CHAPTER FOUR


Workplace Training and Learning

Learning Objectives

After reading this chapter, you will be able to:

      Identify the three main perspectives on labour relations and explain how they affect workplace training and learning.

      Define and critically assess the concepts of human capital theory, learning organizations, and skills and competencies.

      Evaluate workplace training in terms of access to, control of, and benefit from training.

According to a report by job networking website LinkedIn, job-hopping by college-educated American millennials is on the rise.1 The solution, says Professor Jason Wingard, dean of Columbia University’s School of Professional Studies, is training. “By investing in corporate learning, employers have the power to address millennial retention in three key areas: talent attraction; job readiness; and culture change.”2 Before we buy into the “more training” mantra proposed by Wingard, it is worthwhile to tease apart whether these articles about workplace training are accurate.

Our first question should be whether the LinkedIn report’s conclusion about job-hopping is correct. The LinkedIn report sits at odds with a longitudinal study of job tenure by the US Department of Labor that suggests workers are, on average, staying with firms longer.3 To be fair, the danger of using national statistics is that they can wash out differences among subpopulations (e.g., the experiences of Indigenous peoples in Canada). Given this, it is possible that college-educated millennials (who graduated between 2001 and 2010) are job-hopping more than older workers did after they graduated.

Looking at the LinkedIn report itself reveals numerous methodological issues. The two most obvious problems are these:

1. The report’s dataset are jobs reported on LinkedIn profiles. This data is not necessarily valid. For example, older respondents (who are the comparator group) may have under-reported short-term jobs at the beginning of their careers due to memory decay, irrelevance, or a desire to make their careers appear focused and stable.
2. The dataset is not representative of the total population of college-educated workers. It includes only college-educated workers who use LinkedIn. So our ability to generalize the experiences of this sample to the overall population is limited.

The report acknowledges (and even tries to cope with) these issues in the methodological fine print at the end of the article. But these profound methodological problems don’t temper the report’s claims, and that should make us cautious about accepting them. Now let’s consider Wingard’s prescription of greater investment in corporate training: “Millennials want to know whether they will have the opportunity to develop a strong set of competencies and transferable skills that can not only be useful now, for their current employer, but in the future, as well, as their careers advance.”4

This may well be true. But will it reduce the rate of job-hopping? The question that neither the LinkedIn report nor the Wingard article engages is whether job-hopping behaviour (which may or may not be increasing) is a worker choice or is driven by the greater job precarity facing millennials. If job-hopping is by choice, that behaviour may (or may not) be something that companies can influence by providing more training (assuming that a lack of training is driving the behaviour). If job-hopping reflects that many millennials are hired on short-term contracts, then the level of job-hopping has nothing to do with the level of training and won’t be influenced by changes in it.

The value of the LinkedIn report and the Wingard article is that they are fairly representative of how workplace training and learning is usually presented to the public. The specific dynamic warranting our attention is (1) a weak (or false) claim that (2) hints at a problem for employers (3) stemming from undesirable worker behaviour that can (perhaps) be solved by (4) employers increasing spending on training for (5) an already privileged group of workers. The only clear beneficiaries of this questionable prescription are private training providers, who rely upon employers purchasing their products and services. This tendency of the discourse around workplace training to be focused on selling training services poses a profound challenge to a meaningful assessment of what training is in fact done in workplaces and what training ought to be done there. To help sort the wheat from the chaff, it is necessary to recall from Chapter 1 that workplace training occurs in the context of a capitalist economy that subjects employers to the profit imperative. The profit imperative pressures employers to minimize labour costs in order to maximize overall profitability. Workplace training and learning are intended to support organizations in achieving this end. While maximizing profitability isn’t the only reason that organizations provide training to workers, it is an overarching and powerful reason.

For that reason, this chapter begins by examining the differing perspectives that individuals have about employment and considering how these perspectives affect workplace training. With these differing perspectives in mind, we’ll then critically examine important concepts, such as human capital theory, organizational learning and learning organizations, and skills and competencies. As noted in Box 4.1, it is also useful to distinguish between formal, non-formal, and informal learning—all of which are present in workplace learning. We’ll then consider the various forms of workplace training in Canada before concluding with an examination of the role and impact of Professional Regulatory Organizations on workplace training.

