You started as a small fish with dreams of being a biggie. You routinely practiced your moves. You tried to learn new tricks to please those who held power to hand out generous changes in S&B (Salary and Bonus). You regularly preened yourself as you passed the mirror, admiring the lean mean fighting machine that you continued to be … at least for the initial few years. When you met the other alum from your college or B School, you traded notes to see if anyone had learnt a trick that you had no clue about. There were usually a few who always had something clever to share. You read professional journals. The names of those authors were all familiar. Like it was back when the Professors would keep egging you on to read more and more and yet would sneer at your Term Paper before labeling it a B+ at best despite your efforts. That just built in you the grim determination to keep slaving away at sharpening your skills until you could extract an A+ from the hard-to-please faculty. You ran on that learning treadmill and discovered that you were still in the same place. You knew that you had to be better than the best to make a mark in the big bad world. That was then. Over the years you have managed to move up the food chain. You started changing your focus from being the most competent, professionally speaking, to other stuff that helped you climb the rungs of the Organizational Structure. The per capita frequent flyer miles of the continent have gone up because of you. You are mastering the golf stroke. You are no longer the innocent wide-eyed teddy bear. You are the political animal a lion tamer would dread. The corner office is in sight. You point to your beer belly that is now competing with Homer Simpson’s and laugh it off as a sign of prosperity (It still makes you a slob).
Learning is not on your agenda. When your coach tells you that your IQ and EQ points have not improved for eons, you are annoyed. That is so not true, you say. “I am the one who speaks at every seminar on the critical importance of building a learning organization (cool phrase, what!) and my favorite story to motivate the troops is on taking risks. You know, the lightbulb fellow, Edison did not get the filament right the first time either.” You will point out, as evidence, to those motivational quotes that are framed and put on your wall about why we should all aspire to be lifelong learners. You show everyone the dozens of group photos of you and bunch of fat-cats from your weeklong training sessions on Leadership Development at the ski-resort and the 5 day seminar on “Life’s Lessons that Golf Taught Me”. Or that Team Building do at the place tucked away in the mountains which is famous for the sea-food grill … By the way, have you noticed in all the fat-cat photos, that it is the same bunch of guys who seem to be landing up for these paid holidays and generally speaking the same fat cats speak at EVERY seminar with the powerPiont slides they made ten years back? Ever wondered why their ‘menu and venue driven’ training should be funded by the employer? Why??Not saying for a minute that ALL training is only menu and venue driven. Not at all. That would be painting everyone with a broad brush. How do we differentiate the good guys from those with the horns and tail? If only individuals had to fund their own learning and development agenda with their own vacation days and their money instead of being paid for by the employer, there would be a sea change in the way people would view their own learning options. Instead of taking the ‘menu and venue’ based courses, you would choose what you truly need to be ahead of the pack. You, like all employees, would take those certifications to refresh your knowledge and those that you need to build your soft skills, to learn how to run a virtual team, to know what is the next big thing lurking around the corner waiting to snap at your ankles and render you obsolete. That is the only way to separate the wheat from the chaff or the lean from the mean. Have everyone fund their own effort at keeping their skills upgraded.So what is the role of the employer in getting the new upgraded version 2.0 of me? Here is the deal. If the new improved me, results in my manager noticing the large shovels of contribution I have been heaping on to the company’s bottomline since, they will need to pick up the cost of that skill upgradation plus add some more to fund all the coffee I had while I was slaving away, credit back the vacation days (and maybe throw in a few extra), it would be a win-win. The employer would be only paying for what is visibly and in a measurable (not miserable) way adding to the bottomline. The employee would really think very hard about the courses that will add value professionally and then be at pains to show how it is showing up in the new improved behavior at work. No more menu and venue based training. Let that place famous for the sea-food grill appeal to the tourist and not masquerade as a training destination.
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Who Should Pay for You to Learn
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13 responses to “Who Should Pay for You to Learn”
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Nice post buddy.
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@ Viji – Thanks@ Ankit – The concept is simple. If what you learn is reflected in the WHAT you do and HOW well you do it, the current or some future employer would be willing to pay for it. Learning and keeping upto date should be your responsibility. That happened when you got your first job. That must continue to happen.
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Interesting idea. But doesnt that mean that someone who could be a better asset for the employer by shifting focus, lets say from chip design to power modeling, will lose out in this system ?
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Hi Sir!!!I love this idea!!!But in this case the judgement & sincerity of the manager would matter a lot too… I would suggest a third party to be included in the process to judge the employee’s contribution…Let that be an HR associate who is tagged with that particular team…Inclusion of the third party will infuse greater confidence among the employees in this process…Fantastic article!!!!! looking forward to many more such articles….
