Training & Development To make a recommendation with respect to training and development in America. The audience is the office of the President, and this my vision for the President's Council on Training and Development.

Training & Development

The President's Council on Training and Development is a new body, apparently, one that is responsible for providing guidance to American companies with respect to training and development policies. We view training and development as an integral part of improving America's competitiveness in the world. Our nation has a very high amount of collective knowledge, and the role of training and development is to ensure that as much of that knowledge is distributed as widely as possible. The Training and Development Council stands in support of free-flowing knowledge throughout the economy. The more people know, the more empowered that they are to make improvements to existing processes, and to develop the innovations that move companies forward -- and the American economy as a whole. The core philosophy of the Training and Development Council is therefore that companies benefit from having comprehensive, focused training and development programs. The Training and Development Council should encourage companies by providing guidance about the best practices within the training and development field.

Recommendations

It is recommended that companies have Training and Development departments within the Human Resources function. These departments should be structured to meet the needs of the organization, to work within the framework of best practices, and to encourage innovation as a means of gaining competitive advantage. Studies have shown that when training is conducted by the company and focused on skills and competencies that are important to the organization's...

The same study did not show the same correlation with funding for external training -- the key to successful training and development is therefore that it needs to be directed towards the needs of the organization.
The T&D Council needs therefore to provide a system that can help companies identify their training needs and then design programs to implement them. The first step is to define the needs. There are a couple of key components to this first step. Job design is one of them and another one is skills inventory. These are both important steps, for the organization to understand what skills it needs and what it has. Training is the bridge to gap any discrepancy between these two things. The training and development council will help by synthesizing the literature into booklets and simple courses that can provide companies with a distilled version of these basic steps.

It is important, however, that companies are aware of the role of soft skills. It is not enough to simply focus on basic functional skills, because in today's economy it is the soft skills like leadership, motivation, salesmanship and communication that are important. Critical thinking is a highly valuable skill that helps with problem-solving and innovation, yet most skills do not teach it. These are critical areas that are harder to teach than the hard, technical skills, and as such they stand a greater chance of providing competitive advantage for American companies. We were never successful because we were more technically-skilled; we are successful because of the way we do things, the way we approach challenges and solve problems. These are the types of soft skills that we need to teach in order to continue to enjoy competitive advantage in the…