July 14, 2003
Is your workforce performance too slow? Do you suspect skill and knowledge gaps? Sometimes this can appear to be an insurmountable problem. How do you get workers into necessary training when there are already so many constraints? There is an effective strategy if you know how to create the proper environment.
Causes & Symptoms of Skill Gaps
You get a hint something is wrong when teams that you expect to be productive because of past experience are not meeting your expectations for timely and/or quality work. Skill & knowledge gaps may be part of the problem if:
When you suspect significant knowledge and skill gaps, confirm your suspicions by asking questions of those in the workforce, and perhaps organizational specialists in this area. If you get confirmation, then it is time to put in place a very specific plan.
A Very Specific Plan
Your best recourse here is to take the role of facilitator, of supporter. Workers want training--you must make it easier for them to get it. You do that by building a pro-learning environment, setting the tone, establishing the priority. This is a many-pronged effort, and here are some of the tasks you will be stuck with.
Show what training is available and the methods of delivery.
Chances are that your organization has many options for skill improvement. Some are delivered via the classroom, some are online. Coaching may even be available. Make lists courses, schedules, resources available to the workforce.
Promote the benefits to individual workers.
They are going to increase their value to the team and meet individual development plan goals, among other benefits, so remind them of this to motivate them.
Promote benefits to team.
In your communications, remind teams that teams will become more productive as they minimize their collective technical and interactive skill gaps. More importantly, their daily work environment will be much nicer and more effective.
Promote only training to fill project-related skill gaps.
Avoid political problems by supporting training that has clear connection to your project's success. You may hear from advocates of unproven or dubious training topics as soon as you become the "pro-learning project manager," but resist any temptation to actually promote these options. Stick to training that will most likely provide you with improved performance.
In Part 2 of this series, you'll see how to leverage other resources to make your plan easier to implement.
While you wait for Part 2, check out the presentation I created for you to use to motivate workers to become responsible for their own training, with your support. The ideas in this article are incorporated as well as others. You can customize it to your own needs.