Encouraging Education and Training

Regardless of the economy, most companies have difficulty hiring and retaining quality personnel. One cause lies in the education and training of people that companies wish to employ. Historically, companies ran extensive laboratories and training programs. Some few even ran entire universities. As these companies increasingly focused on producing and selling commodity products, these laboratories, training programs, and universities dried up or were spun off. Companies’ expectation now is that people will arrive fully ready to be profitably engaged. While one should expect to have a background suitable for employment at a given company, it is clear that balance has been lost and that the current approach is not working. This article posits means by which companies can encourage the education and training of potential employees while creating win-win circumstances that benefit all concerned.

Who are the people industry is looking for? From my experience teaching at the undergraduate and graduate levels, only 25% of students have a high performance ethic (study, learn, work, produce; in a constant cycle). How is a company to identify, hire, and retain that top 25%? In the DOD and DOE markets where clearances are required, the problem is even more difficult since the person has to be a US Citizen and has to have stayed out of trouble. One sees the impact too where highly-protected trade secrets and proprietary information is involved. Companies can alleviate this situation by addressing the expense of earning a college degree or training certification. Even for the top 25%, money for education is difficult to obtain, especially at recognized institutions in a given topic area. Loans are not a good alternative since nobody wants to start their professional life burdened by onerous debt that can last a lifetime. Government programs that pour money into education are obviously not working. This leaves us with quite a conundrum. Industry says there are not enough appropriately-skilled citizens. Gaining appropriate educational or training background is increasingly beyond the financial means of our population. Is there anything industry can do to dig out of this hole? Yes. Here are three avenues industry can take. Applied together, these avenues present options that help restore the balance between industry support to education and training, and an individual’s personal responsibility to become attractive for hiring within a solid career.

Option 1: For students coming out of college or training programs with loan debt stemming from their time in school, companies could offer a loan-coverage benefit within their continuing education benefit. For the same cost, companies could cover a given amount of employees’ education debt per year, while still fostering continuing education/training. To maintain continuing education specific to company needs, a meaningful percentage of the continuing education fund allocated to each employee could be applied to loan coverage. This would be an attractive benefit that would not be lost once loans are repaid. The same continuing education allotment would then be fully applied to the employees ongoing learning process.

Option 2: It is fairly common for companies to develop potential employees through internships, work-study, and other temporary/part-time arrangements. The best of these efforts provide “clean” projects that matter a great deal to the company but that do not reveal proprietary or classified information. An extension to this idea would be to sponsor students in select senior projects, theses, and dissertations. A company could even sponsor professor-led efforts that engage several students.

Option 3: Education/training loans could be offered to select students starting in their sophomore year or later. Such loans would begin after the student has proven themselves in their area of study. Criteria would be based on grades, projects, and lab work, with some percentage allocated to useful social engagement and other extra-curricular activities. Should the student begin to work for the company, the company would forgive a percentage of the loan principle for every year the student is on board.

As companies seek to build a strong workforce to support profitable undertakings and international competition, they face the necessity of identifying, obtaining, and retaining individual employees. The three options given in this article lay the foundation for a mutually-beneficial arrangement that addresses a wide range of individual and corporate issues in employment and quality personnel.