Ring Bell for Tuition Reimbursement

Q: What is a good tuition reimbursement policy for managers in our office who want to increase their skills? In the past, our construction business did not offer reimbursement. But, we're growing and know we need to improve our human capital. Some in our office think we should reimburse completely, and others think we should reimburse only partly because employees who go to night and weekend school will have some limited availability while they are going to school and could leave our company eventually.

A: A process for tuition reimbursement that applies to all managers in your office should be disseminated to all your managers, applied consistently and tracked over time to show the improvement in employee performance.

There are several elements that should be included to ensure you gain value for the training your managers gain at your expense.

First, prior approval for any course should be required for reimbursement to apply. You may retain the right for approval yourself or delegate it to an immediate supervisor or human resources person in your company.

You may decide to limit reimbursement to specific educational institutions or training providers.

It is good practice to require the manager to provide a class description, schedule and costs including tuition and textbooks as part of this prior approval process. This will insure that the training you are paying for is beneficial to both the employee and your company in terms of tailoring and matching the learning experiences to the needs of the employee. This pre-approval process provides a good opportunity for a mini-performance review where you can discuss areas of training needs.

Cost Issues

Second, you should decide if you are going to pay for the training at the time of enrollment, reimburse the entire cost of the class upon completion, or reimburse for training based on the final grade. I prefer the last method whenever possible, where you provide 100% reimbursement for an A, 90% for a B grade, 80% for a C, 60% for a D, and no reimbursement if the class results in failure or incomplete.

In this instance, the need to provide documentation of the final grade and the course cost is the responsibility of the manager. Again, this provides an opportunity for a brief discussion of the benefits of the learning, the ways it is being applied to daily work, and future training plans.

Third, some recognition of the training received by employees as part of your reimbursement program is important. It might result in greater employee participation, higher morale among the participants and create a company image as caring about the professionalism and quality of their employees.

Concerning your last comment about losing employees due to providing training, a good friend of mine has summarized that concern quite well. He always asks the question if an employer would rather keep untrained employees working at less than their ability or loose a few well trained employees from an overall well trained staff.

I think I would choose the latter.

Do you have questions on construction human resources or safety?
E-mail them to Leonard Toenjes at ltoenjes@agcstl.org or
craig_barner@mcgraw-hill.com.

(If Len picks your question,
he will answer it in a future issue of Midwest Construction.)