From fighting terrorism abroad to managing the economic recovery here at home, the U.S. government has taken on more new roles and responsibilities in recent years than ever before in its history. Thats translating into expanded missions and increased job responsibilities in many federal agencies and state and local governments. Effective continuing education and training are critical to sustaining the kind of skills-based government workforce required to meet the governments current and future needs.

If done wisely, an investment in education and development doesnt just affect individual employee performance and productivity on the job; it also has an impact on employee alignment, engagement, and overall performance. Not only can learning and development be a significant catalyst for driving culture change and organizational transformation, it can also socialize and quickly acculturate new hires to an agencys mission, organizational culture, and work values

communicate clear and specific work expectations to employees at a departmental, team, or work unit level

align and engage employees (both new and current) around changing mission requirements or priorities

reward high-performing employees with customized professional development and career enrichment opportunities

retain highly prized workers by giving them regular opportunities to enhance and refresh their skills

create a nimble and resilient workforce accustomed to continuous learning on the job

foster a strong learning culture.

However, many government organizations have yet to develop a truly comprehensive and systematic approach to employee education, training, and development. Mission-critical skills and competency gaps clearly exist, and are likely to become more apparent in the years ahead as Baby Boomers begin to retire in large numbers. These needs are most pressing today in some areas of defense, intelligence, and national security.

With these clear benefits in mind, weve developed five guidelines that professionals should employ when designing education, training and development, and performance improvement initiatives for government workers.

Guideline #1: Consider all the ways you can incorporate continuing education and training into the employee lifecyclefrom the first day on the job to skills training and career advancement opportunities.

Despite research conducted by the Recruiting Roundtable revealing that effective onboarding programs can improve employee performance by up to 11.3 percent, many employees report that the initial process is often dismalan experience that can negatively affect employee morale and long-term employee retention.

Robust education and training from day 1 brings new hires quickly up to speed with the organizations culture, values, and work expectations. This is a critical point at which to cement strong ties with a new hire. Key onboarding activities, such as clearly communicating performance expectations; providing early feedback; involving co-workers and peers in early socialization of a new employee to the work culture; and providing early job training are critical to boosting performance (Partnership for Public Service/Booz Allen Hamilton).

James Perry, chancellors professor in the School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University and co-editor of Motivation in Public Management: The

Call of Public Service (Oxford University Press, 2008), has been researching the public service motivations of government employees for decades. He said in a 2008 article in The Public Manager that the work motivations of public employees are based on a different set of values than one finds in industry or even the nonprofit sector. Specifically, theyre more strongly motivated by the call of public service, a desire to serve others, and a wish to do good. For these reasons, public sector leaders and managers should stress the social significance of public sector work when new employees first come aboard. According to Perry, initial training and orientation programs offer a powerful platform for doing this.

Use education and training as a tool not only to equip employees with critical skills, but also to empower and engage them on the job. Training and development received high rankings as a determinant of job success among employees of the 10 top-rated government agencies in the 2007 Best Places to Work in the Federal Government survey rankings (PPS and ISPPI). More than 72 percent of employees who work at the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRCthe top-rated agency in the 2007 rankings), for example, felt the agencys training and development (T&D) offerings enabled them to strengthen their skills and perform their jobs effectively. More than 70 percent of NASA employees surveyed felt the same way, as did 66.1 percent of employees at the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA). In fact, among many agencies and agency subcomponents in the survey, T&D ranked high as an important determinant of job success by a significant number of employees.

Clearly, the Best Places to Work survey rankings reveal the degree to which training and continuous learning can give employees a sense of control and competence to do their jobs effectively, and thus affect their degree of engagement and empowerment on the job. And helping employees feel more empowered on the job is at least as important as giving them specific, content-based knowledge with which to do their jobs.

Guideline #2: Conduct annual, or more frequent, assessments to determine training needs and knowledge gaps. These can change all the time.

Conducting thorough T&D assessments is essential to understanding your workforces education and training needs, learning style preferences, and the specific mix of teaching tools that should be incorporated into courses, programs, and curricula.

Effective training will use a variety of technologies and formats with learners, including distance learning, classroom learning, and web-based training. Web-based offerings are very popular among government employees because they can access them directly from their computers or laptops at any time. It should incorporate the use of various learning tools such as instant messaging and helpful graphics. Online learning can be more cost-effective in many cases than sending employees to offsite training programs.

Guideline #3: Ensure that there is a strong succession plan in placebegin developing future managers and leaders now.

Enhancing the skills of middle managers has been identified as a critical need in government today, and as a potentially powerful way to drive workforce and workplace transformation. The reasons many middle managers in government lack critical soft skills are largely systemic: Many have been promoted into management jobs because of their previously demonstrated technical abilities rather than their ability to successfully manage people. Learning and performance solutions designed

to enhance management skills can do a lot to address

this problem.

