Sanitation Engineers: The Value of Training

 

Disinfecting a patient room involves more than "dipping a rag in a bucket," Zoutman added.  Bacterial spores require hospital-grade level disinfectants.  It can take 90 minutes to two hours to do a thorough and complete clean if a patient with an infectious disease has occupied the room.

 

But Zoutman isn't convinced more money is the answer.  "We need to look at how we're cleaning, and what we're doing, before we just say we need to hire more people or pour more money into it."

 

Smart man, this Zoutman.  Money isn't a solution; it is, in some cases, a facilitator for a solution, but money by itself does nothing.  We're too quick to spend (and too quick to cut) without actually making an effort and investing the time to find where the problem lies.

 

First and foremost - how are hospital cleaners treated?  How much training do they get?  Do they have HR support to turn to if they have pressing issues, especially if the wages aren't fantastic, or are they expected to leave personal problems at home and thoroughly clean room after room in monotonous yet rapid fashion?

 

I don't know.  I haven't done any research on this front.

 

That's what we pay policy people for, isn't it?

 

Colle On Political Staff

"Obviously it's highly inappropriate," said centrist councillor Josh Colle, "but you start to worry about the safety of a pretty young group of people in that office who are being exposed to questionable characters.  You'd hate to think they're being put in a situation that's not safe."

Colle's empathy for political staff and concern for both their immediate well-being and the impact of deleterious work conditions on their long-term interests is to be commended.

Given the enormous power, high expectations and partisan stresses being placed on them, it's no wonder stories of staff are emerging in abundance.  When it happens so regularly, it's not an individual thing, it's a structural thing.  Where are young staff learning to act against the public interest when they're spending their entire working careers in politics?

Next, there will be more questions about exactly what training and supports they get to do their job as effectively as possible.  That, in turn, will lead to interest in hiring practices, which will lead back to elected officials themselves and the institutions that support them.

Yet another reason why smart pols are going the Open Government route now - best to own up and fix one's own house proactively rather than risking being called out on poor HR management later.  There's a lot of focus on occupational mental health, productivity and innovation these days, with pressure being placed by governments on the private sector to do better.

And if there's one thing we should be noticing, it's that there is low tolerance for political hypocrisy these days.

Labour Woes at Queen's Park

A former office employee for an Ontario member of the provincial parliament says that her job was replaced with an unpaid internship and is filing a complaint with the Ministry of Labour.

This is but the tip of the iceberg of staff/labour woes at Queen's Park, and in political offices in general.  While there are some truly great and empowering employers within each Party, there are also plenty of horror stories about staff working without proper equipment, direction, paid peanuts and micromanaged or bullied.  It's considered part of the culture - you take your lumps because it's an honour to work for elected officials/a Political Party that many are dying for.  If you can't take the heat, get out of the fire.

Yet there also happen to be countless, ongoing complaints about staff performance issues from constituents; calls not returned, files dragged or "sorry, you need to take that up with someone else" shirks of responsibility and dropped initiatives that go out the window with staff turnover.  Then there's the whole occupational mental health movement, spearheaded by the Feds but also under discussion at the provincial level.

Somehow, nobody has tied these things together - yet.  With a growing number of political staff issues/training needs and related scandals making headlines, there's a much bigger story brewing here that smart Political Parties will take pains to get ahead of.  

Of course, doing that means thinking structurally instead of just focusing on the win - which requires a culture change that Ontario politics, or Canadian politics at large, probably isn't ready to invest in.  

The time is rapidly coming when they're gonna have to.

Not that they need to listen to me; after all, it's not like I have a record of being ahead of the curve on this sort of thing.

RELATED:

Training Political Staff

What motivates Political Staff?

What Canada's Political Parties Can Learn From Environics

Political Staff Work-Life Bleed

Transitioning Queen's Park Staff

What Canada's Political Parties Can Learn From Environics

 
 

I've been pitching variations on this theme to political people for years: train your staff, motivate your staff properly and when parting ways, keep the relationship going.  I keep hearing the same sorts of answers back:

 

   "Politics isn't stable - if you want stability, join the bureaucracy."

