Who Should "Own" Skills Training?

I have never, for the life of me, understood the Gartner HR practice. They write all these long, flowery articles about work for Harvard Business Review and other places, and each time I see one, it seems like not a soul who works there actually understands work at all. Logically per their function, they interview a lot of HR leaders about heady, future-looking work issues. All that begs the question: why? HR leaders tend to know nothing about the future of work, and honestly, a lot of them can barely explain how their current company makes money, or what products/services they provide. They exist as a pressure release valve for the execs; they get in the mud with bad hires so that execs don’t have to pay lawyers except for the big topics, and they provide air cover for managers.

The biggest place that HR provides air cover for managers is hiring, but the second biggest place is learning and development, which somehow became a HR function at many places, even though the people who tend to enter HR have absolutely no business trying to guide the learning process of others. That has to come from managers and self-aware people who are comfortable becoming mentors. It cannot come from HR.

Putting 2 and 2 together now, here’s another new long article from Gartner about dynamic learning. This article is totally editor-proof, meaning that someone who edits business journalism would potentially ejaculate after reading it, but if you’ve ever spent five minutes inside an office, you know that almost nothing mentioned in the article is remotely possible. Just consider the term “dynamic learning.” Go say that to a manager. The first thing the manager will think is “Shit, dynamic learning? So they won’t be focused on tasks? But I need tasks done…” That’s just reality. Managers tend to want shit off their plate, and are happy to have gotten more money to essentially function as a conveyor belt of information and tasks. (That + control/fiefdom.)

There are some good stats in this article, though, such as:

• According to a Gartner analysis of more than 7.5 million job postings, in 2018, U.S. job postings in IT, finance, and sales roles required an average of 17 skills. The same types of roles now require an average of 21 skills, including at least eight that weren’t previously required. At the same time, 29% of the skills from an average job posting in 2018 may not be needed next year.
• One HR leader from a large manufacturing organization shared the challenge of trying to keep up with requests from the business to develop new skills: “When we put together a learning solution, the business has already moved on.” In organizations with a reactive approach, employees apply only 54% of the new skills they learn after 12 months. These organizations are simply too slow to get the skills to employees at the times they’re needed most.
• In fact, 97% of employees report that they would learn a new skill if given the opportunity. Yet only 39% percent believe their organization is effective at helping them understand how information about skills needs applies to their own context.

Again, I don’t really care what “HR leaders” think about the future of work and skill development, but some of the numbers are fascinating. How about that first bullet? Analysis paralysis much? 17 bullet point skills on a job description, when SaaS can probably do half of those 17? That’s just inefficient.

“When we put together a new learning solution, the business has already moved on” encapsulates HR to an absolute tee. No one gives them info. Most barely care about them. They’re constantly six to 12 months behind on every project that doesn’t involve an immediate need for termination. Execs lob projects they want nothing to do with over the fence at HR, like “Make me a deck on ‘engagement’ and what that means.”

So no, HR shouldn’t own this stuff — and it shouldn’t be surveyed about what’s happening with this stuff.

The actual responsibility for skill development, in an utopia, would come from:

• Managers
• Executives
• Those who are socially adept and want to be mentors

The reality is that skill development comes from:

• The employee him/herself
• HR presentations that help barely at all
• Maybe their mom or a friend
• No one else

I’m all for personal accountability, so people should develop their own skills. No argument there. My issue is where managers drop out. A lot of managers don’t think skill development, learning, etc. is part of their job. They want fully-baked, fully-skilled employees to arrive at their doorstep through a process that, LOL, they don’t want to manage either. Then, if an employee missteps a few times, instead of talking to them or seeing where they’re at, there’s usually a tense meeting and then a “Performance Improvement Plan,” and then we begin the whole checked-out hiring, checked-out development cycle again. Good work if you can get it. Not everyone does/can.

A lot of managers are inherently absentee, which means they take no time to get to know their people, respect them, help them grow, etc. The people are disposable task monkeys to them, and when they hire of Tom, they will go find a Todd, then tire of Todd, and get a Tad. If Tad leaves of his own volition, maybe they will find an Eric, and so on. (Perhaps a Lucinda, someday.) Managers like this are common; it’s over 50% of managers I’ve personally had. That’s why managers absolve themselves of responsibility for learning and development and off-shore it to HR, where it dies a predictably painful death, time and time again. The managers simply do not want to focus on that stuff. They want to hit tasks and manage up the chain to get more for themselves. And why wouldn’t they? That’s a huge marker of success, especially for men.

Now, it is possible to improve learning and development programs inside organizations, but ultimately it takes a manager who cares about their people, not a manager who kicks everyone they don’t want to deal with — including hiring! — to HR. If those are the managers you have, no amount of yawning and fawning articles about “the future of skills development” will save you. It’s just rinse and repeat until only the shit remains at every level.

Takes?