The interplay between training and education, in turn, reveals a much deeper transformation that has occurred in recent years regarding the role of training and education in the development of employees. In the typical modern organization, most training and education occurred prior to the employee being hired or at the start of the employee’s tenure in the organization. New hires were expected to have obtained the training and education they needed for a new job in the schools they had already attended or in their previous jobs. High schools, trade schools and vocational schools were to prepare lower-level employees for their job, while colleges, graduate schools and professional training programs were to prepare higher-level employees for their lifelong work in the organization.
This assumption regarding the enduring value of initial training and education held true as long as employees tended to stay in the same job for many years and as long as the organization remained relatively stable over time. Whatever changes must be made in one’s performance on the job could occur gradually with plenty of opportunity for trial-and-error and informal learning from the old hands in the organization. We are now living in a very different world. Employees do not remain in the same job for very long and even when they do there is much to be learned on a continuing basis as the organization adjusts to its unpredictable and complex environment. It is now imperative that organizational leaders invest in on-going training and education.
As I noted in an earlier easay, the new development model centers on the notion of lifelong learning. New employees are selected not only because they have skills and knowledge that are directly applicable to the first job they hold in the organization, but also because these new employees exhibit the capacity to learn. They manifest the curiosity that is essential for anyone who wishes to acquire new skills and knowledge. They want to learn primarily because the opportunity to learn is itself compelling, rather than because the learning is required.
This new emphasis on lifelong learning also pushes to center stage the skills, knowledge and aptitudes associated with two competencies: the ability to effectively organize a task and the ability to teach other people how to perform this task themselves. An employee must be able to find the time for learning new skills and acquiring new knowledge. This, in turn, requires that they can temporarily leave their work in order to attend classes or learn on-line. They must be able to get ahead, plan for their absence from the job, or delegate portions of their job to other people. If employees are at some point indispensable, and must therefore never leave their job, then they soon become highly dispensable, for they are no longer up to date in skills and knowledge. In most instances, therefore, the first training and education programs to be presented to new employees should focus on time management, the organization of tasks and, for managers, processes of supervision and delegation.