Perspectives on Employment and Training

How we view workplace training usually reflects the broader perspective we hold about employment relationships. As noted in Chapter 1, this book takes the position that labour and capital have both converging and diverging interests in the workplace. Not everyone shares that view. For example, as we’ll see below, proponents of learning organizations largely ignore the concept of class and conflicting interest in their prescription. This section sets out the three main perspectives on employment relationships in Canada and how they apply to labour-market training.

The most commonly held view of employment relationships—especially among employers—is unitarism. Unitarism is premised on the belief that an employee comes into the workplace to achieve the objectives of the employer. A corollary of this view is that work organizations are held together by common objectives that unite managers and workers (hence “unitarism”). Unitarists do not acknowledge any fundamental conflicts between the interests of employers and employees.7 Consequently, unitarists believe that industrial relations are good when there is an absence of conflict.

A key problem for unitarists is that employer-worker conflict does occur, although this can sometimes occur in muted forms such as high turnover, absenteeism, theft, and sabotage. Unitarists explain both overt and covert conflict as rooted in the irrationality of workers, the interference of an outside party (e.g., a union), poor communication between management and labour, and a lack of leadership. There is little acceptance that employers and employees might have legitimately differing interests. Unitarism also assumes that workers will behave more rationally if they have more knowledge of management’s need to (for example) improve efficiency.

Unitarism is evident in workplace training, which is most often organized by employers to enhance workplace productivity. The employer determines the content, delivery method, and timing of the training. While some employers might seek input (or feedback) from their workers on the training, the key decisions about what is taught to whom is made by the employer with the employer’s economic interests top of mind. This view on organizational training may help explain who gets what kind of workplace training (see Box 4.2).

The idea that employers should determine what training is required and how it is provided in the workplace is the central premise in the hidden curriculum of workplace training. Essentially, training becomes an extension of management’s right to organize and direct work. Employer-driven training often ignores the interests or goals of workers. As we saw in Chapter 1, workers may engage in learning to achieve a goal (e.g., career advancement), engage in an activity (e.g., social interaction), or simply to learn something new. Ignoring the legitimate interests of workers may reduce workers’ engagement in and application of training.

Workers may be able to exert more control over training in unionized workplaces if their union negotiates training entitlements into a collective agreement. These entitlements may compel the employer to provide (or at least fund) certain kinds of training. Employers may also be compelled to provide (and perhaps fund) job-protected leave for workers undertaking training. Unions and collective bargaining are most often associated with the pluralist view of labour relations. Pluralism asserts that labour and capital have both converging and conflicting interests in the workplace. One way to manage such conflict is through the negotiation of a collective agreement between a union and an employer.

The pluralist view of labour relations dominates public policy-making and is evident in laws that allow workers to unionize and that provide redress for unfair labour practices by employers. The term “pluralism” is borrowed from political science, where it refers to a system of power-sharing among a number of political parties. Not surprisingly, pluralist labour relations are often explained using political analogies. For example, a collective agreement might be likened to a constitution, which sets out the roles and powers of the government (or, in this analogy, the employer). The union operates as the “opposition party,” and its primary job is keep the “government” honest. This analogy tends to obscure the fact that employers are not elected, they govern in the interests of the employer (not the broader public interest), and unions are always cast in the role of the opposition.

While most Canadian employment laws are pluralist (in that they recognize the conflicting interests of labour and capital), the enforcement of these laws is often weak. This allows employers to exert their greater power in the workplace to advance their own interests. Essentially, the rules suggest a pluralist structure (wherein both sides have some power), but the operation of the rules favours employers (thus reinforcing a unitarist system). We saw echoes of this dynamic in the training system in Chapter 3’s discussion of the Canada Job Grant. Here, the federal government designed a funding system for labour-market training that should have benefitted both employers and unemployed Canadians. But the structure of the CJG allowed employers to appropriate this money and use it to offset training costs for already employed workers. The absence of any countervailing worker representation in the CJG meant that, in practice, the interests of unemployed workers were ignored and employers did whatever they wanted with the CJG funding.