   "Staff are transient, so we don't want to invest too heavily in them."

   "Members are elected and it's not the role of Parties to tell them how to train/maintain staff."

   "This is politics. Everyone wants in, so individuals are disposable."

 

To recap, there's no point in training the people who support Legislators, advice legislation and interact with the public, the press and other elected officials because retention isn't the goal.

 

There is a remarkable opportunity right now - the training exists, there are models out there to copy and with the constant headline-grab due to the mistakes of staff who have only ever received political training, there's a pressing need for political parties to internalize the message of this article and the best practices of some Private Sector role models.

 

Oh - and those that do are going to find it a lot easier to motivate the best work from loyal team members, too, meaning better outcomes.  I'd think that's something Parties would be after, but what do I know.

 

Companies shift strategies to retain employees

 

When Deane Code arrived a year ago to start her job as a senior consultant at Environics Communications Inc. in Toronto, she found her new business cards waiting at her desk. She also knew what her new co-workers looked like and how to get to their offices, thanks to a “family tree” that arrived in the mail a few days earlier, with staff photos and a map of the office.

Companies must show a willingness to allow people who don’t have a job title of manager or executive or whatever to take on leadership roles, management professor Ed Lawler says. Getty Images

Stacey Marson had a similar welcome to her new job at LoyaltyOne, a customer insight and strategy firm. Before she started as a co-ordinator of business-to-business public relations and corporate marketing, she got a phone call from her new boss, and a package of information – including a book written by the company’s chief executive officer.

 

The cost of replacing mid-level employees is now estimated to be 1.5 times their annual salary – factoring in recruiting costs, hiring time and training. So it’s not surprising that employers are eager to make sure newcomers quickly learn their roles and feel comfortable with the company, increasing the chances of them becoming stable, long-term employees.

 

Many companies are paying more attention to the ways they can make new hires feel confident, from providing seminars that help them understand an organization’s structure and their place in it, to pairing them with mentors who can take them for coffee and answer informal questions.

 

LoyaltyOne, which employs 1,500 staff mainly in Toronto and Mississauga, introduced its program for employee orientation (“onboarding” in human resources jargon) two years ago. It comprises eight 60- to 90-minute small-group seminars, with additional online elements, and covers everything from benefits to marketing to customer care.

 

The program is designed to be completed over about six months. Employees sign up online and fit the monthly seminars around their regular work schedules.

 

Diane Dowsett, LoyaltyOne’s assistant vice-president of talent management and the driving force behind the program, said the format evolved after surveying staff and finding they wanted face-to-face interaction, shorter sessions rather than half-day events, and scheduling flexibility.

 

The company used to offer orientation in a two-day “boot camp,” but Ms. Dowsett said spreading the information out over a few months makes it easier to absorb.

 

“Joining a company is like learning to speak a new language: In the beginning, the words wash over you and you understand one in five, but over time if you have repeated exposure and people willing to make the effort, you become fluent pretty fast,” she noted.

 

At Home Depot Inc., employee orientation is propelled by the company’s focus on the store level. Store employees receive two days of orientation (in person and online) as well as 35 to 40 hours of training about specific products in their department. And head office staff are required to put in 24 hours at a store in their first three months, including at least a four-hour shift in the first 30 days.

“Everything we do at Home Depot is around supporting store associates because they are front line with the customers,” said Kim Forgues, vice-president of human resources, noting that the practice came about as a way to connect support staff with the stores.

 

“It really gave me an understanding of what’s happening in the stores and how I can help people in the stores provide the best customer service,” said Erika Botond, a manager of public relations and communications for Home Depot, who was hired about a year ago and completed her training in the paint department.

 

New hires value the opportunity to interact with their colleagues. At Environics and Home Depot, a buddy system pairs new and established employees. Environics also hands out a quiz that forces new employees to interact with co-workers across the company to answer questions such as “Which Environics employee met Taylor Swift backstage at a concert?”

 

Employees also want to hear from their managers. At LoyaltyOne, such feedback prompted Ms. Dowsett to incorporate a “graduation” session about the company’s vision and culture, led by the CEO. “People love the fact they get access to the CEO and all of our business leaders so quickly and so it’s a really good opportunity for them to foster engagement,” she said.

