Is On-the-Job Training Still Worth It for Companies? - Businessweek

Is On-the-Job Training Still Worth It for Companies? - Businessweek: "It’s not hard to see why. Training is expensive, and Philips notes that people now spend less time in their jobs, which lowers the expected return on the training investment. Craig Copeland, of the Employee Benefit Research Institute, estimates that in 1983, almost 60 percent of men (ages 45 to 49) had been at their job for more than 10 years. In 2012, only 45 percent had been. Rates of long-term tenure fell for all men under age 60.

If we want companies to revive a commitment to on-the-job-training, it’s worth asking what created our current nation of job hoppers. There are plenty of reasons, including the decline in union membership and the increased portability of benefits. The changing nature of work itself has also encouraged more frequent job changes. When jobs required unique, specific skills, training paid off; it was also harder for a worker to translate his experience into a new environment. Technology, in part, has made some skills far less specific. Take car manufacturing. According to the Center for Automotive Research, auto assembly now requires less mechanical ability and more technical skills—skills that are more standardized. Once, the skills you learned at General Motors were fairly specific to GM; now it’s easier to take them to Ford.

STORY: It's Not a Skills Gap: U.S. Workers Are Overqualified, Undertrained
Skills have also become more flexible as the service industry has grown. Service jobs place a higher premium on good interpersonal skills and access to a large network—the kind of skills often developed precisely by changing jobs. A new employer, after all, also means new co-workers. In all but the biggest companies, it’s almost impossible to develop the same skills by staying in one place."



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