The final perspective on labour relations is a critical one, inspired by the ideas of Karl Marx. Like pluralism, it views labour and capital as having conflicting interests in the workplace. Unlike pluralism, this critical perspective is deeply skeptical that these conflicts can be resolved through negotiations or regulation. Part of this skepticism stems from the tremendous structural advantage capitalists have and use to pursue their interests. For example, this critical perspective suggests, in part, that trade unions are a means by which employers and the state manage conflict in the workplace. Specifically, the incorporation thesis asserts that management and unions have a symbiotic relationship that moderates the behaviour of unions. Management supports the union by agreeing to union-security provisions (e.g., an automatic dues check-off provision). In return, the union supports management by agreeing to a management’s rights clause (thereby guaranteeing management control over production). In this arrangement, unions protect their members’ interests (by grieving violations of the contract) but they also ensure their members heed their contractual obligations (by not striking during the term of the contract and thereby disrupting production). This dynamic is sometimes referred to as the central paradox of trade unionism: union power over its members is appropriated by management to serve management’s goals.10

This critique does not mean that union officials are management apologists or are engaged in a conspiracy against workers. Rather, this critical perspective identifies a dilemma for union leaders. If the union collaborates too much with management, it risks rank-and-file revolt. Yet, if it is too vigorous in pressing its demands and fails to police its membership, it risks the loss of management and state support and/or legal penalties. This critique also helps temper the claim that the establishment of collective bargaining represents an unqualified victory for unions. This perspective on labour relations helps explain some unions’ willingness to cede to employers significant control over what workplace training is provided to whom. Unions do so in acknowledgement that employers have a need to manage, even if that need is routinely operationalized in ways that monetarily disadvantage workers or important subgroups of workers. As we’ll see in Chapter 5, some unions have responded by developing their own training infrastructure.

Understanding the differing perspectives on labour relations is important because it helps us to better understand why individuals and groups act the way they do. For example, an employer might announce mandatory staff training without consulting the workers who will receive the training. From the employer’s (unitarist) perspective, it has bought the workers’ time and can deploy those workers as it likes. Since the workers are ultimately employed to help the employer earn a profit (which also benefits the workers), it makes sense for the employer to decide what training will occur, when, and how. But, from the (pluralist) perspective of the workers, you can see how such an announcement might be greeted with disfavour. Their interests in what training occurs, when, and how are being ignored. And the slogan that “people are our most valuable resources” sits uneasily (perhaps even gallingly) with unilateral employer decision-making around training.

Further, depending on the nature of the training involved, workers might well worry that the training will come with changes in job design that will make their jobs worse. For example, cross-training employees (so they can fill in for one another) is often the first step to eliminating some employees and assigning their tasks to the workers who remain behind. This additional work will often violate the implicit psychological contract (sometimes called the wage-effort bargain) that has developed over time about how and how hard employees will work for the wages that they are paid. More practically, it can also cut into rest periods available to workers under the current job design. These rest periods may be important in allowing workers to physically or mentally manage the work that they are required to do.

Human Capital Theory

Employers often view workplace training and learning as a way to enhance an organization’s competitive advantage. This same view—writ large—underlies human capital theory. As we saw in Chapter 1, human capital theory asserts that the cumulative stock of KSAs, intelligence, experience, and judgment of an individual or a population comprises a key input into the production process. Thus, human capital can be maintained or increased through education and training. More contentiously, some employers, politicians, and academics assert that both individual labour-market outcomes and collective economic growth turn upon and can be increased through additional education and training.

In this view, training is an investment by workers in their careers. This view justifies shifting the cost of formal training onto individuals as well as increasingly aligning formal education with the demands of the labour market. Chapter 2 revealed that these trends are evident in Canadian PSE. It is less clear whether or not training provides positive financial returns for employers.13 Society may also experience social returns—a gain experienced by the economy as a whole—from training. For example, a trained worker may be more likely to participate in society and may increase the productivity of other, less trained workers. The evidence of a social return is strongest for formal schooling, while the social return on subsequent workplace training is more ambiguous.14

The limited empirical support for human capital theory may reflect that the relationship between training and economic outcomes is complicated and may be mediated by a variety of factors. For example, an absence of good jobs will limit (in varying ways) the individual and employer returns available from almost any form of training.15 In this way, precarious work disincentivizes employer provision of training. Similarly, increasing workers’ KSAs without allowing them access to tools or job designs that allow them to employ those skills to their best advantage can reduce or negate the value of the training. Employees may also not be motivated to apply training to its fullest extent because the outcome of doing so (layoffs, higher workloads) may be contrary to their interests. Such a nuanced view of human capital theory runs contrary to the interests of many training providers, whose own income depends upon selling employers and workers on the idea that training is a panacea for individual, employer, and social woes.

