Investing in Your Biggest Asset

Most experts agree that we can no longer compete on price in North America; countries like India and China have a significantly lower labor costs. If we are going to compete in this global economy, we need to focus our attention on quality of service. Consumers are willing to pay more for the experience.

Who delivers the experience? People! Your human capital will play a key role in providing you with the competitive advantage you need to succeed in this global economy. The old idiom is true; people will do business with people they know and trust.

That’s what most businesses need to capitalize on. Developing a culture and training strategy that empowers their employees to deliver quality service and build long-term relationships with your clients consistently.

For a training strategy to be effective you must make a commitment to creating and following through with the strategy; this will require an investment: investment of your time, effort and money.

Investment of time

From creating a strategy, to developing and executing the training plan… it requires time. You can mitigate this by using off-the shelf training programs, however, one word of caution, off-the-shelf programs rarely meet the need of most organization. For training to be meaningful and effective, take the program and customize it to your company needs. This will allow you to leverage off of existing material and reduce your overall development time. Of course, there is a cost. The downside to this strategy is the cost of purchasing the pre-existing program. So, do a quick time / cost analysis to see how long it will take you to develop it on your own versus the cost of purchasing the program and time required to customize it for your needs.

Investment in Effort

You will either need to come up with a training strategy that uncovers your particular needs, design a training plan, execute and evaluate it. My personal recommendation is to stick to your core business and rely on an expert. You wouldn’t do your own taxes? You would go to an accountant… right? Similarly, I recommend you hire an expert to manage this for you. A Certified Training and Development Professional is like a doctor for your business, he/she will come in and do a business health check and prescribe a customized solution for you. Where do you find a Certified professional? I would recommend going to the certification body like cstd.ca (in Canada) and td.org (in the US) and lookup a certified member near you.

Investment in Money

To develop a training strategy and execute it, you will also require a financial investment. If you have a trainer internally, you will need to factor in things like salary, opportunity cost, cost of developing and administering the training (including facilities & equipment). If you’re hiring an external expert, you will also need to factor in their consulting fees, this could involve time required for the consultant to meet with key stakeholders, understand your business, present a solution and then develop and execute it. Think that costs too much? Exhaustive research by Dr. Laurie Bassi, a human capital analysis specialist, found that training and development has a 300% return on investment. This ROI out-returns many other investment options like R&D, hard or capital opportunities.

Training your employees isn’t easy, but it represents the best investment in your business. A qualified professional can help you retain your employees; increase their productivity and your company’s profitability.

AUTHOR INFORMATION

Ravinder Tulsiani is the Author of the #1 BESTSELLER: “Your Leadership Edge”, an innovative step-by-step leadership training program that will help you develop a highly engaged and super-charged workforce... get your copy at http://www.yourleadershipedge.ca.