 

“Employees come in and do their job for eight hours without being able to see the bigger picture of what they’re looking toward,” LoyaltyOne’s Ms. Marson noted, adding that the orientation program “creates a united work force going forward to the same goals.”

 

Another thing new employees seek is feedback and a bit of personal attention. “I circle back with all new hires, whether or not they’re on my team, four to six weeks after they start,” said Josh Cobden, senior vice-president at Environics.

 

Mr. Cobden, who was hired 16 years ago, recalls a time when the company – which now has 120 employees and offices in Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa and Washington – was small enough for the whole staff to take new hires out to lunch.

 

Given the expense of hiring and training a new employee, companies are finding that paying close attention to a newcomer right from the start pays off with an engaged, long-term staff member.

At Home Depot, for example, Ms. Forgues notes that a 90-day “check-in” with new employees resulted in a 15-per-cent decrease in turnover in the past year.

 

“The type of people we hire are high performers, who put pressure on themselves to demonstrate that hiring them was the right decision,” Mr. Cobden noted. “But what they don’t know is that we put as much pressure on ourselves to prove that joining us was the right decision.”

Training Political Staff (UPDATED)

“If there’s a clear indication that they should have known better, if there’s a clear indication that they did not provide any kind of guidance, that type of thing, then there should be responsibility attached to the political party and that might take legal measures.”

Two things emerging out there that, to me, are worth paying attention to.

One - Canada has a recognized training deficit.  This is a big problem; traditional low-training required jobs, like manufacturing, are moving to places where the labour is cheap and employer responsibilities are minimal. 

The current Conservative government feels the solution to this problem is to reduce mandated employer responsibility and weaken unions on the one hand while bringing in more already-trained foreign labour on the other.  The desired end-goal seems to be the opposite direction most industrial economies head; weakening the local workforce and an increased reliance on foreign-trained labour.

How they feel that's sustainable is beyond me, but it fits well with their overarching policy scheme.  A reduction in employee rights and stiff competition with cheaper, better-trained foreign labour is only going to encourage employees to take unnecessary risks (resulting in avoidable injuries and related health costs/rising health premiums employers will eventually want government to deal with) or a backlash against foreign workers just looking to make ends meet.

Plus, it makes us less competitive in the Knowledge Economy.  Why on earth would you embrace horses and bayonets when the market is increasingly demanding a bit more value add?

Two - thanks to social media, the dumb mistakes of political staff resonate more, last longer and are increasingly tied to Party brand.  As is the case with Members themselves, the inclination is for top-down management and tightly-controlled messaging. 

It's ironic in the extreme that Parties who advocate free speech, liberty and decentralization for their country provide the exact opposite internally, but I digress.  Given the quick turn-over of political staff, nobody's ever felt that internal human resource development was worth the effort; it's far easier to see labour as disposable and focus on replacement, not investment.

Until now, that is.

Here's where the two strands connect:

Government, for better or worse, leads the country and sets the standard; whatever government is seen to get away with, the Private Sector is going to try to get away with, too.  The reverse is equally true; if government raises the ethical bar, they get to hold Private Sector players to the same standard.

Given the fact that there will be increasing pressure (for political gain by some, for headline traction by others) to hold Parties to account for staff, the traditional methods of circle-the-wagons or throw-under-the-bus aren't going to hold water; not if you want to get keep retaining the best talent.  The advantages one gets working for government will quickly be outweighed by the chance of getting a criminal record. 

The same, oddly enough, will likely hold true for political suppliers like polling firms and phone banks who might start pushing government to provide stronger regulation as a way to cover their own skins.

Necessity being the mother of invention and all, we could quickly get to a point where government is forced to train and account for their staff.

Of course, if Political Parties wanted to be proactive on the training/internal HR piece, they could get ahead of the curve and craft an example, scoring themselves a win out of this emerging picture.

