Who's responsible for training anyway!?

Hi! Welcome back.  Today I’d like to review and critique an article that appeared in the Wall Street Journal on October 24, 2011 by Peter Cappelli entitled “Why companies aren’t getting the employees they need.”  The author included several statistics about the current state of the economy and what employer’s perceptions of the job market are.  “Even with unemployment hovering around 9%, companies are grousing that they can’t find skilled workers, and filling a job can take months of hunting.” Cappelli states.  He goes on to state that “the real culprits are the employers themselves”, which I agree with but have a different set of possible solutions to the problem.

Cappelli further states that “With an abundance of workers to choose from, employers are demanding more of job candidates that ever before.  (Possibly because it’s a buyer’s market my words not his).  They (employers) want prospective workers to be able to fill a role right away, without any training or ramp-up time.”  “Employers need to drop the idea of finding perfect candidates and look for people who could do the job with a bit of training and practice.”  “Unfortunately, American companies don’t seem to do training anymore.”   “Data is hard to come by, but apprenticeship programs have largely disappeared, along with management-training programs.”  “The amount of training that the average new hire gets in the first year or so could be measured in hours and counted on the fingers of one hand.”    As a workplace professional I couldn’t agree more with Peter Cappelli’s assessment of the current job market and employers attitudes towards it.  However Cappelli ‘s list of solutions to this problem is in my opinion incomplete and I’ll offer my own thoughts on the subject later first Cappelli’s.

Cappelli offers three solutions in which employers can get the skills they need without having to invest a lot of upfront training.

1.       Work with education providers-if the job candidates don’t have the skills you need, make them go to school before you hire them.  Sounds logical but don’t we have an abundance of college educated employees sitting on the sidelines waiting to get in the game now?

2.       Bring back apprenticeships- pay employees less while they master their craft or lengthen the probationary period-with lower pay- until employees get up to speed on job requirements.  A good idea and to some extent we see that now with the use of temporary workers who begin as a temporary employee and don’t get an offer of full-time employment until they show that they can do what the employer requires.  However apprenticeships are not easy to establish and maintain it takes someone to administer the program, train the mentors and communicate with the protégé’s etc.  This is very difficult to accomplish in our current cost conscious, short term corporate culture.

3.       Promote from within- employees have useful knowledge that no outsider could have and should make great candidates for filling jobs higher up, I agree!  These days many companies simply don’t believe their own workers have the necessary skills to take on new roles.  That’s a little like telling me the Green Bay Packers can’t run the football.  The Packers have the personnel to run the ball both in the backfield and offensive line but for some reason they choose not to.  If you want a running game in football you have to hand the ball to somebody and allow them to run.  If you want an educated workforce in your company, what do you think you have to do?  That’s right you have to educate them!

Employers for too long have bemoaned the current state of our educational system as a major reason why they can’t get and keep good employees.  Whose responsibility is it to make sure employees are up to speed with the latest skills and expertise needed on-the-job?  Whose gets the benefits of an employee’s labor as they work individually and collectively for a company?  The education system? No! The employer reaps the benefits and it is the employer who must take some responsibility in training and re-training their employees. 

To relinquish responsibility in the development of employees is like the Green Bay Packers asking the University of California-Berkeley to train Aaron Rodgers in the complexities of the Packer’s offense even before he joined the team and then bemoan the fact that they (the Packers) aren’t finding good professional quarterback material while he was learning the quarterback position in Green Bay because the colleges aren’t producing anybody.  That is insanity!  Nobody who follows team sports in general or football in particular would accept or even state this position but that’s what I hear every week while listening or watching business programs on the current state of the economy and job market.

Every company has talented people on staff that they can employ to impart useful knowledge to new and inexperienced employees but most don’t because either they don’t take the time to value the skill of training people or they don’t know how to train their new employees using their existing staff.  In 1975, Bowling Green State University in Ohio conducted a landmark study entitled the “Industrial Training Research Project”.  They studied the effects of structured vs. unstructured On-the-Job Training (OJT).  The first group used traditional unstructured OJT or the “Buddy” system.  The first worker was trained by the supervisor, and then each person trained the next person to do the job.  The second group was trained by the supervisor using a structured OJT program.  The results were astounding!

 The second group (The Structured OJT Program) reached a predetermined level of skill and productivity 75% faster than workers using the unstructured “buddy” system.  In addition, those trained using the structured OJT approach produced 76% fewer rejects, and their troubleshooting ability was increased by 130%.

In addition, morale, productivity, and professionalism normally are higher in organizations that employ a sound On-the- Job Training program. Did you know that according to Carnevale and Gainer (1989) The Learning Enterprise, ASTD that:

• 80-90 percent of an employee’s job knowledge and skills will probably be learned through OJT.

• Organizations will spend 3 times (3X) more per employee for OJT than for off-the-job training, even if there is no designated budget item for OJT.

• Up to 1/3 of an employee’s first-year salary is devoted to OJT costs.

 How does your company impart knowledge within the firm from experienced workers to less experienced workers?  Do you know the difference between a structured and unstructured On-the-Job Training program?  Want to know more about the benefits of a structured On-the-Job Training (OJT) program?  Well that will be subject of my next post, until then thanks for reading and all my best!  Jer.