At Kyphon there is a broad, flexible approach to employee development; almost any type of learning is considered valuable. Employees are encouraged to pursue knowledge in any format that suits them, inside or out, formal or informal. The company spends over $4,000 per year per employee on training, and support for learning extends to employees' families. Employees are responsible for seeking out opportunities for learning, and the company helps the employee find learning opportunities. This approach to training and the company's opportunities for quick advancement are important recruiting and retention tools, which are critical at Kyphon. Loyalty and longterm employee commitment are important goals at Kyphon because their product is so specialized requiring both medical and technical knowledge to sell. In contrast to Kyphon, Triage's employee lifecycle is much shorter and their model is to hire a large number of entry level employees and replace them three or four years later when they leave.
Triage is perceived by new employees as a good place to learn about the field, and many move on to graduate school or medical school. This is a similar hiring model to many types of consulting firms Triage must get new employees up to speed quickly and retain them long enough to justify the development investment before they move on. Most new employees come in with a blank slate about the health care field, medical jargon, and interpersonal skills necessary to work with clients, who may be resentful that Triage is trying to correct their mistakes (i.e., failure to collect insurance payments). Triage employees receive approximately 12 hours of orientation, and over 21 months they complete 15 formal training modules. However, unlike Kyphon, which values learning in general, Triage training is job specific, requiring employees to focus on what they need to know to come up to speed quickly and generate immediate revenue. Outside training is not generally supported at Triage; school is perceived as an outside diversion from the task at hand, and if an employee wants to pursue an outside degree, the employee must do it on their own, if they have time. Thus, although hiring and training at Kyphon and Triage are dramatically different, the success of both com panies belies the fact that their individual approaches work for them
Discuss which approach to hiring and training described above you think is best, and would be more generally applic able to other companies