Instead of waiting for the hammer to drop, Parties could invest in their future and put together internal training programs, peer support processes and staff transition strategies.  This would do a couple of value-added things:
- reduce the risk of poorly-considered decisions/actions burning the brand

- increase Party loyalty among staff both during their tenure and in whatever career path they follow next

- facilitate best-practice sharing

- institutionalize internal knowledge and experience, ensuring that wheels don't endlessly need to be reinvented.

More to the point, by setting a training example, Parties could more easily lean on Private Sector employers to do the same thing.  In fact, if governments wanted to get creative, they could play the role of stone in the soup and nurture a public-private partnership to develop an online training platform that would allow every citizen to beef up their skills.  From there, all kinds of possibilities emerge.  This in turn would feed in to the efficiency and access benefits to be had from e-government.

Of course, taking a proactive approach requires an acceptance by decision-makers that they aren't the best at what they do right now, something many ladder-climbers simply don't have time for.  It's far easier to download the problem than it is to take responsibility for the solution.

At least, it has been.  How the Michael Sona story plays out might encourage a few people to change their minds. 

They can wait and take their chances or they can plan ahead; how they choose to manage internal resources is always a great indicator of how they'd manage public ones and the public will be watching too.

UPDATED 23/11/13: As the event of this week have demonstrated, emails are becoming to political scandals what DNA evidence is to crime scenes.

But one way or another the episode stands to change the way governments conduct their backroom business - forcing their operatives to either seek even more clandestine means to manage crisis or to stick to arrangements that can withstand the light of day.  It would be nice but probably overly optimistic to hope they opt for the latter.

No promises, Ms. Hébert, but there are still some rational optimists in politics!

Blizzard on Skills, Training and Contract Negotiation

Mitchell said Keung had negotiated the all-expense-paid PhD in her employment contract with the ministry -- that it met all ministry guidelines and when she moved to eHealth, the deal went with her.

 

I find this kind of thing fascinating. 

 

In ranting a bit about eHealth and publicly paid PhDs, Christina Blizzard scratches the surface of some more complex and highly relevant questions:

 

What do we want in Public Employees?

 

Does Blizzard have a point when she says the public shouldn't be paying for the education of a public servant?  It's a more complex question than it appears on the surface.

 

Chief Operating Officer is a significant position; traditional wisdom suggests that the person who holds that office has to be organized, focused and a little bit aggressive to get the job done.  The sort of people who fit this profile are competitive, self-motivated, driven; the theory is that if they're hungry for their own power/title/wealth, they'll work extra hard on behalf of their company to achieve it.  You determine this kind of profile in the interview/contract negotiation process by how confident they come across and how effective they are in forcing you to give them what they want. 

 

In the Private Sector, additional education is frequently included in contract negotiations; to ask for it is an indication of a desire to keep going, not settle, which suggests the right stuff for an employee.  And were this a discussion about Private Sector employment, it wouldn't even be a story.

 

But this is the Ontario Public Service.  More to the point, it's eHealth, which has a demonstrably troubled history.  People on the political right constantly refer to eHealth as an indication of why you have to run government like a business to get the efficiencies and end product that public sector/union safety cushions theoretically provide.  Government needs to function like a business to be competitive and attract the right talent that would otherwise go to the Private Sector.  Right?

 

But if you want to compete with the Private Sector and in practice, senior Private Sector positions go to the aggressive folk who want lots of money, expect personal value-add (including education) to be part of their contract and want control over their work, then doesn't the Public Sector have to compete with the same carrots to attract that talent?

 

Of course, you can easily argue this is further evidence that the Public Sector has no business offering services to the Public, that Private is entirely the way to go.  Do your homework, then ask yourself - would you really want MGM Resorts International running Ontario's hospitals or online health services?  I would imagine not.  Yet gaming is a high-profit industry that attracts those confident, aggressive, take-no-prisoner types who we apparently want to woo to senior Public Sector positions.  So is Goldman Sachs.  So was Lehman Brothers.  When you dig around, there are actually a lot of Chris Mazza types in the Private Sector, too.

 

This before even touching the mandate differences between traditional Private Sector vs Public Sector operations - ie, narrow scope of service targeting specific markets vs creating an equitable playing field for everyone.  It's a church/state division, though we tend not to look at it that way.

