It's a Free Agent World - training and retaining employees

Training & Development, Sept, 2000 by Darren Short, Rose Opengart

This is the second in a three-part series about free agent learners, who will increasingly populate the workplace and change the traditional ways work, jobs, employees, and loyalty are viewed. For part], see "Getting to Know the Employee of the Future" by Arnold Packer in the August issue of Training & Development.

The times are filled with uncertainties but also with promises, challenges, and opportunities. Headlines warn us of dramatic changes in the job market and in organizations that will and already are affecting how employees view their jobs and careers. For one, more workers are focusing on employability rather than employment security. Enter the free agent. Like their counterparts in professional sports, free agents are not bound to any one team or franchise--or organization.

Free agents focus on long-term employability based on their expertise, knowledge base, reputation, and networks. They speak of having a "portfolio of assets"--a collection of skills that makes them value-added contributors. They offer their assets to organizations, which benefit from increased competitiveness. But free agents expect something in return: They expect their employers to offer them opportunities for growth through learning and the application of that learning. Where the growth enhances employability, the free agent is more likely to stay with the organization. But where growth is limited and employability is threatened, free agents may seek alternative organizations that offer desired incentives and structures around learning.

With their focus on employability through growth and learning, free agents are essentially free agent learners--independent, highly motivated adults who take responsibility for their own learning and development, use their spare time to learn, use new approaches to learning, and self-teach using a variety of resources. Free agent learners take the initiative by organizing and structuring their own learning experiences and by seeking the best opportunities for learning and growth, and for applying that learning. They're likely to have little patience with planned learning experiences that don't match their desired format, timing, and location. Instead, free agent learners seek to learn wherever and from whomever they can.

Arnold Packer's article (August) about free agents discusses their effect on organizations in detail, suggesting that if organizations fail to deliver the desired learning and growth, they risk losing key employees and becoming less competitive. As employability and learning become more important, fewer employees will accept without question the training provided by their organizations, and more will take learning into their own hands.

So, what should training and learning specialists do? What key strategic role do they play in helping an organization attract and retain free agents? How do workplace performance professionals operate in an environment where learners are independent and more selective about their training?

With organizations looking to use learning as a strategic tool and individuals using new approaches to learning to enhance employability, training faces a new challenge: to make an evolutionary change or be considered dispensable. Training functions that fail to adapt to the modern game of free agent learners may find themselves cut from the roster. We believe that training functions need to consider this evolutionary path:

1. Alter the training function's focus of attention.

2. Partner with organizational systems.

3. Adopt new roles for trainers.

4. Develop new competencies for trainers.

Alter the training function's focus of attention. The process of training is but one means of learning. Training functions need to break away from their current focus on courses and programs toward more informal learning. If employees and organizations are already focusing on learning and career employability, then training functions must shift the emphasis away from training and toward continuous learning and careers. That's supported by linking formal and informal learning and helping employees learn how to learn. To do that, training functions must complement self-directed and informal learning with an emphasis on formal development (such as courses and education) and place greater attention on the environments and structures needed to encourage such learning. Indeed, the whole HRD community needs to focus on what it does that encourages and sustains learning, change, and growth.

Trainers helping employees with career development isn't a new concept. However, free agent learners are challenging HRD to become a strategic force with leverage and impact beyond training interventions and practices.

The free agent learners' focus on employability implies a need to update and expand expertise, technical knowledge, and skills; to build and maintain networks; and to bolster and promote reputations. Therefore, training functions need to take these steps:

* Make employee learning, growth, and career development the center of attention.