Human capital theory broadly supports the unitarist view of training. The purpose of training (in human capital theory) is to increase productivity. If employers are best situated to know what additional human capital will increase productivity, then it only makes sense that employers determine the content of training. But the complexity of work in large organizations undermines the assertion that employers know best in terms of what training is needed or how it will affect work. In many fields, workers will know better what training is necessary to improve performance or stay current in their fields. Further, workers may also have a better appreciation of the degree to which training will actually (rather than theoretically) increase productivity based upon an understanding of who the workers are and how their interests will affect the way in which training is operationalized.

Learning Organizations

One of the most durable training concepts (and some would say fads) to emerge in the late twentieth century is that of the learning organization. A learning organization is one focused on increasing the capacity of its employees through ongoing learning as a means by which to improve organizational performance. The problem that learning organizations seek to solve is the tendency of organizations to become inflexible as they increase in size. Increasing employee skills is intended to make organizations more nimble and responsive to the needs of customers and clients and, thereby, provide a competitive advantage over other, more bureaucratic organizations. In this way, the discourse around learning organizations nicely aligns with human capital theory.16 As Box 4.4 suggests, learning organizations are related to, but distinct from, organizational learning.

In his 1990 book The Fifth Discipline, academic and management guru Peter Senge identifies five characteristics of learning organizations:

1. Personal Development: Organizations are collections of individuals. Learning occurs at an individual level first, although not every individual is necessarily interested in actively learning. Learning organizations both encourage individual learning and attempt to capture that learning in order to change and benefit the organization.
2. Team Learning: Capturing and sharing individual learning results in team learning. Team learning is facilitated by structures that encourage individuals to develop shared understandings. These knowledge-management structures can be physical things (for example, databases) or social things (e.g., a culture of ongoing formal and informal knowledge sharing).
3. Testing and Changing Assumptions: Individuals and organizations develop norms and beliefs about what behaviours are effective. Sometimes, these norms and beliefs are untrue, or no longer true or effective. Learning organizations develop ways to identify, challenge, and replace such norms and beliefs.
4. Shared Vision: The development of a vision shared by all organizational members is expected to motivate and focus individual and organizational learning. Such efforts to create “bottom up” visioning seem to augur in favour of flat organizational structures where decision-making power is devolved to the lowest organizational level competent to make the decision.
5. Systems Thinking: Organizational components, processes, and outcomes need to be clearly and fully understood (often through the use of quantitative performance measures) in order for an organization to make meaningful changes.20

While the idea of becoming a learning organization can generate broad support within an organization, actually doing so can be challenging. Some workers may be reluctant to engage in this process because they identify these principles and practices as threatening to their interests. For example, the move towards team learning can threaten workers’ ability to shape their working conditions through their greater knowledge of how work is done. As Box 4.5 suggests, employees have good reason to be skeptical when an employer starts asking after their knowledge of work.

Developing shared values can also be a stumbling block to the implementation of learning organizations. The profit imperative tends to play a major role in the design of organizations and jobs. Individual workers or classes or workers may have goals (e.g., job stability and control) that run contrary to the profit imperative. Such class-based conflict tends to be ignored in discussions of learning organizations, even though it can be a major barrier for the development of a shared vision and the decentralization of power.

Organizational size can also pose a practical barrier to the development of a learning organization. Organizations with more than 150 employees tend to have greater internal task specialization and less cross-functional communication.23 This dynamic poses a fundamental threat to developing a shared vision and systems thinking. The result is ironic. On the one hand, the putative purpose of learning organization is to increase the flexibility and responsiveness of large organizations. Yet, on the other hand, as organizations grow larger, the effectiveness of primary mechanisms of learning organizations (knowledge sharing) tends to diminish. While this tension does not preclude the development of learning organizations, it suggests that learning organizations are increasingly difficult to establish in the very organizations where they are supposedly most needed and effective.