Using training to enhance a managers job effectiveness

has huge implications for federal agencies and

state and local government organizations

that are challenged with the task

of breaking down functional silos to

operate more efficiently, as well as unifying

and aligning employees around

rapidly changing agency missions or

organizational priorities. (Think of the

needs in the Departments of Defense

and Homeland Security, for example.)

Arming mid-level managers with

the tools to be effective communicators and influencers

can go a long way toward reducing workplace conflicts,

building stronger teams, and improving managementlabor

relations.

Guideline #4: Understand that

people have different learning styles

and preferences, and develop your

education and training program

based on these differences.

Todays government workforce is made up of at

least three discrete populations of workers, including

Baby Boomers (born between 1940 and 1960), Gen

Xers (born between 1960 and 1980), and Generation

Ys or Millennials (born between 1980 and 2000). Each

generation has specific learning style preferences, and

distinct attitudes toward work and authority.

Baby Boomers tend to be well-educated and hardworking,

often putting in long hours on the job. Of the

three generations, theyre probably the most acclimated

to instructor-led, classroom-based training, having

generally completed their formal education before the

widespread use of computers, much less the Internet.

Gen Xers, by comparison, are tech-conversant

multitaskers. Designing T&D programs for this group

requires mixing technology (for example, video or audio

streaming and software simulations) with more traditional

training approaches, which gives people ways to

multitask even as they take part in training sessions, and

incorporates an entertainment component into training

and development curricula.

Gen Ys (Millennials) are even more tech-savvy

than Xers, and very social as well. Its Millennials,

after all, who have pioneered use of social media (think

Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace) both in their personal

and working lives. Designing T&D programs for this

group means incorporating social media (for example,

chat or instant messaging) and other technologies

into training programs to making

learning personal. Keep learning

fast-paced and bear in mind that

Ys have generally shorter attention

spans than both their Boomer or

Gen X counterparts.

Then theres the Generation

C group, which is a blend of elements

from all three of the generations.

Generation C, according to

Trendwatching.com, has been described as a cohort of

individuals of any age who actively use social media

and engage others on the Internet. Their learning and

interpersonal preferences favor creativity, collaboration,

conversation, extensive use of online content-creation

tools, and the creation of vibrant online learning and

social communities.

Members of Generation C blog, tweet, text, and

IM (instant message) their friends and colleagues constantly,

and view the Internet and new communication

technologies almost as extensions of their personalities.

The ascendancy of Generation C represents nothing less

than an intellectual, demographic, and tectonic shift in

how people live, learn, connect, and communicate. We

in the education business must pay attention to them

and design future learning programs and solutions in

response to their evolving communications habits and

learning style preferences.

Guideline #5: Use education and

training as a way to create a strong

learning culture in your organization.

It will help maintain day-to-day job

satisfaction as well as increase

recruitment.

Continuing education, skills training, and other

employee development opportunities can serve as powerful

recruitment and retention toolsif organizations

know how to use them for these purposes. For example,

new employees (usually recent college graduates)

typically seek out career development opportunities at

work (especially in a first job). For that reason, agencies

should promote T&D opportunities to prospective

college hires as part of their annual recruiting efforts

on the nations college campuses. Doing so can help agencies become employers of choice to more young college graduates, especially those with an inclination to national or public service.

Continuing education and professional development also can be used to reward high performers and to give valued employees more opportunities for continuing professional growth and career advancement. When used in this way, T&D can be an important channel through which an organization builds leadership bench strength, identifies and retains high-performers, and fills its leadership and talent pipelines with new talent critical to the organizations long-term success.

Given the pace of change in government, continuous learning is critical to building a strong and resilient workforce; one that is able to quickly scale up to meet growing challenges or increasing responsibilities. For that reason, government executives should make continuous employee learning a top-level priority. They can do this by creating strong learning communities and networks of best practices within their agencies. They also should embed more just-in-time training and continuing education opportunities into employees everyday work schedules by using the power of the web and various social networking tools.

Taking on the Continuing Education and Training Mantle

As the T&D executive in your organization, you should embrace the role of strategic advisor to your organizations political appointees and top-level career executives as well as the newcomers and mid-managers. Doing so will ensure that your agency or department begins to take a truly strategic approach to education, training, and development in the years ahead. This approach should directly support your organizations workforce planning requirements and strategic plan.

If youre in the federal government, consider using the Obama Administrations management agenda as a strategic planning template. It will provide you and your agency with a very concrete and coherent approach to employee development and planningone that focuses both on present training and development needs and on emerging workforce planning priorities. Meeting the management agendas requirements wont just help your agency improve its current operating performance. It also will help your agency develop the

9employee skills and competencies necessary to meet evolving mission requirements.

To position yourself as a strategic T&D advisor to your organizations leaders, reach out to colleagues in HR and to agency line managers and directors to help them assess existing skills and competency gaps, and to design education and training plans, courses, and curricula based on identified needs. By taking this approach, you position yourself as a trusted business partner to your agencys leadership and lay the groundwork for helping your organization meet its talent development needs both today and in the future.