best quotes for health and nutrition

1. “Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy wealthy and wise” ~Benjamin Franklin 2. “Physical fitness is not only one of the most important keys to a healthy body, it is the basis of dynamic and creative intellectual activity.” ~John F. Kennedy 3. “The greatest wealth is Health.” ~Unknown 4. “Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food” ~Hippocrates 5. “Just because you’re not sick doesn’t mean you’re healthy” ~Author Unknown 6. “Those who think they have no time for exercise will sooner or later have to find time for illness.” ~Edward Stanley 7. “If you don’t take care of your body, where are you going to live?” ~Unknown 8. Healthy is merely the slowest rate at which one can die. ~Unknown 9. “Garbage in garbage out” ~George Fuechsel 10. “Life expectancy would grow by leaps and bounds if green vegetables smelled as good as bacon.” ~Doug Larson 11. “Health is a state of complete harmony of the body, mind and spirit. When one is free from physical disabilities and mental distractions, the gates of the soul open.” ~B.K.S. Iyengar 12. “If you can’t pronounce it, don’t eat it” ~Common sense 13. “In order to change we must be sick and tired of being sick and tired.” ~Author Unknown 14. “Health is like money, we never have a true idea of its value until we lose it.” ~Josh Billings 15. “Time And health are two precious assets that we don’t recognize and appreciate until they have been depleted.” ~Denis Waitley 16. “From the bitterness of disease man learns the sweetness of health.” ~Catalan Proverb 17. “Health and cheerfulness naturally beget each other.” ~Joseph Addison 18. “Take care of your body. It’s the only place you have to live.” ~Jim Rohn 19. “Your body is a temple, but only if you treat it as one.” ~Astrid Alauda 20. “Mainstream medicine would be way different if they focused on prevention even half as much as they focused on intervention…” ~Anonymous 21. “Our bodies are our gardens – our wills are our gardeners.” ~William Shakespeare 22. “The best and most efficient pharmacy is within your own system.” ~Robert C. Peale 23. “Health is not simply the absence of sickness.” ~Hannah Green 24. “My own prescription for health is less paperwork and more running barefoot through the grass” ~Leslie Grimutter 25. “The more you eat, the less flavor; the less you eat, the more flavor.” ~Chinese Proverb 26. The best doctor gives the least medicine. 27. “The doctor of the future will no longer treat the human frame with drugs, but rather will cure and prevent disease with nutrition.” ~Thomas Edison 28. “An apple a day keeps the doctor away” ~Proverb 29. “A merry heart doeth good like a medicine, but a broken spirit dries the bones..” ~Proverbs 17:22 30. “True healthcare reform starts in your kitchen, not in Washington” ~Anonymous Healthy Quotes Selected by Global Healing Center To help get us to the number 50, we asked the staff here at Global Healing Center to provide their favorite quotes about health and nutrition. Below are those quotes. 31. “The only way to keep your health is to eat what you don’t want, drink what you don’t like, and do what you’d rather not.” ~Mark Twain 32. “To insure good health: eat lightly, breathe deeply, live moderately, cultivate cheerfulness, and maintain an interest in life.” ~William Londen 33. “A man too busy to take care of his health is like a mechanic too busy to take care of his tools.” ~Spanish Proverb 34. “To keep the body in good health is a duty, for otherwise we shall not be able to trim the lamp of wisdom, and keep our mind strong and clear. Water surrounds the lotus flower, but does not wet its petals.” ~Buddha 35. “Now there are more overweight people in America than average-weight people. So overweight people are now average. Which means you’ve met your New Year’s resolution.” ~Jay Leno 36. “Don’t eat anything your great-great grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food. There are a great many food-like items in the supermarket your ancestors wouldn’t recognize as food.. stay away from these” ~Michael Pollan 37. “Health is a relationship between you and your body” ~Terri Guillemets 38. “He who takes medicine and neglects to diet wastes the skill of his doctors.” ~Chinese Proverb 39. “Sickness comes on horseback but departs on foot.” ~Dutch Proverb 40. “Diseases of the soul are more dangerous and more numerous than those of the body.” ~Cicero 41. “A good laugh and a long sleep are the best cures in the doctor’s book.” ~Irish Proverb 42. “Water, air and cleanliness are the chief articles in my pharmacopoeia.” ~Napoleon I 43. The 'i' in illness is isolation, and the crucial letters in wellness is 'we'. 44. “Health of body and mind is a great blessing, if we can bear it.” ~John Henry Cardinal Newman 45. “Today, more than 95% of all chronic disease is caused by food choice, toxic food ingredients, nutritional deficiencies and lack of physical exercise.” ~Mike Adams 46. “It’s bizarre that the produce manager is more important to my children’s health than the pediatrician.” ~Meryl Streep 47. “Healing in a matter of time, but it is sometimes also a matter of opportunity.” ~Hippocrates 48. “The part can never be well unless the whole is well.” ~Plato 49. “Health is merely the slowest way someone can die.” ~Author Unknown 50. “By cleansing your body on a regular basis and eliminating as many toxins as possible from your environment, your body can begin to heal itself, prevent disease, and become stronger and more resilient than you ever dreamed possible!” ~Dr. Edward Group III