A study of how the Swiss Postal Service attempted to become a learning organization suggests that attempting to transform an organization solely by altering its culture will be ineffective. This is because organizational structure and job design are powerful factors in how organizations operate and also tend to reflect environmental conditions and pressures, which can be difficult to alter. Basically, organizations operate the way they do, in part, for good reasons. This same study also suggests that it is important (but difficult) to connect individual and team learning with strategic organizational objectives.24

A recent survey of academic studies of learning organizations revealed two of the largest knowledge gaps to be (1) what it means to be a learning organization, and (2) whether learning organizations are effective.25 The limited research conducted on these topics suggests that we exert caution when confronted with claims that becoming a learning organization is a pathway to organizational success. Perhaps the most compelling critique of learning organizations is that real-life examples are hard to find. This lack of examples does not necessarily invalidate the utility of the learning organization as a model. We rarely see, for example, labour markets that are perfect representations of the models outlined in Chapter 1. Yet that idealized model of how labour markets work still has practical value. That said, significant gaps between a model and reality suggest important limits to a model’s utility.

Given the challenges associated with actually developing learning organizations, it is useful to ask why the concept of learning organizations retains currency some 30 years on. For organizational leaders, seeking to create a learning organization may provide them with political capital. The ill-defined but positive-sounding goal of creating a learning organization can be used to generate buy-in (or lower resistance) to whatever organizational changes the leader wants to make. In effect, the utility of learning organizations may be their use as a rhetorical strategy rather than any inherent value they generate. Management consultants who are seeking a steady supply of new clients may support such rhetorical efforts.

The concept of a learning organization also feeds into the quest of human resource (HR) practitioners for increased organizational salience. Historically, HR management has been viewed as comprising transactional personnel-management functions (hiring and firing, record-keeping, and payroll management). Such transactional work is easily outsourced. Many HR practitioners seek to elevate their organizational status and become “strategic partners” (which, in turn, makes it more difficult for the employer to contract out their jobs). There are two main impediments to efforts to make HR a strategic organizational partner. First, much HR work continues to be transactional personnel-management work. Second, other organizational actors may be reluctant to give up influence and control to HR. The work of implementing a learning organization often falls to HR, thereby creating an opportunity for HR shops to expand their organizational role and influence.

Skills, Competencies, and Knowledge

Workplace training is normally aimed at creating or improving workers’ skills, knowledge, or competencies in order to increase an organization’s capacity (and, usually, profitability). Employers may also undertake training in order to comply with certain legal requirements, such as meeting their obligation to inform workers about the presence and safe handling of hazardous chemicals. Such training may increase workers’ knowledge and skills, but that is not what motivates the employer to provide the training.

A skill is the ability to perform a task. Being able to accurately saw a board in half is a skill. Making change or reading a financial statement are also skills. The acquisition of a skill usually builds upon other skills a learner already possesses. As we’ll see in Chapter 5, academics and governments often subdivide skills into different categories and rank them in order of complexity. For example, possessing basic skills (such as reading and writing) may be a prerequisite to developing general workplace skills (such as problem solving) that, in turn, are prerequisites to learning job-specific skills (such as operating the software an organization uses to track customer emails and phone calls).

The term “skill” is often used interchangeably with the term “competency.” A competency is a collection of KSAs that allow someone to perform a task or a job. For example, assisting a customer to resolve a problem may require a worker to apply her knowledge of a product, her communication skills, and her ability to calm a frustrated customer. Again, there are numerous typologies of competencies. The key point is that competencies tend to refer to an amalgam of KSAs employed to complete more complex work.

“Knowledge” is also a term that is worthwhile unpacking. Knowledge is information (i.e., facts) combined with experience and values that we apply to situations and problems in our lives. Knowledge is often categorized as explicit and tacit knowledge. Explicit knowledge is fact-based and relatively easy to transfer to learners. For example, it is fairly easy to explain to someone how to operate a fire extinguisher. The steps are straightforward and easy to distill into writing: pull the pin, aim nozzle at base of fire, and squeeze trigger.

