Overarching Components
Involve Employers
In the Analysis stage, we noted the importance of conferring with employers on current and projected labor demand, to ensure that the type of job training to be developed is indeed meeting a real, persistent, or emerging need. The role of employers does not stop there. During the design stage, it is important for employer input to continue to drive the process because if they are not ultimately pleased with the results of the education and training program, they will not hire any of its graduates.
The degree of the involvement of employers can vary greatly, depending on their availability, attention span, or the extent of their need or interest. In some cases, program staff will confer with employers and their subject matter experts on specific skill needs of different jobs. These programs subsequently design the training and prepare the trainees without significant additional involvement of the employer. In other cases, employers take a much more active role and are involved at every step of the design and development of curriculum. They work with the program on the development of the skill profile, endorse the training design, articulate candidate screening processes, and work closely with the program to manage the flow of applicants and the interview process. As a result, the program participants may receive an advantage over other job candidates in the hiring process.
A challenge can be to find the right balance of employer involvement – enough so that an employer will develop confidence that the training program will meet their needs, but not so much that the training program is too customized to any one employer or type of employer. The Massachusetts BEST program, for example, learned the difficulties of developing a training program to meet multiple employers in the same industry. Because of resource constraints, smaller firms could not attend as many curriculum design meetings as could larger firms, with the result being that many smaller firms backed out of the initiative entirely. The smaller employers felt that the training would not meet their needs the way it would the needs of larger employers (FutureWorks, 2004). The danger is in then needing to customize training programs for specific employers, rather than keeping it general enough to serve the needs of a broader range of employers, such as those in a given industry sector.
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Related Organizational Examples