George F. Brown Jr., CEO, Blue Canyon Partners
IndustryWeek reported on June 18 on the skilled worker challenge facing U.S. manufacturing.
Citing a recent ManpowerGroup survey, shortages exist across a broad spectrum of jobs -- skilled trades, engineers, IT, sales and many more. While some of the problem may be solved though recalibrating pay scales, it's clear that many companies' leadership teams will have to refocus on in-career education and training as a route to successfully filling critical jobs.
Increasingly, the ability to grow will depend on how well a firm responds to Jack Welch's charge: "When you become a leader, success is all about growing others."
As education and training is elevated to leadership-team discussion levels, I believe that the opportunity -- and the challenge -- goes beyond addressing the basic skills that are needed by employees in job functions like those cited above.
The business environment of the coming decade will require a much stronger and much more agile workforce than what was required in the past. Three areas stand out as ones that must be on the agenda for employee development.
Most firms can bank on having to make changes in their business models in the coming years. Whether these changes involve shifts from production-to-stock to production-to-order, even more global dimensions to operations, new service offerings or other changes, a workforce that can support change will be critical.
Recent research has spotlighted the factors most likely to undermine successful change.
