Question: How serious are companies about workforce development?
Answer: "Wait for a recession and workforce development is the first thing management stops doing. That's the primary error in a typical business recovery strategy," says Brandon Day, business manager, training services with Rockwell Automation, a provider of industrial automation power, control and information solutions. "In cost-cutting moves, some managements seem to think no more of workforce development and training than they do of trimming travel and entertainment expenses. The evidence: Budgets for both are typically banned or curtailed early in the recovery game -- often in the same corporate directive."
Day says the second most common error is that management doesn't take the time to analyze goals and objectives. "They don't step back and prioritize the type of training, or they introduce a lower quality level of training simply because they want to pay less. But pursuing workforce development on the cheap should not be considered the ultimate objective."
He recommends starting with a process that first evaluates the workforce so that proper goals can be set to meet corporate objectives. "Then the actual individuals can be included in the prioritization process as to who needs to know what."
"For workforce development to proceed with maximum impact, the issues of employee training and optimization must proceed with an organizational viewpoint," adds Ron Kirscht, president, Donnelly Custom Manufacturing Co., a leading player in short-run injection molding. For example, he says the following issues underlie his commitment to workforce development:
- Nothing is static and things are either progressing or regressing.
- Earnings are in direct proportion to the quality and quantity of the products and services we deliver.
- Management's first responsibility is to the continuation of the business.
The significant challenge, says Kirscht, lies in enabling senior management to easily monitor and correct weaknesses in workforce training. And above all, he emphasizes, don't position workforce training as being primarily a narrow, departmental issue. Workforce training really fits into broad, corporatewide strategies (see "
Top 10 Myths of Workforce Development").
Standardizing Workforce Management
At Air Products and Chemicals, a provider of atmospheric gases and related materials and equipment, workforce training is part of a strategic vision to more completely integrate its separate business units under the corporate umbrella, says Vince Grassi, director, global learning and knowledge management. By unifying business process consistency across the organization, corporate brand identity is strengthened, he says.
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