 

There's fair bit of cognitive dissonance here, but that's for another post.

 

Next:

 

Is training something you do and move on from?

 

With this column, Blizzard implies that staff should come fully-formed, fully-trained and ready to do a job in perpetuity.  Or rather, the job at the time; I read into this the implication that if a given employee isn't independently able to measure up to changes in a position, we should cut them loose and replace them. 

 

Yet the cost of retraining and the institutional stress that comes with shifting senior people is proven to reduce efficacy over the duration of the shift.  If you look at the Public Service, again, I'm sure Blizzard would agree that in times of political uncertainty, there's a real hesitancy on the part of bureaucrats to enact anything, knowing they might have to undo their work and head in a completely new direction as soon as the next election roles around. 

 

I don't know a thing about Alice Keung, but from Blizzard's article alone, it's clear she's been with eHealth for some time; that means she knows the corporate culture, system and team, meaning she'd have an easier time facilitating a transition than would an outside player brought in.  It's fair to argue eHealth could use a culture change, but at the same time, I don't think it's fair to criticize an organization for trying to retain talent and using education to help accommodate promoted employees to maximize their potential in new roles.  It's more efficient to promote inhouse than to bring in outsiders; if efficiency is your sole goal, then training existing talent has to be part of your mandate. 

 

Training shouldn't be a four letter word in any sector.

 

This ties in to the broader economic transformation going on - whereas my parents both had the same jobs for their whole lives, the majority of us will be cycling through careers our entire working lives, with retirement increasingly a frill rather than an expectation. 

 

Scratch that - we might not even be looking at traditional careers anymore, but working on a project-by-project basis.  This means that training will be an ongoing requirement for a growing segment of the population - a costly one, too, if everyone has to go back to college or university to succeed.  Second Careers is a great program, but it's not designed for that kind of volume.  There's a change happening in education with, much like healthcare, an emphasis on using the Internet to offer more options to a broader audience.

This ties in to the ongoing debate around whether "extra" curriculars are truly extra, but we don't want to connect too many dots all at once, do we?

 

Christina Blizzard is a traditionalist and she writes to the Sun Chain's audience, so you can't blame her for being consistent.  By focusing on disgust at surface problems, though, she's ignoring the structural challenges facing our economic, education and public service systems (which, worth noting, eHealth is meant to help address).  She's missing the opportunities, too.

 

The opportunity here is to have a broader debate about what training means, who and how should it be paid for and how the Public Service can recruit the best Private Sector talent without using public dollars to deliver the same kinds of perks Private Sector entities don't mind paying to get the most assertive talent.  It's going to be tricky and it will never happen if the various Parties at the table are focused on aggressively pursuing their own interests at the expense of everyone else.

 

As Premier Kathleen Wynne might say, this is a conversation worth having.

 

 

Tackling Training in Canada

While the system has improved over the last decade, Flaherty is right to be concerned. Two issues crop up again and again, right across the country: the “needs assessment” and “silo” issues.

Yes. 

Here are some ideas to address those concerns.

Provide Alternatives to Crime

“You do have to provide programs to keep kids away from crime,” he said. “There are multiple fronts to take action on.”

Good on Stephen Harper.  Like political minds tend to circle the wagons around issues, but this is a concern that, like mental health, is bigger than partisanship.

There are multiple fronts that need to be pursued.  Identity is one; when you feel accountable to something larger than yourself, you tend to self-regulate a bit more.  Education is another; youth need training that meets their learning styles, but also teaches them to be flexible.  At any rate, it's hard to learn when you're worried about getting shot. 

The other side to keeping kids away from crime, though, isn't just providing alternatives - it's about steering them towards success.  This is within the realm of the possible; you really can teach resiliency and practical social skills like financial literacy, networking, social emotional learning, critical thinking, planning, etc.  Not everyone will be a whiz, but with the right level of exposure and encouragement, everyone can find a niche that works for them while allowing them to be contributing parts of society.

