The Workforce Investment Act: Implementation Experiences and Evaluation Findings

4 - Customized Training

113 4 Customized training David A. Long Abt Associates In the United States, national workforce development policy has steadily placed a greater emphasis on the involvement of the private sector in the planning and oversight of federally funded programs. WIA has required local workforce development planning and operations be led by boards chaired and largely composed of private sector leaders. However, this and other WIA provisions have not ensured the use of “demand-driven” skills training—that is, the provision of particular employee skills needed by specific firms in their current and new workers. Federal policy once shied away from such training, because it was considered the responsibility of employers to prepare their own workers in skills that are this job-specific. Now, however, local boards have the discretion to support the training they want, and there is increasing recognition that training tailored to the needs of specific employers is a vehicle both for providing good jobs to low-income and disadvantaged groups and for promoting economic growth in particular communities and industrial sectors. Recognizing this, the USDOL and private foundations in the United States have funded what can be termed “customized” training initiatives (this type of training goes by several names). These initiatives typically involve local partnerships between firms from the private sector and training providers and intermediaries from the public sector. This chapter answers several questions about customized training, beginning with the most fundamental: What is it? And, what is the rationale for this training? Then the discussion will turn to the role of customized training in WIA. What is that role now and what might it be in the future? Finally, I will address questions regarding how much we know about delivering customized training and, if implemented well, about how effective this training can be. In answering these last two 114 Long questions, I will rely primarily on research findings from four largescale demonstrations mounted by the USDOL during the last 10 years and from a fifth major initiative funded by the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation. WhAt IS CUStOMIzED tRAINING? One of economist Gary Becker’s many contributions to the way we think about education and training is the distinction he drew between general and specific training. Firm-specific training is useful only to the individual sector firms providing it, while general education or training is useful to a range of firms.At the general education and training end of the continuum is the wide-ranging preparation—for example, in communication skills and word processing functions—that is not designed for a particular industry, let alone a specific firm in the industry. At the other end is the specific, in-house skills training provided by individual firms to their own employees, including on-the-job learning about the firm’s procedures, structure, and culture. Becker notes that employers have little incentive to invest in general training, because it raises the productivity of workers in other firms and not just their own, which then encourages competing employers to hire away these workers at higher wages. On the other hand, he argues that completely specific training—which can only be provided by the individual firm as on-the-job training in its own unique processes, special methods and routines, and unique uses of technologies and equipment—has no value to other employers and consequently does not bid up wages (Becker 1997). Becker’s distinction is very useful, although it should be noted that there are few completely firm-specific skills and, even where they exist, such skills may actually be quite valuable to competing firms. Along the continuum between general and specific training, customized training occupies a place closer to the latter. By definition, customized training is instruction for workers and job seekers provided by education and training institutions working closely with employers. The training curriculum is developed or adapted to meet the education and training needs of the specific firms, which often belong to a Customized Training 115 particular sector. As a result, this training often has gone by the name of “sectoral training”—particularly in the philanthropic community. This term is incomprehensible to most people. In addition, the training to which the term refers sometimes involves well-defined jobs (such as a computer technician) in firms from more than a single sector, but located in a single geographic area. Government agencies have more often attached the term “demand-driven” to this type of training, wanting...