Demystifying Technical Training: Partnership, Strategy, and Execution

2.4. Summary: The Value Proposition for Technical Training

While most people agree that skills development is important, O'Toole and Lawler (2006) explain why training and development in general is becoming more and more critical: "Particularly in the last decade, an observable convergence of trends has heightened the need for more, and better, job training: the increasing speed of technology change, the increasing sophistication of foreign competitors, the export of manufacturing jobs, downsizing due to pressures to increase productivity, shortcomings in the quality of formal education (particularly at the high school level), and the aging of the workforce. All told, those trends amount to an almost perfect storm, creating an ever-increasing ...