I keep turning back to martial arts training I've received over the years.  Failure wasn't an option because failure meant quitting on the part of the student, the teacher, the family and the community (school).  Falling was inevitable, but as we all know, the reason we fall is to learn how to pick ourselves back up.  The best teachers I have ever had were the ones that were relentless, patient and consistent, making praise something to be earned rather than expected and always pushing me to crystallize my skill a little bit more.  Those lucky of us to have had teachers or mentors like that over the years love them for teaching us that excellence is a pursuit, not a benchmark.

The fundamentals of this style of training can be applied in our schools.  It starts with empowerment, flows through achievement, and keeps on giving with success and resiliency.

It's within the realm of the possible - we just need to commit ourselves fully.

 

Creative Destruction: Motivating Employers

You can lead a horse to water - but you can't make it drink.  So, lead two horses to water.

Most employers don't understand work.  They don't understand employees, either.  Like domineering parents or dictatorial heads of state, they don't feel the need to - he who has the gold, after all, makes the rules.  Those who want access to the fruits that gold can supply simply have to fall in line.

Ironically, the history of work suggests it's actually the reverse that happens.  It's not the people with power who have innovated, created and marketed new opportunties that have made and remade the rules, redefining and adding to what defines status.  It's the people in the middle.  As they rise up the pyramid, the water hole shrinks; divisions over resources lead to social friction and conflict.  This ends up burning off the dead brush of the old models, creating space for new, innovative growth. 

Call it Creative Destruction.

The new water hole looks a bit like this - an aggregate of  complex, counter-intuitive understandings of the nature of work, motivation and creativity and turning them into easy-to-understand slide-presentations and video clips.

How do you get today's leaders to take a drink?  By advertizing the crap out of it via social media.  The early adapters will climb on board, setting positive exmples their teams can tweet/Facebook/Pinterest to the high heavens about, building demand for effective leadership elsewhere.  Those who don't will find it a lot harder to compete.

Creative destruction is just as integral to the evolution of social systems as it is for the continued growth in the ecosystem. 

It's those who adapt that will lead the way.

Where We Stand – and Where We’re Headed

Nearly a million young Canadians are out of work and more than half aren’t even looking for a job, according to the first study of its kind by Statistics Canada.

The phenomenon, dubbed “NEET,” which stands for Not in Employment Education or Training, is an area of growing concern to policy-makers around the globe.

The pace of technological change means most jobs require at least some training, which few employers are willing to provide.

Nearly a million young Canadians are out of work and more than half aren’t’ even looking for a job, according to the first study of its kind by Statistics Canada.

Long-term unemployment leads to problems with income, financial well-being and psychological problems.

In some countries, high levels of youth unemployment have led to riots and demands for social and political change.

What does it all mean?  How do these strands all connect?  Where are we going next?

That question, ironically, is where we should draw comfort.  Wherever we have come from, we’re all headed to the same place.  All that’s lacking is leadership to show us the way.

“I’m trying to free your mind, Neo.  But I can only show you the door.  You’re the one that has to walk through it.”

Trainingpedia: The Future of Life-Long Learning

Skills are important to national economic growth — and Canada does not fare well in international skills comparisons. A comprehensive skills strategy to raise Canadian students' and workers’ literacy and numeracy would help.

C.D. Howe Institute

The nature of labour demand is changing.  As traditional manufacturing jobs gravitate towards emerging economic powers like China, India and Brazil, countries like Canada are being forced to diversify their options. 

Despite this global trend, the Harper government thinks it has found the golden goose in the natural resources sector; they seem determined to put all of our economic eggs in that one basket, particularly Alberta’s Tar Sands.  There are multiple reasons why this is a short-sighted approach.

While there will always be a need for natural resources, there are huge risks and lost opportunities in focusing solely on the resource export market.  Plus, as the Knowledge Economy starts to kick in to high gear, there will be an increased demand for highly trained labour that has the capacity to innovate.  Raw materials, yes, but it’s product, process and new markets that industry is focusing on now.

