Training: Whose Responsibility?
Thu, 12/01/2005 - 23:16
The Job
I have noticed that there is a schizophrenic message being given out these days regarding employment situations. Headlines declare labor shortages while engineers complain about not being able to find jobs because they are being shipped overseas. Some companies seem to be crying about not being able to find people while others are laying off in droves. What exactly is going on here?
There is a clue in David Wessel’s column in this morning’s Wall Street Journal. The headline is “Behind the Labor Shortage – Layoff Paradox: Lack of Skilled Workers�, and the article describes two stories that literally ran on opposite pages of that paper last week. One talked about GM’s layoff of 30,000 workers while the other reported on a survey of manufacturers that described a lack of skilled workers. The key word, as Wessel points out, is “skilled�.
A company I am working with is going through this right now. They are facing cutbacks in existing contracts while new work requires networking expertise that most of their engineers simply do not have. They are trying to hire new people to allow them to get that work while scrambling to find work for their existing engineers. The long-term solution is, of course, to train their current workers, but they need to fill that gap in the meantime.
Yes, the company screwed up. They should have anticipated this situation and arranged for the required training long ago. On the other hand, the engineers could have seen which way the wind was blowing and taken it upon themselves to update their skills. They are the ones with the most to lose if they get too far behind, so they should be the most motivated to do something about it.
What do you people think? Is it the responsibility of the engineer to keep up-to-date or should the company be planning for its future needs more effectively?
Larry Mittag
There is a clue in David Wessel’s column in this morning’s Wall Street Journal. The headline is “Behind the Labor Shortage – Layoff Paradox: Lack of Skilled Workers�, and the article describes two stories that literally ran on opposite pages of that paper last week. One talked about GM’s layoff of 30,000 workers while the other reported on a survey of manufacturers that described a lack of skilled workers. The key word, as Wessel points out, is “skilled�.
A company I am working with is going through this right now. They are facing cutbacks in existing contracts while new work requires networking expertise that most of their engineers simply do not have. They are trying to hire new people to allow them to get that work while scrambling to find work for their existing engineers. The long-term solution is, of course, to train their current workers, but they need to fill that gap in the meantime.
Yes, the company screwed up. They should have anticipated this situation and arranged for the required training long ago. On the other hand, the engineers could have seen which way the wind was blowing and taken it upon themselves to update their skills. They are the ones with the most to lose if they get too far behind, so they should be the most motivated to do something about it.
What do you people think? Is it the responsibility of the engineer to keep up-to-date or should the company be planning for its future needs more effectively?
Larry Mittag
