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| McDonalds' cleverly branded corporate university. |
My last post was about the value of graduate school for HR professionals. While my article was in
favor of graduate school, the student loan crisis is undeniable, and many
people writing about similar topics argue that graduate school, and even
college, no longer provides a reasonable ROI to justify the choice, especially Ivy
League and other reputable schools. With
higher education being unaffordable for many Americans, will learning and
development of US adults slow or cease?
I don’t think so, but I do think it’s shifting.
Unfortunately, with so many people questioning the value of
higher education, the ultimate result may be that the rate at which degrees,
specifically graduate degrees, are obtained will likely plateau or taper. Most people go to graduate school today
because they are trying to make a career change, hope to reignite a stagnant
career, or just love learning. However,
if they can’t provide a continued learning experience for themselves, it will
increasingly be incumbent upon employers to provide adult learning and
development to their staff. Now, corporate
universities are not new. We already
know that employers of choice make learning and development a priority. I believe this is just the beginning – as
higher education becomes increasingly unaffordable, US employers will need to
help pick up the slack in order to get the talent they want and need.
This is a slight throwback to my post, “Hire Character,Teach Skill”, and to build upon those ideas, I think that more organizations
need to focus on training, and develop this as a real strength within the
organization. There are two general
buckets of training that you can provide to employees – skill training and
behavioral training. While many
organizations provide some skill training, there are still a significant number
of job openings that expect candidates to come to the table with every single
skill listed in a job description. In
today’s world, this isn't very practical.
This is the reason that business people say they are still struggling to
find the right talent, amid 8%+ national unemployment rates. Imagine a business environment where each job
posting accounted for some level of skill training for the new incumbent, whether
formal or OTJ, lengthy or brief.
De-prioritizing the necessity of so many skills, and specifically, niche
skills opens up a lot of possibilities to hiring managers and businesses. And back to my previous blog post, it may
mean they increase quality of hire by focusing on character, rather than skill.
Don’t have the resources to provide weeks of training to
every new hire? Not a problem – there
are ways to work around this. I’ve
worked in small businesses for most of my career, and I know that money, time
and resources can be scarce. I’m a firm
believer in the building of trainings (versus buying), and managers and leaders
within your departments can help. They
are your personal subject matter experts, and honestly, the best for building
and delivering skill-based training.
Work with them to build a training agenda, and then work on the “meat”
of the training and be sure to include detailed skilled based information, and
practice where possible and applicable.
There is also behavior based training, and this is one area
that our traditional education system is relatively poor at. Behaviors like relationship building,
professionalism, critical thinking, problem solving, adaptability, etc. are all
behaviors that employers regularly outline as being important or critical to
career success, however, most universities and graduate programs offer little
focus in these areas. So basically, you
just have to pray that you are naturally gifted with these behaviors, or that
you had a parent/teacher/mentor along the way that instilled these
characteristics in you. US corporations
are doing more than most other formal education systems to advance behavioral
learning. For example, organizations
heavy in sales staff tend to experience a lack in the areas of critical
thinking and prioritization. Like more
technical skills, these are skills that can be taught. In fact, if your other people and HR
processes are setup well (i.e. staffing, performance management), then the data
should be able to tell you exactly where your workforce needs help.
Now, believe me, I know many of you, particularly those of
you working in smaller firms, are reading this and thinking, “wow, nice idea
but too bad I don’t have any money!” I
want you to believe me that what I suggest in this post can be done on
shoestring budgets. It requires you to
be innovative and resourceful, but being the cutting edge, thought leading HR
professional I know you are, you will find a way. How do I know this? You don't really have a choice. If you're are going to continued to be effective in your job, and if companies in our new economy are going to continue to thrive, the workforce will need to gain the skills necessary to do today's work. If formal educational institutions aren't providing it, you had better be working on a solution for your firm.
If you've implemented skill or behavioral
training in your organization, particularly on a tight budget, please comment
below.
