PATHWAYS — Volume 9, Number 4 – October, 1997

In most organizations today, demands for change are real and typically ripple down through the organizational structure.

• The organization must change in response to new needs and expectations from its management and its customers.
• As a result, the organization’s employees must learn new skills and areas of knowledge.
• That, in turn, means the staff development function must adapt if they are to anticipate, understand, and satisfy the changing knowledge and skills requirements of employees.

Whether the staff development function is called Human Resources, Education and Training, or some other title, its duties are no longer limited to developing and delivering training. Increasingly, staff development is being called upon to help anticipate needs based on corporate strategic planning. They are then expected to help senior management forecast future staff competency requirements—and have qualified talent in place when needed.

For many staff development groups, this proactive role is new, challenging, and perhaps somewhat intimidating. To act proactively rather than reactively, staff development professionals require a new, non-traditional skill and knowledge set. It includes:

• Increased business acumen¾ ability to match services to the strategic and tactical plans of the organization.
• Industry knowledge¾ ability to access trends, estimate impacts, and influence management to respond proactively.
• Consulting skills¾ ability to assess the organization’s "internal customer" needs, determine the nature and degree of the gap between current and required capabilities, and recommend innovative, cost effective solutions.
• Selling skills¾ ability to help internal customers select among alternative solutions, then elicit agreement to implement the solution selected.
• Financial awareness¾ ability to assess the costs associated with recommendations and justify the investment by quantifying both tangible and intangible returns.
• New technologies¾ ability to access and use new development and delivery approaches and produce solutions using the new technologies.

In his article, Van Wright offers some suggestions for upgrading staff development professionals.

This section is addressed to those of you who face the need to move your organization's staff development function from a narrow training focus to a broad-based performance support role. To make it all happen, you need to put in place a strategy for getting there. We would like to suggest a four-phased approach:

Let’s look at each of these phases in turn.

During this phase, your first step is to identify changes in the organization’s needs.

• What new strategic directions are being projected by senior management?
• What changes are taking place in your industry?
• What is the competition doing that will force your organization to change?

• How are customer expectations of the organization changing?

Answers to these questions will help you anticipate new services that may be expected of your function.

Before proceeding to Phase 2, you also need to obtain executive-level commitment for funding and resources. Unless one or more executive champions buy into your new vision, it is risky, if not futile to proceed.

During Phase 2 you analyze how the business changes you identified in Phase 1 will alter employee skill and knowledge requirements. You will probably want to use some version of the classic needs assessment model:

• What is the desired state?
• What is the present state?
• What is the difference between the present and the desired state?

At Home Savings, for example, (see the sidebar on page xx), the organization planned to move from a single-product-line-and-service focus to a sales-and-service focus by adding the capacity to offer consumer loans and business banking services. Since few employees had this range of experience, the need for sales skill and technical knowledge development was evident.

Once you have identified new training and development requirements for the organization’s employees, you will also need to perform a similar assessment of your own staff development function. (These two assessments can often occur in parallel.)

Both for the organization as a whole and for your own staff, you basically have four options:

1. Outsource some or all of the staff development functions.

Instead of using your own resources to meet all the new employee development requirements, you may decide to turnkey some requirements to a qualified, outside resource. Outsourcing may include training development, delivery, or both.

2. Replace some or all people with more qualified individuals.

Trying to do this across the board is risky because of the impact on employee morale.

3. Retrain the people you have.

This option is often the first option considered, whether for budgetary or personnel policy reasons. Keep in mind that retraining does not have to be done totally from within. In addition to company-sponsored courses, you can also use existing programs offered by local academic institutions and outside vendors. Some will adapt their programs to fit your organization’s needs. You might also consider professional trade shows and conferences, free software seminars, and the like.

4. As demand for services grow, add resources with new skills.

For example, HealthNet (see the sidebar on page xx), not only retrained their existing staff; they also added individuals with needed new skills as requirements increased.

5. Partner with outside specialists for a limited period.

Once you have evaluated and selected the right mix from the options described in Phase 3, it is time to get started. Some things will work just as you anticipated, but there are also likely to be some surprises along the way. As with any project, it is necessary to monitor progress, fine-tune as needed and, if necessary, make mid-course corrections.

For your staff development function to meet the changing requirements of your organization, you need to continuously plan and provide for staff growth.