How well do businesses understand what kind of training and development their employees want?
As the U.S. continues to navigate a long road to recovery from the pandemic, employers and policymakers alike are embracing skills training as a critical part of our collective efforts to prepare for a fast-changing world of work. In many cases, that involves learning programs in high-growth industries — like cloud computing or cybersecurity — that would completely transform a worker’s career path.
It’s a concept that some refer to as “radical reskilling,” and it’s become an increasingly popular idea as the world of work becomes ever more digitally driven. We’ve all heard stories of the waiters and bartenders who are now computer programmers. And the narrative of this sort of wholesale career change is undoubtedly a compelling one, particularly since these fast-growing industries can often offer higher salaries and prospects for career advancement.
But does this starry-eyed view of radical reskilling actually fit with the goals and aspirations of workers themselves? Or are we too quick to impose this narrative on workers who actually want something else?
Over the past year, my team at Penn Foster has explored the answer to this question, with a particular focus on middle-skill workers — those working in jobs that do not require a college degree. Given that middle-skill jobs make up the majority of the U.S. labor market, shedding light on the perspectives of workers in those jobs may help us understand broader labor market trends. And in this case, our research found that the story of radical reskilling may be more complex than the tales of success that often find their way into the news.
Our work began with a survey of middle-skill workers conducted this past year, with the aim of better understanding their perspectives on education and training. What we found was that, unsurprisingly, workers do want more access to training. It’s just not as radical as we might have expected.
The survey found that the majority of middle-skill workers looking for a new job want to find opportunities in the field in which they already work — a clear sign that switching jobs is not high on the priority list for this worker population. And despite the popularity of intensive coding bootcamps in the news, most respondents didn’t want to leave work to get a degree or certificate, even for a few months. In fact, more than half of respondents said learning new skills on the job would be the most important thing they’d need after beginning a new role.
And what about those respondents who do have new careers in mind? For them, the most important part of the decision-making process is seeking opportunities with long-term stability: not what you’d expect from a job in the exciting, but often volatile, tech industry.
To make a long story short, the majority of workers in the labor market aren’t interested in training that would make them start their careers over from square one. In fact, particularly against the backdrop of the ongoing pandemic, they want the opposite: stability, on-the-job training, and opportunities for slow and steady growth. That’s a lesson we should take to heart, especially as the federal government prepares to infuse significant funding into a broader and more equitable economic recovery.
What do these findings mean for the employer community? How can business leaders better align their training and development efforts with the actual priorities and aspirations of their workers?
The survey results indicate that the best path to finding and cultivating talent may be to support and train the workers you already have — consistent with the research of organizations like Opportunity@Work, which studies career pathways for often-overlooked workers. It’s also clear that employers should build upskilling and development programs around removing the barriers that workers face on their path to career mobility. Survey respondents cited the need for training and the cost of training as the two factors that were most likely to keep them from looking for new jobs.
In short, the best way to build a more resilient and equitable workforce (particularly for middle-skill workers) isn’t a radical solution at all. Instead, employers should focus on providing a straightforward path to long-term stability that is rooted in on-the-job training and makes the experiences as accessible and streamlined as possible for workers. That depends on providing training and development that is clearly aligned with a job pathway, accessible on-demand and integrated into the flow of work.
The other lesson, of course, is that we shouldn’t always listen to the flashy ideas we hear on the news. Too often, shiny objects can distract us from the ideas that actually resonate the most with the needs of today’s workforce — which are often simpler than we think. If businesses, training providers and policymakers work harder to explore where our assumptions fall short of workers’ aspirations, we can make progress in our shared mission to create a future that works for everyone.
