When it comes to workforce education, I think companies are really looking to understand their competitive advantages and adapt their strategies for their talent management approach accordingly. By connecting to their overall strategy, this enables them to identify stronger hiring needs and ways to engage employees.
Companies that take this approach don’t look at workforce education as a quick-fix because they weave education into their company strategies. It becomes part of the decisions they make.
There may be some companies, on the other hand, that are struggling to keep their competitive advantage, or maybe they’re just dealing with pain points in the business, so they’re going to be more tempted to grab at “the flavor of the month,” whatever it may be.
In this approach, employees may get fliers in their e-mails about a training opportunity and think, “Wow, this looks like something that really could fix the problem.”
I think, overall, the better approach is for employers to really engage their employees and identify the talent that is delivering what they need, and then build this talent in others. That’s going to have an impact on the company’s profitability, so the company will be more successful overall if it educates its workforce.
Challenges
The challenge with workforce education in today’s timeframe really goes beyond the next trendy thing.
For example, the workplace went through an era where everybody was looking at “change management,” or everyone was looking at company culture or doing diversity training. I’ve seen plenty of those types of training programs come through organizations.
However, if those are not timed to the strategy of the company, they don’t stick. If a company spends a lot of money on training, but it’s not connected to the overall company strategy, it won’t work.
I think the challenge companies are going to have moving forward is two-fold:
- Not only are they going to have a question of the skills gap they need to address in their organization in order to get capable employees, but it’s going to overlap with many of the Baby Boomers retiring—leaving the organization and taking with them years of experience and knowledge.
You can hire around the technical knowledge capability, but a lot of the theories and understanding of the business will leave with Baby Boomer employees.
- So now employers in this situation are not only looking at ways to develop the talent they need, but they’ve also got to figure out how they’re going to transfer all the Baby Boomer’s knowledge to the next generations of employees.
It’s become much more complicated; and company’s need to figure out which one they want to focus on: They only have so many resources that they can spend on training, so how should they spend them?
- Are they going to invest in some mentoring-type programs?
- Should they continue with the education they’ve done in the past and tie it to company skill gaps?
It’s going to be interesting to see where companies go with this in the future.
In my next Insight, I’ll talk about the common mistakes I see employers make regarding workforce education.