This month, we raise the question of how much responsibility your business should take on when it comes to training your employees. The options are numerous, and range from outsourcing to developing your own intricate in-house endeavor. You can literally write the book on what your employees need to know, or you can leave it up to professionals who focus on nothing but training other companies’ employees. No matter what you decide, making a decision to implement a proper training program at your company is essential.

I recently had the opportunity to speak to a restaurant owner in Detroit who told me that when he was starting out in the business, he thought a good way to cut costs was to trim a little out of the training budget, just enough to eliminate one session. His general manager at the time, however, set him straight. “If you think training is expensive,” he said, “you should try ignorance.”

Indeed, there can be nothing more expensive than an employee who, without the proper training, makes a bad decision due to ignorance. A customer service training session through a professional training firm might cost your company a bit of money; an in-house program might cost your management team time and resources. However, an ill-informed employee can cost your company much more if he or she gives customers the wrong information or handles them in an unprofessional manner.

Training takes many forms, and not all of them may be right for your business. In this issue, Associate Professor Rita McGrath from Columbia Business School says a mix of “off-the-shelf” training from outside firms and in-house programs is becoming more popular as companies seek to outsource the nuts and bolts and paint the big picture themselves. VendorSeek founder Ken Wisniefski shares his experience with outside firms and why he ended up training on his own.

Your business might use outside or internal resources for training, but if you haven’t put much thought into it before, now’s the time. Unlike most other big expenses, ignorance is the one thing you can spend a lot of money on without ever getting anything in return.