When it comes to employee development are you a great, good or everyone else investor?

How successful is your organization going to be when the economy turns?

I truly believe there is a window that continues to close more and more each day to organizations when it comes to investing in employee development as well as preparing our next generation of leaders. Our current economic climate has forced all organizations to put their cards on the table about how truly important they feel learning and development is to the future success of their own business. I look at the situation much like an investor. Great investors see opportunity before everyone else and are also the one's that reap the greatest rewards. Good investors follow the great investors and are still able to reap above average returns. Then you have those at the tail end who follow the good investors and usually see average to below average returns or maybe no return at all. Lastly you have everyone else who continually says, "man I wish I had..."

As I meet with organizations I see the same type of investor scenario above, when it comes to developing employees. Some organizations see this as an unbelievable opportunity to invest in their employees, these are the great investors. They see investing in employee development now is going to pay great dividends later. These types of companies I believe are at the forefront and truly will see unbelievable returns for their investment. The returns they are going to realize as the economy begins to turn are employees that are not looking to leave the organization, because they will feel incredibly loyal to the company who continued to invest in them "in the not so great times"! They are going to have a more engaged workforce who is better prepared to understand how to be ready to compete in the new global economy that is being created right now. They are also going to be an organization that is ready to hand over the reigns of their company from the Babyboom generation leaders to a well prepared GenX and GenY employee population. If this describes your organization, I am extremely confident that you will be one of the leading organizations we are reading about 20-30 years from now.

If you do not yet fit into the above category, not to worry you still have time to follow the great investors and become a good investor. However the window continues to get smaller everyday. More and more signs are pointing to an economy that is finally beginning to stabilize. You may be asking the question, wouldn't that be better for us all if the economy stabilizes? The answer is absolutely, the only problem is it also will create that much more of an equal footing for every organization when it comes to having resources allocated for employee development. At that point as an investor you have lost the opportunity to leverage the bad economy as a strategic advantage to your company, when it comes to investing in and developing employees. It is at this point the great investors have already found the next big opportunity.

If you are the organization that waits for the economy to completely stabilize and rebound, I truly believe you will be saying what all of us have said at least at one point in our life, "man I wish I had..."