By contrast, tacit knowledge is more difficult to transfer. It encompasses knowledge that is often learned through experience and is very difficult to codify. Continuing with the fire extinguisher example, while it is easy to teach someone how to operate a fire extinguisher, it is harder to teach to them when to use a fire extinguisher (versus evacuating the area) or how to most effectively employ the fire extinguisher in particular conditions (e.g., high winds, confined spaces). This kind of knowledge is often imparted through practice and experience, often guided by more experienced practitioners.26

What counts as knowledge, skill, or ability is often mediated by personal characteristics, such as gender. For example, jobs traditionally held by men (e.g., construction worker, building superintendent) often explicitly identify lifting as a required ability. By contrast, jobs traditionally done by women (e.g., nursing, cleaning) often require lifting but this is rarely explicitly acknowledged in job descriptions. When employers make activity (such as lifting) invisible, workers—predominantly women—are denied compensation as well as adequate training and equipment to do the job safely.

Similarly, certain competencies are often ignored, even though they are a key requirement of the job. Emotional labour, for example, is often a component of female-dominated occupations. Emotional labour is an occupational requirement to manage one’s feelings and to make occupationally appropriate emotional displays, regardless of one’s internal feelings.27 Servers and caregivers may be expected to act in ways that trigger positive feelings in others (e.g., exude warmth and compassion), and women typically dominate these roles. This key competency is rarely recognized or compensated, reflecting that emotional labour tends to be the (unpaid) province of women, and that it often occurs in the home (i.e., it is part of the social reproduction).

The pluralist perspective on labour relations helps us explain why employers and workers might disagree about what counts as knowledge or as a skill or competency. Employers seek to minimize their labour costs, in part by controlling the design of work. They have, historically, been better able to control the design of traditionally female work because women were less likely to overtly resist differential treatment. Over time, employers have shifted strategies from overt discrimination in female-dominated occupations (although this still happens) towards deskilling work, thereby allowing employers to increase a job’s precarity. But not all work can be deskilled. Some occupations remain high-skill (and high-status and high-wage) jobs. Many of these jobs require significant labour-market training to secure and maintain the right to practise.

Professional Regulatory Organizations

As noted in Chapter 2, in some occupations, workers must be licensed in order to legally practise. Examples include engineers, pharmacists, teachers, lawyers, and nurses. Such occupations are often referred to as regulated professions. In order to be licensed, an individual must meet certain requirements. This licensure requirement is intended to protect the public’s health and safety or other interests, which might be compromised from receiving services from unqualified practitioners. That said, in some instances, jurisdictions have regulated professions where the risk associated with non-licensed practitioners is questionable. This suggests that the designation of which professionals are regulated is a political decision, rather than a purely technical one. Other professions may have voluntary certification.

Provincial and territorial governments often delegate responsibility for establishing and administering licensure requirements to Professional Regulatory Organizations (PROs). Each province has its own PRO for each occupation and these organizations go by many names. For example, the Law Society of Upper Canada regulates who can practise law in Ontario. It sets out minimum educational, employment, and character requirements as well as sets examinations that candidates must pass before being permitted to practise law. As we saw in Chapter 2, there are differences (by gender, heritage, and socio-economic status) in access to post-secondary education programs that are normally prerequisites to professional licensure. By requiring specific PSE training, professional licensure compounds patterns of advantage and disadvantage.

Some PROs also ensure that professionals meet other criteria, such as having adequate insurance coverage. Maintaining licensure may also entail undertaking periodic training (often called professional development, although this term is often used broadly to mean any ongoing training in non-regulated white-collar occupations). Meeting professional licensure requirements has given rise to a large body of private training providers that offer workshops and conferences (sometimes in exotic locations) to help professionals meet their profession’s requirement. Workers unable to achieve and maintain licensure are barred from practising the profession. This power makes workers with certification very leery of opposing or otherwise running afoul of their PRO.

