Note to Gen Y: You’re on your own.

Job Changing Reduces Incentive for Firms to Invest in Employee Development

Yesterday, I referenced Kauffman’s Disciple and Guru paper in a post about effective talent management practices. today I find “Your HR Guy” (Lance Haun) suggesting that firms have caught on to the fact that frequent job changing by employees reduces the likelihood that they will recoup the value of investments in employee training or professional development. In a post called “If Gen Y Gets Their Way, Training Goes the Way of the 8 Track”, Lance instructs us to get used to paying for our own training, education, professional development, etc. as firms stop investing in it.

This is precisely the opposite of the approach suggested by Disciple and Guru.

We Need Deep Knowledge, Technical Skills, and New Ways to Share the Cost of Acquiring Them

What’s happening here is a renegotiation process. Skills and talent are both individual and collective assets. People, firms, and government (representative of both) have shared the cost in different ways for decades. But today, technical skills become outdated more quickly, while and deep knowledge and creativity are ever more valued. This raises the demand for both higher levels of general education, and more sophisticated (and more frequent) technical training across the labor market.

But the costs of training, education, and development are increasing (along with housing, transport, child care and health insurance, as Elizabeth Warren points out here).

And the incomes of most individuals are not.

For Most, Incomes Flat or Falling

Change in Average Real Household Income Source: Economic Policy Institute

We’re going to have to reimagine, reinvent, and renegotiate.