Working Strategies: Random thoughts: ‘Office,’ not ‘work;’ on-the-job training

Amy Lindgren Now and then I like to pull together ideas I ve been musing about Here are a couple of things at this moment on my desk Office I meant office In last week s column I repeatedly used the term RTW return to work At least I m consistent but I should have been using RTO return to office Longtime reader Barb C brought this to my attention noting Return to work makes it sound like we were on a work hiatus this whole time I assure you we were not Nope you weren t and neither was is anyone else whose work happens to occur somewhere other than a communal workplace After acknowledging my error I popped onto the internet to see how RTW and RTO are being used by others What I saw erased any lingering doubt about which is the better phrase Although I had imagined the W would be more inclusive because not every remote worker is office -based I soon understood just how frustrated home-based workers have been about this issue As noted on several discussion boards the more we describe a change in the work setting as a return to work the more we imply that work wasn t being conducted before While that s merely annoying in particular contexts it s demoralizing for residents employees who already fight an uphill battle related to their image As a Reddit poster succinctly wrote Language matters Consider me educated Remembering on-the-job training There has been a lot of talk about the value of apprenticeships agreement schools and non-college strategies of learning work skills I m all for it and try hard not to point out my decades of columns as proof After all no one likes a know-it-all But it does seem pivotal to tie the parts together so new ideas are recognized for the foundation they stand on Ready In decades past fewer people went to college Those that did tended to go into what became white-collar jobs They weren t necessarily trained in college for those jobs but were chosen for the perception that college had made them into thinkers analysts writers etc They were trained on the job famously starting out in the mail room or on the sales desk before gaining their striped ties because they were more often men than women Meanwhile their friends who didn t go to college were enrolling in business school or going directly to work in manufacturing retail hospitality construction basically everything else They also didn t show up with the needed skills unless they had worked in a family business or had related classes in high school They too were trained on the job In other words not to be too blunt about it employers took responsibility for training their workers to work for them Sometimes they revealed people already trained such as folks just out of the military but they didn t count on such fortune as their only pipeline Nor did they demand previous training or experience or certificates as the entry point for their jobs So that s the foundation prior to the explosion of external training programs that provided employers the promise expectation assumption of already-trained workers I m skipping quite a lot here including that people used to hang onto jobs for life if they could Partly because they feared not getting on the escalator at the same floor if they tried to go elsewhere And partly because employers sweetened the pot by providing pensions and not cutting staff on a whim Too much has changed in all aspects of our lives to imagine going back Not to mention those glory days were only glorious for certain segments of our population who still paid a price for all that glory My point isn t to wax nostalgic but to ask frankly Whatever happened to on-the-job training I m asking for your thoughts on this but I ll cover a few ground first by saying I know certain companies have made headlines partnering with schools or advancing pipelines for kids coming out of the justice system And I know that apprenticeships are gaining traction again Daily press releases also keep me abreast of individual initiatives tucked into different pockets of the country But I m still asking Given the constant drumbeat of articles and surveys where employers say their jobs demand skills their applicants don t have Why aren t they training them It s got to be more complicated than I think but then I wonder if it is Anyone Related Articles Working Strategies Adjusting to and surviving return-to-work Working Strategies Do you have a bucket list for your career Working Strategies Competing offers prove both a good and bad dilemma to have Working Strategies Using AI while maintaining core skills Working Strategies Latest the no-experience-no-job cycle part Amy Lindgren owns a career consulting firm in St Paul She can be reached at alindgren prototypecareerservice com