Labour Pains

Despite the strong evidence that Canada needs more training (and not just up-front training, but life-long learning), we are actually facing a national training deficit.  We are also failing to harness the full potential of new Canadians, immigrants bringing a wealth of knowledge and experience (but not Canadian experience) to our country.  Ontario is starting to tackle this problem head-on, but is there a broader opportunity here to reduce Canada’s training poverty and employ some of the new raw talent coming to our country to do so?

A Little Knowledge is a Dangerous Thing

Human capital formation, through education, training and skills development, is recognized as a primary determinant of worker productivity and earnings as well as firm productivity – and, therefore, broader economic growth.

 Here’s the reality – Canada’s economic performance has fallen behind many of our major competitors.  Between 2000 and 2005, for example, the rate of Canada’s productivity growth was only 25% that of our major trading partner, the US.  One of the major reasons for this is a lack of investment in skills upgrades and training on the part of Canadian firms.

Statistics Canada tells us that “investment in human capital, that is, in education and skills training, is three times as important to economic growth as investment in physical capital, such as machinery and equipment.  This implies that investments in raising the average level of skill could yield large economic returns.”

So – if we’re falling behind and there’s a correlation between this trend and training levels, why aren’t we training more?

It all comes down to the way we look at work and how we understand motivation.  Unfortunately, our views on labour have not kept pace with the changes in technology and the solidification of the global economy; until recently, they haven’t needed to.  Businesses are still largely understood through the industrial, vertically integrated top-down model; employers give money and resource access to employees, who are then responsible for turning a profit for their employers.  Training is an initial investment in labour – not a continuing one.  Once training is given, it’s up to the employees to deliver; they are incented to do so through the carrot and stick approach.

What we aren’t noticing is that the carrot-and-stick approach informs the actions of employers, too.  Training, benefits programs, etc. are seen through the lens of direct cost/benefit analysis rather than the aggregate impact on business.    As there hasn’t been much research clearly demonstrating value for money, training programs haven’t been seen as a particularly useful investment.

This is particularly true for small business owners.  For them, the negatives associated with training seem to outweigh the positives:

-          Training employees can make them more attractive to better-resourced competitors; you could very well be serving as a grooming school for other businesses.

-          Training costs money; it also takes your staff away from productive time which is, of course, where your profit comes from.

-          Employees are employees, not partners; if they are bringing in new methodologies and ideas and push for their implementation, it’s more hassle than the training is worth.

It’s a bit of a tragedy of the commons; a bigger investment would have a greater pay-off, if everyone did it.  Insufficient positive motivation makes it harder to get excited.  The stress of managing a business and the urge to be firmly in the driver’s street of one’s own enterprise leads to a focus on keeping staff in line rather than supporting them.  Salaries are seen as expenses rather than investments; lower pay equals higher profits.  The sad thing is, the reality is the exact opposite of this – employers who pay less see higher turnover and face higher costs of credit. 

If It Ain’t Broke…     

You can’t find the best solution if you haven’t identified the correct problem.  In the case of labour, the problem we have identified is motivation – managers are constantly struggling to find new ways to get employees to do their work better, more efficiently, more creatively.  Some training gets thrown at them, but to a large degree we rely on the traditional tools of the trade:

-          bonuses, promotions, project control

-          disciplinary measures, demotions, firing

In short, we employ carrots and sticks to get workers to do what we want them to.  This more-or-less worked in the past for repetitive tasks, manual labour, etc.  For the kinds of labour we rely on in the Knowledge Economy, though, the traditional approaches can actually be detrimental.   We’re solving the wrong problem.

When we make work about something gained or something lost, we disengage people from the process of work itself.  It becomes about the reward, not the procedure; according to Occam’s Razor, people will find the easiest and quickest way to achieve their goal.  The fastest, most aggressive solutions aren’t necessarily the wisest.  The ends don’t always justify the means.  Plus, when people don’t enjoy their jobs, you don’t get their best work.  They’re also more likely to face health problems. 

This is exactly the wrong approach for nurturing the creative, out-of-the-box solutions that will define success in the Knowledge Economy.

