'Corner Office': Invest in Your Brightest
Aug. 20 -- — You probably aren't in a position to be quite as magnanimous with employees as the MacArthur Foundation, but you can do the next best thing.
Every year, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation makes grants to a distinguished group of MacArthur Fellows. These grants, popularly known as the MacArthur Genius Grants, are given to individuals who show "exceptional merit and promise for continued and enhanced creative work."
The grants are paid in quarterly installments over five years, and they are given with no restrictions or requirements that the recipients report back. The grants are simply votes of confidence in gifted people. The nearly 600 recipients include novelist Thomas Pynchon, filmmaker John Sayles, dancer/choreographer Twyla Tharp, and actress/playwright Anna Deavere Smith.
So with the "genius grants" as your example, why not do the next best thing, and reimburse the tuition of employees pursuing college or postgraduate degrees?
Tuition reimbursement is an investment in your best and brightest, those people ambitious enough to pursue an education even while working. As employees develop their skills, you can reap the rewards of those improved skills on the job. It's a win-win for everyone.
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Establish parameters for reimbursement. Some employers believe that education — any education — is good for employees and, ultimately, for the company. Accordingly, they offer to reimburse tuition for any college courses (or the equivalent) that an employee might elect to take. That includes everything from a weekend class in travel photography to coursework for an MBA.
There's nothing wrong with such generosity. However, it may make more sense to limit your reimbursement to classes that directly support an employee's current job or established career path. The reason is that if the company has financial difficulties at some point, you aren't put in the position of having to decide which classes seem worthwhile and which do not; it's cleaner to have a business rationale.
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