Business Always Finds A Way
Hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving this past week. I look for moments of inspiration each week to ensure that my articles are timely and relevant. This week I found inspiration on two fronts; one during a Q & A at the end of my ATD Houston Webinar, and the other at my daughters High School Orientation. Stick with me, they actually are related.
On Monday I helped ATD Houston kick off their December Week of Development with my webinar of “All Companies are Tech Companies.” At this point in the year, it was a summation of what I’ve learned the past 11 months from my travels, conferences and customer meetings. Suffice to say, many of the macro Talent Development trends of a tight talent pool, skill gaps and tech struggles are global. Many point to the challenges I have highlighted in the HR Perfect Storm.
As we were wrapping up the session with final Q & A, I was asked a question in a forward looking way; “How long do I see these trends of a tight workforce lasting?” Of course, any answer is pure conjection, but it actually seemed pretty straight forward to me. Short answer, for the foreseeable future. Long answer, why – because of the forces converging from the HR Storm. We are currently in a talent pipeline disruption moment. Existing pipelines of talent for numerous jobs and industries have been disrupted and businesses are still sorting out how to fix the problem. But, like the title of this article, business will find a way.
Enter my daughters High School orientation last night, a mere 6 hours later. As I sat with my wife and daughter in the auditorium, one of the presenters was from our district’s CTE (Career Technology Education) Program. She was announcing a new program that was being offered in the High School next Fall, Cisco Networking Academy. Now, to be clear my daughter is not interested in the program, however as a professional and seeing this I was completely intrigued.
Back to the initial question from the webinar and my hypothesis – talent pipelines are being redeveloped. We are seeing this happening in several different industries; there aren’t enough pilots to fill the future demand, scores of jobs remain open while college graduates work at Starbucks, there’s a shortage of trade skills, the growing mountain of unsustainable college debt. Take your pick, the pipelines of the past; military and college/universities are either rusted through or have run dry.
So what’s a business to do? What they always do to survive, solve the problem. Much like new pipelines being laid out for oil, gas and water, new pipelines are being laid for talent. Take the example of my son a few weeks back. He wants to be a Commercial Pilot for United. Shazam, United just announced a new mentor program to guide college freshman into a fast-track of sorts to be a United Captain. Of course I was just introduced to the Cisco Networking Academy last night, another program aimed squarely at High School Students to educate and prepare them for jobs in the networking sector – that Cisco dominates.
Consider the news of late from Amazon and Wal-Mart as well regarding their investments into education. Both companies are going to reimburse for training and education related to positions needed within the company. Layer in the removal of a degree for consideration at many large corporations and you start to see the bigger picture. Business is getting into the business of education to develop their own talent pipelines. They can no longer rely on a supply developed by traditional methods. Those sources have failed to adapt and are now languishing.
Now, here’s the kicker – where do you think most of the workload for the educating of young and new talent falls, Human Resources of course! If you thought HR was overwhelmed with L&D programs for Leadership Development, you ain’t seen nothing yet. This is where the HR Perfect Storm is going to get messy. HR Departments are under siege as talent will become the most valuable resource to any company, regardless of being a manufacturer or service company. As traditional pipelines dry up, there will be a race to develop new pipelines to fill their talent needs.
The examples of United and Cisco are just in my immediate view. In the coming weeks and over the holidays I’ll start to scan the websites for many of the major corporations, I would encourage you to do so as well. What I suspect I will find is more of the same. Incubator programs for talent will start to pop up everywhere. Colleges and Universities should be on notice, businesses are now going to the primary source, High School Graduates, to provide them training and skills while removing the need to “deprogram” talent from dated practices being taught in Higher Education. Keep in mind, none of this is a zero sum game. There are exceptions to much of this in business and education, but what I’m seeing in these programs represents a new way to ensure business will ensure a reliable pipeline of talent into the foreseeable future.