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Abhijit,THe post is well written, and I think even the art of writing a post like this which can then be cascaded to “written communication skills” is also a big contributor to Version 2.0 for all of us!(See how easily I made a complex sentence-There is an identified learning need)I think a common thread which most of the “professionals” or rather”corporate porifessionals” miss is the serenity to identify whats good for them in personal life and should remain intact and whats good in professional life and needs to be sharpened. I dont want to dwell on the process of introspection but there is a huge point which most of us miss through our careers i.e what am I good at and what is it that I can learn.Let’s give some credit to CKP on core competency- we just need to identify that and thats the best way that you can contribute to organisation. Another interesting thought would be to define contribution. Is logging in 8.5 hours in office with 4 smoke breaks with boss a contribution or is it the amount of money that I am saving(as a cost centre) and still enahncing productivity. Though obvisouly most of us would go in for latter(productivity et al) becuase its cool to align ourselves with what should be done!! but the bottom line is that those 4 smoke breaks with my boss will give me my bonus at the end of the year.The point I am trying to put together is, there is still no replacement for hardowork it has just been substitued by the depth rather than the length.Just commenting on Saikat’s post- Why should HR be bullying around the people managers on defining contribution, let HR sit back and observe the efficieny of PMS which will dole out clearly defined objectives. But Alas, HR will not want to do that, becuase it needs to align with business or in other word the business head- to re-define contibution acooridng to the falvour of the month.Cheers!
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Abhijit:I am glad you are writing about something close to my heart, professional training. As someone who their entire career has been stuck in jobs that I was over qualified for this hits home, big time!! So unfortunately to be honest, I have felt like I have been chewed up and spit out by corporate America more than once. The only recourse I had in my career was to go get more training, which I paid for. Some may speak about scholarships and grants but I never qualified for help with my education in terms of monetary assistance.One has to invest in one’s own knowledge base of skills with continuing professional development to stay current with the changes in technology and software. Text books and training manuals change so often that one could not possibly be able to remain current. In this real time world that we live in the only thing that one can count on is that things will change again often and what one thought was current knowledge and wisdom may be here one moment and replaced by a bigger and better mousetrap the next. This should not stop one from learning and surviving to fight another day.Regards,Jody
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Nice one Abhijit!
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Hi AbhijitI’d go a step ahead and share my thoughts on the outcomes of what you are saying. It should result in more people going out and learning on their own and investing in themselves. Also online coaching and learning would become more popular.Organisations need to be more prudent… they need to invest in talent where it brings in the revenue/adds value to the organisation.HR resposibilities, I believe need to go through a paradigm shift. HR needs to align what important for the organisation. It is still very administrative in its approach in most organisations. It is important for them to see that which employees are committed to the growth of the organisation and is working on himself. That I believe is a true measure of loyalty, commitment and passion.Regards
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after all these years i think ‘the system’ ends up paying. paying for someone not learning,someone not turning up, and to quote my friend yawar someone coming into a programme and sitting their with this ‘train me, teach me, in spite of myself attitude’…’almost saying damned if i will learn’.the serious ‘learners’ end up paying, their time gets wasted listening to ‘digressions’ and ‘listness’ of other in-interested participants.paying for business that goes away because one did not learn how to ‘hang on to it’ leave alone ‘making it grow’.all is not lost however at each programme you meet a few ‘learners’ these few keep this industry growing.
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Nice article. The article clearly brings out the importance for any organization to create employees who understand the need to learn continuously and can well relate it to organizational performance. It is very relevant these days and as Mortimer Adler has said “The purpose of learning is growth, and our minds, unlike our bodies, can continue growing as we continue to live.” same has to be internalized by every organization.
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Broadly, capability may be classified into three (or more) buckets 1. those that are needed in an individual to enter and keep a job within an organisation: this the individual should pay for and usually does unless the earlier employers have paid for it; 2. New or Addl. Capability that specific employees need to have at various points in time to meet the changing strategic needs of the organisation – this the organisation should shoulder especially if this specific capability is in addition to the still relevant core capability and; 3. Capabilities needed by an employee to grow within the company – the organisation pays if it believes retaining the individual will bring significant benefits that more than offset the cost of losing him/her. Learning in the form of formal education must be borne primarily by the individual with the organisation chipping in by offering a sabbatical (time-off without pay). Any organisation benefits from the advanced formal education of an employee in bits and pieces and the education usually serves the long-term personal ambitions of the individual. In any case, the good old 70-20-10 paradigm still holds – 70% of our learning is on the job; 20% by following role models & team interactions and; only 10% of our learning occurs in a classroom of some kind.Let this be my tribute to the Prof. who taught me my first lesson on Training & Development at the business school in India.
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Nice One! Learning is a continuous process….I am all smilessssssssss 🙂
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It is the best time to make some plans for the future and it is time to be happy.
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