Training and Experience on the Job

Adam Van Dell asked a question on his blog that made me think about the influx of knowledge workers in our labor force. These are employees who bring value to an organization simply by virture of what they know. They are skilled workers such as physical scientists, computer analysts, or product designers, even video game developers. They usually have some kind of expert knowledge in a subject matter and come to the job with a lot of skill and training and education. Obviously we need a lot of these kinds of workers today, but they raise a challenge because their knowledge becomes outdated very quickly. Some say the technical education of such workers has a shelf life of about 3 years. That's not much time before they need "retooling" or re-training. So how should management tailor the workplace for such workers? Do they need special consideration? Failure to update their skills may cause the orgnaizaton to lose competitive advantage, or the worker may go to another firm that does provide the retraining.