CAROLYN WARNER

Since skilled people become the only competitive advantage, you might want to embrace a skill standard system.

In today's rapidly evolving global economy where everyone has access to the same technologies, the only differences between the companies that succeed and those that fail are the knowledge, skills, and abilities of their workforce, their people.

Jamie Houghton, former chairman of Corning, makes a vivid point: When Corning uses one pound of glass to make a Corelle dinner plate, the glass sells for 90 cents per pound. But if Corning takes the same amount of glass to make optical fiber, it sells for $550 per pound. The difference is knowledge.

U.S. Economist Lester Thurow writes: “The skills of the workforce will be the competitive weapon of the 21st century. Brainpower will create new technologies, but skilled labor will allow one to employ the new product and process technologies that are being generated. Skilled people become the only competitive advantage.”

Technology has also made an incredible amount of information available to us—information that if used properly, will enable us to make smarter, more efficient business decisions and increased profits.

In the words of Peter Drucker, this is the era of the “knowledge worker.” People with knowledge are replacing land, equipment, and capital as a company's chief asset. So today's employees—the knowledge workers—must be better educated and trained than they were even 10 years ago.

Learning—the acquisition of applicable knowledge and skills—is the currency of the future. This is why employers are looking for highly-skilled workers who work smarter, and not just harder. As Drucker puts it, “The knowledge employee may well need a machine (a computer, an ultrasound analyzer, or a telescope), but the machine will not tell the knowledge worker what to do, let alone how to do it. And without this knowledge, which belongs to the employee, the machine is unproductive.”

We all know that finding and keeping qualified workers will be critical to competing in the 21st century. But in the United States, we have a surplus of workers with skills that are obsolete and an alarming scarcity of workers with the skills needed. So we must ask: How can we best prepare individuals to enter the workforce? How can we ensure that workers do not find themselves obsolete, but, rather, flexible and adaptable and able to change with the times? How can we upgrade our workforce to the next level of performance?

Skill Standards

We now have an important piece of strategy to keep pace with change. We know that voluntary skill standards are central to the solution for bridging the gap between the skills employers want and the skills that workers get.

Skill standards provide us with a means to stay on the cutting edge. Skill standards aren't everything. By themselves they will not transform the workplace. However, they are the threads in the total workforce delivery system that will provide educators, trainers, and human resources personnel with the information they need to articulate and measure specific worth to an organization. So part of our challenge is developing a common nomenclature that will provide trainers, educators, and human resources personnel with a common language.

Employers should not embrace this voluntary skill standard system simply out of charity. In the 21st century, it will be imperative that businesses do everything they can to attract, develop, and retain top talent. Skills standards and their certifications are not just very important tools in the development of the future workforce, they are an essential component of economic survival. EE

Carolyn Warner is president of Corporate Education Consulting, Inc. This article is adapted from her speech to the International Conference on Vocational Training and Skill Standards of the European Union, Basque, Spain, and used with permission of Vital Speeches of the Day.

Excellence in Action: Consider adopting skill standards to attract, develop, and retain top talent.