(posted by Inflexion’s Shannon Flumerfelt)

It is somewhat unpredictable how and where one makes sense of things within a moment of consideration, especially in the midst of doing something else. 

For instance, as I was running this morning, my MP3 player kicked out a song.  As the song drew me in (and with the help of exercise-induced endorphins), I started to think about the future of the workforce.  According to modern folk singer, Jewel, “There is a difference between dreaming and pretending.”   As I listened to Jewel, I thought about a recent American Society for Training and Development (ASTD) event where I participated as panelist.  Through the panel discussion, ASTD members were working hard to make sense of the training issues of workforce of the future.   They were not interested in “pretending” or maintaining irrelevant approaches to employee learning and development.  Rather, they wanted to proactively understand best practice, identify emerging trends and internalize the predictions of futurists to strategically position their organizations for a distinct advantage.  In other words, they wanted to engage in “dreaming”.

For the dreamers, the picture of the future workforce is clearly described in the Rand Labor and Population Report (prepared for the US Department of Labor), entitled, The 21^st Century at Work:  Forces Shaping the Future Workforce and Workplace in the United States.  In short, the concerns expressed in this report attacks this so-called “pretending” as the precursor to economic turmoil and the demise of the workforce in the United States.  To understand what should be done, Rand describes that there are significant emerging differences between the present and future workforce.   Among others, two areas requiring critical change include: 

-The Key Characteristics of the Workforce: 

There will be a need for increasing skill, higher educational attainment and more minority representation in the workforce driven by the rapid pace of technological change and related market growth.

-The Employee/Employer Relationship: 

The nature of work and the structure of jobs will change.  Employees will be more self-directed, accountable and autonomous.  Organizational structures will be more participative and less vertically integrated, more focused on emerging best organizational practices.  In turn, because specialization will be valued, new reward systems will enforce those competencies so that structural productivity boosts occur and improved business practices are maintained.

For those of us who wish say “goodbye to Alice in Wonderland” in workforce development, the Rand Report calls for a radical change in the content, methods and pedagogy of training: 

Increasingly, the system (the education and training system) is less relevant for the 21^st century workforce. . . .The new model for workforce education and training is predicated on the need for continuous learning throughout the working life, a process of lifelong learning involving training and retraining that continues well past initial entry into the labor market.  

To change this system is possible, as long as we understand there is a difference between dreaming and pretending.

Let’s keep the conversation (and dreaming) going.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 19th, 2007 at 9:24 am and is filed under Human Capital/Human Resources, Research. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.