Continuing Education and Training: Not Just the Employee’s Burden Skilled engineers seek further training and development through their employers

1. Continuing Education
and Training: Not Just the
Employee’s Burden
Skilled engineers seek further training and
development through their employers
kellyservices.us/engineering

2. It’s a shared
responsibility
53% Despite a very tight labor market for engineers in many industries today, where candidates have their
pick of opportunities, it’s still incumbent on engineering employees to make sure they remain hirable.
They must be current on skills, know where to look for the right jobs, and have the ability to incorporate
of the global respondents from
sophisticated social media into the job search process.
the KGWI said that it was more
Yet this doesn’t mean that employers are off the hook. In highly technical professions such as
important to change employers in engineering, in fact, a company’s ability to play a role in developing skills may be just as important
order to grow their careers and as the skills a worker brings to the table. Why? Because workforce experts know that the global
labor market of the future is really just all about people. If an organization doesn’t know how to get
further their skills them—and keep them—by offering valuable training opportunities, that organization could soon be
surpassed by others who have figured out the right formula for keeping the best talent on board.
57% of engineers surveyed
in the chemical industry said they’ll Continuing education can help attract
need to upgrade their skills within and retain engineering talent
the next 12 – 24 months to keep up
with advances in the profession Key results from the 2012 Kelly Global Workforce Index™ (KGWI) indicate just how important it is for
an organization to take training seriously. Of the 170,000 global respondents spanning nearly every
72% of engineers surveyed industry, more than half, 53 percent, indicated that it was more important to change employers in order
to grow their careers and further develop their skills. Seventy-four percent indicated that the ability to
excel and develop skills on the job is a key to deriving meaning from their work.
in the computers and electronics
industry said they’ll need to Other results that focus specifically on what engineers in a variety of fields expect from their
careers indicate that training opportunities are even more important in highly technical fields. The
upgrade their skills within the results from the KGWI show that those in professional and technical fields are significantly more
same time frame likely than non- professional/technical workers to feel it is important to change employers when it
comes to staying current with career development and skills.
Clearly, training cannot be overlooked. But it is often a difficult proposition in the current economy.
Even global companies that seem to have endless resources are experiencing the same struggles
to do more with less—just like smaller firms around the world. Providing training opportunities for
employees is expensive. And in an age of free agents who are highly skilled and can be hired for
specific projects, it’s not unreasonable for employers to expect that the people they hire will know
exactly how to get the job done from day one.
Continuing education naturally improves the value of
engineering employees
But even highly skilled engineers who are currently employed know that training and continuing
education are important aspects of their careers. In the chemical industry, for example, more than
half, 57 percent, of the engineers surveyed said they’ll need to upgrade their skills within the
next 12 to 24 months in order to keep up with advances in the profession, according to primary
research conducted by Kelly®. An even bigger percentage, 72 percent, of engineers working in
computers and electronics said that they’ll need to upgrade their skills within the same time frame.
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3. The major challenge for But how are these engineers expecting to accomplish this goal? For them, it’s not an entirely go-
it-alone proposition. Half of those in the chemical industry rated structured, on-the-job training
companies in constructing training opportunities as one of the three most important training and development types. About 45
programs is ensuring that their percent of engineers working in computers and electronics said that “formal training programs”
and structured, on-the-job experience are also critical in their quests for ongoing training and
program is viable from a “dollars education in their careers.
and sense” standpoint: will this
In almost any modern manufacturing plant—even in mainstream industries like automotive
program be economical for your or consumer products—manufacturing engineers need to be knowledgeable about process
company? Will it be valuable to automation and controls technologies in order to remain relevant to employers.
your employees?
New challenges in developing training programs
These results make it clear that workers—even those who are highly skilled—know how important
it is to keep their skills up-to-date, and that they are largely expecting to reap those benefits from
the workplace.
A major challenge for companies, then, will be to figure out how to develop effective training
programs that provide real value to their employees. These opportunities are a critical draw for the
world’s most talented workers in the current age of free agency, and it just makes sense to invest
in this kind of talent in order to retain them. After all, these workers will likely become a company’s
most valued resources in the workplace of the future where an organization’s institutional
knowledge will be just as important as its ability to produce.
But a second major challenge will be to develop training programs that also make financial sense.
The cost is not likely to go down, and finding alternative ways of providing the best training
possible will be just as valuable to companies as the skills their employees are able to acquire.
Fortunately for organizations, workforce solutions experts are moving toward the task of not
only finding the best candidates, but training them as well as possible. There will always be
a continued need to source the best talent for a specific job. But moving forward, the best
workforce partners will also understand that drawing from a talent pool is only possible if that
talent pool has the resources available to continually keep up on valuable skills. A company
looking for effective workforce solutions should therefore always look for a workforce partner
that is striving to bridge the gap by maintaining its own training methods and programs.
Invest in and retain your talent
Kelly® offers online coursework that’s For example, in some cases, Kelly, a leading global workforce solutions provider, has partnered
with higher education institutions to develop these programs, or has helped organizations build
available to help engineers prepare for customizable training programs that they can rely on far into the future. After all, it’s no longer
critical, in-demand credentials within their good enough for corporations or workforce experts to simply shuffle talent around—we all must
collaborate to develop talent, too, in order to always have the right candidates on hand.
disciplines, including Project Management
Professional (PMP) Certification Prep, As the world’s workforce continues to rapidly evolve, so too should the ability of organizations to
meet all the challenges of building a meaningful workforce model that works for them. Continuing
Certified Six Sigma Green Belt (SSGB) education and training will remain critical tools in that quest, and Kelly is helping to ensure that the
Test Prep, and Certified Six Sigma Black world’s best organizations are able to fulfill these expectations.
Belt (SSBB) Test Prep.
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4. About Kelly Services®
Kelly Services, Inc. (NASDAQ: KELYA, KELYB) is a leader in providing Since employing its first engineer in 1965, the Kelly engineering
workforce solutions. With specialization in the scientific industry, Kelly® specialty has grown to be recognized as a leading provider of
offers a comprehensive array of outsourcing and consulting services engineering resources to customers in such industries as automotive,
as well as world-class staffing on a temporary, temporary-to-hire, and chemical, defense, electronics, energy, medical device and
direct-hire basis. Serving clients around the globe, Kelly provides pharmaceutical. Want more information?
employment to more than 550,000 employees annually. Revenue in
Visit kellyservices.com/engineering today.
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