm, leverage the Great Recovery and have a solid future.

3) I personally feel that PR pros are better suited than those from other marketing disciplines to leverage social media. Why? We’ve always been about engaging audiences, participating  in dialogue, and influencing influencers. But social media channels are changing rapidly, practically daily. Are you using training to keep all your staffers on top of the new, new in this area?

4) For today’s PR pros from the Millennial Generation (whom I wrote about in Al Croft’s “Management Strategies for PR Firms” newsletter) there is an expectation that employers will provide a career track and training, regardless of the state of the economy.

We may not agree with that particular notion, but we’d be foolhardy to ignore it, if we want to have teams of motivated GenY staffers whose loyalty is intact now that our industry is rebounding.

So I ask again: How can you afford not to be training?