Re:Ask HN: How are you doing performance appraisal at your s...
by icebraining on Thursday December 08, 2016 @06:42PM
(#13135405)
As an employee, those perks annoy me because they promote checking boxes over actual learning. Oftentimes what you really need to learn is not available as a certification (the subject may be too new, or obscure, or only taught in person far away, etc) and you're better off learning by yourself, but then you won't get the same pay raise as your coworker, despite their course being mediocre and barely relevant to their job.
If your training was useful, it'll reflect itself on your work, no? Why do we need to reward it specifically?
It seems obvious to do as a business owner, but as you pointed out, I guess it's not that common.
It is just strange to ignore basic incentives/economics. The more you can align the incentives in the same direction, the better result you get. Highly-trained workforces are not fungible. All of this sounds like being "nice" to employees, but in reality it serves the business simply better than the alternatives.