Here’s How to Develop Talent: Help Workers Navigate the New Learning Economy

IBM’s Almaden Research Center sits at the top of 700 acres of serene, undeveloped land overlooking Silicon Valley. The 540,000-square-foot facility opened in 1986, at the dawn of the personal computer age. Since then, its Ph.D. researchers and scientists have been responsible for some of the most important discoveries in technology: the first Internet connection in 1988, the first data mining algorithms in 1994, and the world’s smallest disk drive in 1998.

I visited Almaden while reporting my new book, There Is Life After College, to meet with Jim Spohrer, a computer scientist who leads IBM’s university partnerships. Part of Spohrer’s job is to ensure that colleges are teaching the skills needed for employment at IBM and to attract talented students to work at the company. IBM hires thousands of college graduates each year, so what the company looks for in potential employees matters far beyond these walls.

IBM's Almaden Research Center

Spohrer told me that when the Almaden Research Center opened, IBM recruited candidates who were mostly expert in one subject. They could write computer code, for instance, and do it really well. IBM then trained new employees in the “IBM way.” Though IBM still spends $600 million a year on training, the company and the world around it are much more complex than they were even in the 1980s.

“IBM is in all industries—we do nanotechnology, quantum computing, systems research, modeling of industries, modeling of cities,” Spohrer said.

It’s not just IBM. Every company, every industry, every occupation is undergoing massive change in a global, information economy. To succeed—even survive—in this modern workforce, workers must be adept in more than one subject and keep up with an ever expanding knowledge base that never seems to stop moving. Workers need to be lifelong learners who are comfortable with learning “just in time” rather than “just one time” in life.

The companies that will survive and thrive in the future are those that consider talent development a critical piece of their growth strategy, not just a perk for employees.

For their part, employers need to take a more active role in guiding their talent along this educational journey, helping them figure out what training they need, when they need it, and where to get it. The companies that will survive and thrive in the future are those that consider talent development a critical piece of their growth strategy, not just a perk for employees.

But most companies are investing less, not more in employee development. Even employers considered best in their industries have reduced what they spend on training by some 15 percent since 2006.

Part of the problem is that too many employers still operate with an old playbook for training that follows regimented formulas for when workers can access professional development, how much they can spend, and where they can spend it. The rules have changed, so a new playbook is needed to develop and retain talent and build a new workplace culture around learning. Among these new rules:

Learning in short spurts.

Our method for training employees—even our education system—is structured in exactly the opposite way as how most of us actually learn: in short time blocks, with a focus on a few key concepts, immediate application of learning in a real-world environment, and frequent feedback. Most employee development sequesters workers in classrooms following traditional academic calendars.

That’s how Xerox used to do it. In the 1970s, Xerox opened a massive campus in suburban Washington, D.C., to train its global sales and management workforce. Some 1,800 employees would come through the facility in any given week for classes.

But Xerox sold the campus and now conducts most of its training virtually, every day, with more than 10,000 short web-based videos and another 20,000 on-demand reference materials. Today, 70 percent of Xerox training is online.

Online education saves the company money, but according to John Leutner, Xerox’s head of global learning, it also improves retention because workers learn on their own time and at their own pace. “We think too much of education as having a beginning and an end,” he said. “We need to think about learning more iteratively and in milestones.”

Flexible training for a new economy.

One way employers invest in the professional development of their talent is through tuition assistance.

But at most companies, those benefits haven’t kept pace with an evolving workplace. Some employers require workers to pay back the benefit if they bolt for another job or limit the types of classes they will pay for. And even as tuition rates skyrocket, companies have largely refused to sweeten the benefit, instead sticking with what the federal government allows them to deduct annually from taxes (up to $5,250 per employee from their revenue), an amount that has not changed in nearly three decades.

Now a handful of companies are rethinking their approach to professional development in an economy where workers will have multiple jobs and even multiple careers with many different companies over their lifetime.

Take Starbucks, for example. In a unique relationship with Arizona State University, the company helps its employees finish college by full reimbursing those with at least two years’ worth of credits and paying some of those cost for those with fewer credits. And employees don’t have to stay with Starbucks after completing their degree.

“To build a great, enduring company that is so people-based, as Starbucks is we have to bring our people along on this journey and demonstrate we are sharing the success,” Howard Shultz, the CEO of Starbucks, told The Atlantic.

Recently, Amazon announced that it would share the secret sauce behind its employee development program with other companies. Amazon’s Career Choice covers nearly all tuition, fees, and even books for employees after they’ve been with the company for a year as long as they enroll in programs that are in “high-demand fields” according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Like Starbucks, Amazon realizes that employees might take their training elsewhere—for a better job at a different company. That’s fine with them and should be for most companies in an era when employees are increasingly free agents and when employers want flexibility with their workforces.  

Navigating a new learning economy.  

Not only is how workers get training and professional development changing, but so too is where they are getting it.

Rather than go to traditional colleges and universities, workers are increasingly turning to a new set of providers that offer education in short spurts, online or in face-to-face classes, for a faction of the cost of legacy providers (or in some cases for free).

These providers—ranging from free online courses from edX and Coursera to online skills courses from Lynda.com and boot camps like General Assembly and Galvanize—are hardly household names, but they are already attracting millions of students.

Part of the job of employers who want to retain and develop their workers is to help them navigate this new "learning economy," to help them find the best programs, at the right time.

Jeffrey Selingo is author of the new book, There Is Life After College. You can follow his writing here, on Twitter @jselingo, on Facebook, and sign up for free newsletters about the future of higher education at jeffselingo.com.

He is a regular contributor to the Washington Post’s Grade Point blog, a professor of practice at Arizona State University, and a visiting scholar at Georgia Tech's Center for 21st Century Universities.