According to a recent survey by the Harvard Business Review, the top perks are things like: better extended health benefits, more flexible hours, more vacation time, work from home options etc.  There is something noticeable here – training is not on the list.  Nor should it be, but many employers still treat training as a perk.  Especially if it is out of town (can anyone say ‘road trip’) and even more so in an exotic locale. 

During the pandemic, many organizations switched to online training out of necessity, but the thinking around what employee training is meant to accomplish remains fuzzy in many cases.  Upgrade skills – sure.  Take on new management role – even better.  But changing venues – i.e.: from in-person to online does not in and of itself help to clarify the desired outcomes from training.  You need to consider both the individual and the organization.  An employee may want to take a course in, let’s say gardening.  Great, but unless your business is a garden shop or nursery, that may not really fit with the skills you think they need. 

It’s even more of a challenge in a volatile and quickly changing environment.  Can anyone really say with confidence what the jobs of the future will require (even 10-20 years out?).  We have all seen the disruption caused by the widespread availability of artificial intelligence.  Prognosticators are divided on exactly how this will roll out.  The doomsayers predict massive relocation of work to highly skilled technocrats, and subsequent creation of whole classes of unemployable workers.  The optimists predict a kind of egalitarian work commons.  The question of whether you should make ChatGPT (or some other large language model) available to all your employees is difficult and certainly contextual.  Even more so, do you really have a good idea of how AI will affect your business overall? 

Artificial Intelligence is only one example of a business disruptor (and certainly not the only one) that requires you to be nimble and forward-thinking.  To do so, though requires nimble and forward-thinking employees.  Adaptable, innovative, risk taking, willing to re-learn, these are all skills most organizations would like their employees to have.  How you get there is the big question.  But there are ways to do that through focused and results oriented training.