- October 1, 2018
- Kimley-Horn Corner, President's Corner
President’s Corner: Investing in Employee Development
- By: Steve Lefton
Kimley-Horn President
Creating, implementing, and maintaining training programs at a firm is an investment. It’s an investment in the firm’s future success, reputation, and people. From a financial standpoint alone, the costs associated with poor retention rates, project mistakes, and low company morale far outweigh the costs of developing employees’ skills. Kimley-Horn’s core purpose is to provide an environment for our people to flourish, and providing opportunities for professional development is a direct reflection of this commitment. Our extensive training programs are largely in-person and supplemented with a growing online training program we have developed in-house. These programs help employees build confidence, network with their partners across the country, stay on top of industry trends, increase productivity, and understand that the firm values their professional development. While our technical trainings are focused on providing the building blocks within different areas of expertise, Kimley-Horn also offers majors trainings focused on our culture, people and project management, career development for emerging female leaders, relationship-building, marketing, and more.
Our training programs are continuously evolving, with input from company leadership, discipline specialists, and training attendees. More than 1,900 employees have attended an in-house training in 2018, and as our firm and client needs continue to grow, we expect the number and types of trainings we offer to grow as well. It is incredible to know that individuals who I’ll teach at Consultant Training next month will one day be instructors to their peers and younger staff at the firm. The best investment a professional services firm can make is in its people. Those that you train today will be the leaders of tomorrow. To learn more about Kimley-Horn’s current training offerings, visit our website: https://www.kimley-horn.com/join-our-team/training-at-kimley-horn/.
This photo was taken at a recent training—Fundamentals of Practice—where I joined employees for an open discussion about our firm.