Josh Bersin had an excellent piece in Forbes last week with the inaccurate headline: “Jobs Report Points To Tumult In US Workforce.” This is a must-read and it’s not about the jobs report. It’s about the future of talent development. Here’s the lead.
“Friday’s poor jobs report (only 80,000 jobs created) points out the many talent imbalances we have been talking about over the last year. I just finished an interview on CBS radio and my message was simple: we have some complex problems in the workforce which business leaders must address.”
Bersin lists five ways, starting with a “talent imbalance,” that today’s talent landscape is both different and changing and he certainly sparked my thinking. If talent development is what you do, then here are three ways you should think about doing it differently.
Plan on doing talent basic training, not just plain old talent development. The day is pretty much gone when you could pluck knowledge workers fully prepared from the labor pool. Get used to the idea that you may have to do some basic skills and literacy training.
You shouldn’t try to do it all yourself. It’s not good that the most under-funded part of the education system, community colleges, may be the most important to our economic future. But, the good news is that you can partner with a local community college to improve your own training and development and help support them at the same time.
Use systems to facilitate learning. Technology and changing educational and training landscapes make it possible to give people options to learn when they’re ready.
Hidden in these challenges is something important: the opportunity to gain competitive advantage. The future belongs to the companies take control of developing their own workforce.
