Employers must engage with staff to solve skills shortages

Research amongst UK employers has shown leading organisations tackling skills shortages by creating a culture where managers work with staff to provide learning opportunities that support both the needs of the organisation and employees. All employers will need to embrace this approach if they are to avoid facing skills shortages and compete successfully in the war for talent, according to the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD).

A new CIPD report, From training to learning, uses case studies to demonstrate how employers are supporting, accelerating and directing learning to deliver business benefits. The research summary and 26 detailed case studies can be downloaded from the CIPD website www.cipd.co.uk/helpingpeoplelearn

Case studies include the following organisations:

- INA Bearing Company Limited - a Welsh manufacturing firm that has focused on boosting competitiveness by developing the capability to deliver higher value added products.
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Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) - due to new threats, such as terrorism, GCHQ developed a culture to include a new approach to shared learning.

- Surrey County Council - introduced a programme designed to improve the IT skills of staff.

- Transport For London - reconsidered their approach to training in IT skills.

This is the final report of a 4-year research project which shows there has been a shift from training to learning over recent years. The shift from training to learning is the progressive movement from the delivery of content to the development of learning capabilities.

Martyn Sloman, CIPD Learning, Training and Development Adviser, says, Training is one method by which you can learn - characterised as an instructor-led, content-based intervention, leading to desired changes in behaviour. But learning places far more emphasis on the individual and is the process by which a person gains new skills and knowledge. It is a self-directed, work-based process, leading to increased adaptive capacity.

Learning will only happen if individuals actually want to learn, and what or how they will learn depends on the organisation and individual themselves. Employers should encourage individuals to take responsibility for their own learning and make sure the relevant support is provided to ensure learning ties in with the business objectives.

Successful organisations are those that can persuade and encourage their people to learn to learn. Combining business requirements with the learning strategy will ensure employees make use of their skills within the organisation and gain support from managers.

Employers must consider the organisational culture when managing learning to ensure line managers and those in the boardroom understand the business benefits of offering time and support to individual learning.

CIPD research finds organisations are now undertaking large-scale reorganisations at least once every three years with small changes occuring almost continually. The rapid rate and scale of organisational change experienced today creates considerable challenges. In this climate, it is crucial that a learning culture is in place that will build adaptive capacity and enable organisations to make change.

Martyn Sloman, author of the report, and two of the organisations involved in the study are speaking at CIPDís Learning, training and development conference 2005, on Tuesday 12 April 2005. They will discuss the shift in approach from training to learning and how to help people to learn through innovative approaches to training and development:

- Helen Tovey, IT Competency and Learning Manager, Ford of Europe will discuss how Ford have developed a Career Development Framework to help provide IT resources to support current and future business needs.

- Jim Robson, Learning and Development Manager, Principle of the Scottish Fire Services College, will focus on how the Scottish Fire Services have moved away from a traditional top-down training model, and used a competency framework to encourage firefighters to take responsibility for their own learning.