Several years ago, I met with the CEO of a major financial firm. He pointed to the computer on his desk when asked about the future training and education needs in his organization. He noted that his Vice President for Human Resources expects that all the training and education programs in his corporations will be placed on-line within the coming two years. This includes his company’s orientation program for new employees. In fact, part of my work with his corporation included conducting a set of interviews with him regarding his company’s history. These interviews were recorded on video and will be interspersed as video clips with the written text of the company’s new orientation program.
New employees will be invited to begin their job immediately after a very brief welcome by the president and head of the new employee’s department. The new employee will be able to access a wide range of topics regarding the organization they have just joined. In this way, the new employee can select their own sequence of topics and study each topic on demand at their own desired pace and, in many instances, in the location which is most conducive for their own learning. This might be in their place of work or it might be at home. The president also pointed to the computer in his office as future source of all training and education in his organization. He envisions interactive conferencing among employees, following review of role-played scenarios that have been recorded on video and placed on the company’s computer network.
This visionary and computer-literate president also envisions linkages between his own organization and many other financial organizations as they jointly prepare on-line training and education programs on international finance, governmental monetary policies and pending state and federal legislation that could impact on their strategic planning initiatives. This president spoke of many other potential uses of the computer (and Internet) for his company’s training and education program; however, the most important point he made was that training and education would occur just-in-time, when it was most needed by his employees. He believed that the leaders of HRD in contemporary organizations should no longer try to anticipate the educational and training needs of their employees. HRD leaders should instead create resources for employees to use when they themselves determine that these resources are needed.