Life is a Journey, Not a Destination

Creativity, be it in problem-solving or innovation, is not a fixed process.  While structure certainly helps channel the cognitive process, too much overt control and exerted pressure stifles it.  This point cannot be overstated; all the traditional tools in an employer’s box to make a sale, close a deal or complete a project are counterproductive to the process of innovation.  The goal of the employer in the Knowledge Economy isn’t to tighten an employee’s focus on a destination, but make sure they take in the sights along the way. 

Ontario’s Premier, Dalton McGuinty, has suggested “it doesn’t matter where you come from, but what you find along the way.”  He was referring to the diversity of Ontario’s population, but the same holds equally true for ideas.

This, then, is where we come back to training.  We need to re-brand training not as a product or a piece of paper to hang on a wall, but as a process – an ongoing process that the best employers will nurture and the best tools will facilitate.

Given the challenges employers face in justifying the skills upgrades mentioned above, how are we to convince them that such training is a worthwhile expense?  Once again, we’re identifying the wrong problem; the solution isn’t to carrot-and-stick employers into paying for training, but to build value into the process of creating and harnessing training opportunities.  The way to do this is to make training free and collaborative.

Taking Training Online

No, I’m not talking about throwing limitless sums at publicly funded post-secondary education, nor publicly-funded upgrade courses.  There’s no need for this – all the resources one could possible want, ranging from sales techniques to the latest innovations in clean energy technology to best practices in office configuration are all available online already – the trick is to coordinate these resources into an easily-accessible, open-source platform that everyone can invest in and receive benefit from.

What I envision is a new hybrid online framework that combines the best elements of existing resources like Wikipedia and Charity Village with the simple, aesthetic veneer of an Apple product.

This system (we’ll call it Trainingpedia for now, but feel free to suggest cooler names in the comments section below) would exist like a three-dimensional map online; a legend would give a user access to sub-strata more relevant to their niche area (a field of study, communications best practices, even tips on managing the work/life balance).  A search engine would help bring users directly to the topics they wanted, but with side-bar links on related material.  The whole site would be designed, like a map, to encourage exploration and, like Wikipedia, for contribution.  It could even be multi-lingual, as Wikipedia is and include a translation function.

Picture the resource power of every single employer and employee with access to a computer wired into one system.  As has been proven the case through the Wikipedia example, a broadly crowd-sourced engine like this would produce accurate, beta-tested and rapidly-updated best practices, new insights and opinions; all the benefits of paid training without the hassle of paying for it.  Think what this could do for market research.

Yes, there’s a risk that a Trainingpedia site could become an aggregate for complaints; that’s not necessarily a bad thing.  Complaints would become one section of a larger digital geography; if there was more content that was positive and engaging, it would get the focus.

For employers to truly gain the individual benefits of such a system, they would have to build in “research time” into the schedules of their employees.   Considering how many people spend part of their work day trolling the internet anyway, doing so in an encouraged fashion wouldn’t impede productivity, but increase innovation potential.

Would a Trainingpedia site take business (and profit) away from training service providers? 

This is why ardent pro-Capitalists should love the Trainingpedia model – it has creative destruction written all over it.  As generalized training services, best practices, peer-support groups, etc. get formed online, companies that get paid for training services or products will have to think outside the box, finding targeted, boutique and specialized services to sell.  Having access to Trainingpedia will make this a much easier job for them; they can even advertise themselves there by posting videos like Hill & Knowlton’s Billy Wants a Dog or contribute to various entries, like LinkedIn group discussions.  Yes, their for-sale product will eventually end up in the free system, but that’s fine; these firms will be in a continuous process of exploring new training, educating and employee-support options to offer.  Remember, it’s product, process and new markets that business is going to be looking for.

Innovative firms can even advertise competitions for new ideas and processes, imitating the success of GoldCorp.

Moving Forward Together

The traditional model of society (competing for the best grade, the highest salary, the corner office) may have gotten us this far, but to succeed in the Knowledge Economy, we need something a bit more.  Motivation must now come from within – not without.  It’s through feeling inspired by what others are doing or pieces we pick up along the way that we will come to challenge ourselves to do better.

 Success in the Knowledge Economy, then, is like building a taller pyramid; the more effort we put in collaboratively at the base, the higher we’ll all be able to reach.