I was at an event yesterday in a beautiful country house hotel in Sussex. Originally it had been a stately home of some stature, and was a very impressive building with an expansive estate, including a lake.

But, between the house's original incarnation and its current lease of life, it turns out that the building was a training centre for Barclays Bank.

I was told a little about this by a woman whose husband used to work there during that period. She said that people always loved going on courses there - for obvious reasons, and that courses used to be longer than they are now - a week instead of two days.

Of course, cost-savings eventually brought the end of this little piece of training luxury - to which my first reaction was approving, after all how expensive must all this have been? Surely there are specialist training providers who could run the courses?

But then I began to wonder what was lost when this training centre closed? The courses would no longer be teaching the 'Barclays way of doing things' - but were more generic for all companies, losing them a way of distinguishing them from the competition. And there will be fewer opportunities for Barclays staff from different parts of the business to meet, socialise and share ideas and best practice.

It strikes me that Barclays doesn't spring to mind as a company that provides amazing customer service - and doesn't win consumer awards for such things. But one company that repeatedly does is 'Richer Sounds'. Its a small private company, founded by Julian Richer.

He decided from the very early days that he needed proper control of the training of staff - and that it was one of the most important roles for him to play. So he built a training centre with accomodation in the grounds of his house.

This enables him to train staff in his values, and 'the Richer Way', and enables staff to network, socialise and build bonds that create a stronger business.

The company has high staff loyalty, high customer satisfaction - and has become so successful as a result that it is in the Guiness Book of Records for the highest value of sales per square foot.

Maybe, however, the business will one day be sold to a large corporate. Costs will be cut, the in-house country-based training centre will close. Perhaps it will become a country house hotel. Money would be saved on training, money would be made on the property sale. But what would the greater cost be to the company, what would be lost?