I’ve been thinking a bit about training at work recently, largely in the context of having spent the last twenty years working for US technology companies. I think effectively all of these companies made a pretty big mistake — they viewed training of employees as a perk much like vacation, book budgets, or t-shirts. They advertise their training programs as part of their recruitment process, and just like other perks they’re cut when times get a bit grim. However, that’s not actually why employers should train their people. We train people so that they have the skills they need to do their jobs — especially when things get real and aren’t working out to plan.
There are definitely industries who have good examples of this sort of risk reduction training done well — airlines and the military both engage in regular training activities that ensure that when things get exciting the people know what to do. This includes leaders being trained on how to make decisions that are likely to result in the desired outcomes.
However… High tech is not one of those places. I’ve seen a lot of tailored in-house training programs replaced by a corporate Udemy or LinkedIn Training subscription, and I have seen very little evidence that these all-you-can-eat e-learning platforms actually deliver much in terms of results. This is especially true because I am yet to meet an organization that gives their employees enough contiguous time to actually do one of these e-learning courses without doing it on their own time or with frequent context switches. I think what they do deliver is a training thing you can put on your HR site that has a fixed cost to the company.
I think its also true that individual employees should focus their self-funded training (if they do any, I suspect its rare) on skills that they find interesting or align with their longer term career goals. It is not the role of an individual to subsidize their employer.
When I rule the world (which is looking increasingly unlikely, but anyways), I think I’d start by identifying the skills a given team need to succeed — both in the base case of business as usual, but also in times of crisis. I’d stack rank those skills, and then I’d ensure that the team had at least a couple of examples of each skill. Perhaps the availability of a skill should be proportional to both the likelihood and impact of the risk if guards against? I wouldn’t be too concerned about the employment type of the people being trained either — if you seniors are contractors that’s not relevant, I still want my senior people to have the skills needed when they need them.
But I don’t rule the world. So I’ll just keep doing random learning things on my own time because they personally interest me, not because my employer of the day might one day need them.