The age old management dilemma: "CFO: What happens if we train them and they leave? CEO: What happens if we don’t and they stay?"

This a very dim, short-sighted view. Most large companies do have training programs and don't artificially limit the skills to ones that are not transferrable. Investing in the skills of your current employees can be far cheaper than trying to hire for those same skills.

Even in your worst case scenario you've presumably gotten some benefit from the employee before they depart and spent less than you would on a bad hire who has the desired skills (and therefore makes more).

If the result of your investments really is competitors with better trained employees then you have a higher skilled pool to recruit from when you need it. Plus, you've saved money in the meantime.

They employer has ways of making it more attractive to work at their company. More pay, nicer workplace, more freedom... But besides that, many people tend to develop loyality when they started as an apprentice and the employer gives the impression that they offer a stable job for life. That system works reasonably well here in Germany and, from what I hear, in Japan.

If people are leaving your company right after being trained, your company has some major problems.

Well, they can also HIRE better trained staff from their competitors.

If companies really wanted to preserve talent for the long term, however, they should look long and hard at aggressive outsourcing programs that evacuate all technical and operations expertise to offshore companies. This has been "training competitors" for decades. There will be a comeuppance for this someday.

No, all the training has to do is increase the corporation's profits by more than the cost.

People are getting paid to provide labor, not to be serfs.

The company I was at prevoiusly had this exact dilemna. In the end, they are still ahead of competition, in part because of their trained workforce, and in part because training people also means the hierarchy is more susceptible to listen to them. The people that leave for companies not training are not as effective in their new roles because of that.

There aren't so many of those jobs, but there are solutions that make this not so much of a problem.

On pharmacy I worked at trained their own pharmacy technicians. You can go to school for it and get a license. If you train at the pharmacy, however, it is not transferable to a competitor.

Some companies have contracts, stating that you must work at the company for x years after completing training. Occasionally there will be money to pay back. This is exactly so the company feels it can get some of its training investment back. I've seen this quite a bit with education reimbursement and management training programs.

You can also simply make your workplace a horrible place to work. Treat employees well, don't take advantage of employees-in-training, give vacations and be reasonable. You know, normal stuff.

It's absolutely true. Here's one example: The Los Angeles Department of water and powers pays millions on its apprenticeship programs yet many never finish or they start working for some other company.

Here's the story:

http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-dwp-audit-20170328-...

There are some companies that take this approach, though I am not sure if it is intentional. Goldman Sachs being one of the most famous examples who use lots of proprietary in-house technology, which can make it difficult for leavers to get new jobs elsewhere.

the flip side is that i'm paying through the nose to get trained to do a job for you, but with no actual job, maybe never an actual job.