In addition to regulating who may practise a profession in their province or territory, PROs also typically investigate complaints against registered professionals and may discipline members, including prohibiting them from practising. The disciplinary function of PROs is intended to protect the public from incompetent or unscrupulous conduct. The importance of conduct reflects that the public is often profoundly vulnerable when interacting with professionals and, absent a complaint process, would face significant barriers to successfully pursue remedy. Sometimes, a single organization will act as both a PRO and as a trade union (i.e., representing workers in collective bargaining with employers); an example would be the Alberta Teachers’ Association.

PROs are normally self-governing organizations. This means that the PRO is created by an act of a provincial or territorial legislature. The PRO then establishes rules, regulations, and guidelines to govern its operation. Typically, a PRO will be governed by a board of directors (the precise name will vary). Members of the board may be elected by and from the membership of the profession, appointed by government, or chosen by some combination of processes and often include members of the public. The board then sets policy, which is carried out by staff members employed by the PRO.

As we saw in Chapter 3, some workers engage in employment-related geographic mobility. Historically, workers in some regulated professions faced difficulties becoming reaccredited when they changed jurisdictions. These difficulties are typically not as significant as those faced by foreign trained immigrants (as we’ll see in Chapter 5). Over the past 10 years, many provinces have entered into internal trade agreements that include labour-mobility provisions. For example, British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba have signed the “New West Partnership Agreement.” This agreement requires that PROs in each province recognize professional accreditation issued in any of the other three provinces.28

There are many arguments for professional self-regulation. Members of a profession are more likely to understand the nature and complexities of practice than might a government agency tasked with oversight. Self-regulation also creates a unique degree of normative (or peer) pressure to comply with regulations that may be less felt when dealing with government regulators. Self-regulation also shifts the cost of regulation to the professionals and (to some degree) insulates legislators from demands to intervene or otherwise take action on issues specific to the profession.

Concerns about self-regulation tend to centre on the potential for a conflict of interest. This might come in the form of a PRO protecting a member from a public complaint. There is little evidence that this is a widespread problem, in part reflecting that it is in the reputational interests of the PRO and its members to be seen to discipline and expel bad actors. A more difficult criticism to dismiss is that a PRO is essentially a cartel. A cartel is a group of producers that act in concert in ways that increase their profits. Cartels are most often associated with price fixing, but other cartel activity includes limiting the supply of a service available (thereby driving up its price). As we’ll see in Chapter 5, many immigrants with professional qualifications from other countries face significant delays and other barriers to entry to a profession. Some suggest that this pattern (particularly since it appears to most significantly affect non-English speakers who are visible minorities) is intended to limit the supply of professionals, which economically advantages existing members.

Conclusion

Workplace training is driven by the belief that enhancing workers’ KSAs will, in turn, enhance organizational performance and profitability in the private sector. The evidence for this relationship is uncertain, suggesting that not all training results in a return on investment. The potential for conflict between labour and capital may play an important role in explaining the uneven gains that come from training. Workers may, for example, choose not to use training if they feel it is going to be employed in a way that is contrary to their interests (or their co-workers’ interests). Conversely, employers may arrange work such that workers have little ability to implement training. The only people unquestionably benefitting from workplace training are training providers!

One provocative way to think about workplace training is as a management technology that makes workers more governable.29 Human capital theory is designed to lay responsibility for being adequately trained upon workers (who are the primary beneficiaries of training). What KSAs are needed are determined by employers through their hiring and training decisions, thereby making workers more subservient to employers. So-called revolutionary ideas (such as the learning organization) provide a pretext to submerge intra-organizational conflict in order to advance the interests of the employer. This includes developing a shared vision of organizational goals and codifying employee knowledge so that it can be appropriated by the employer to redesign work in more efficient ways.

Somewhere between 5 and 10 per cent of the workforce is employed in regulated professions. Such professions typically have high status and compensation, and maintaining the integrity of the profession (thereby protecting the public) is the official role of professional regulatory bodies. Yet there is another side to the role of PROs. By restricting access to the profession, the PROs operate as a cartel, inducing (however indirectly) a tighter supply of labour than would exist if there were no requirement for licensure. In this way, PROs act both for and against the interests of employers. Licensure allows employers to be confident employees are competent (and give them a way to discipline incompetent employees), but it also acts to drive up the price of labour. This tension plays out most clearly in the labour-market experiences of foreign-trained professionals, which we’ll consider in Chapter 5.

Notes

1    Berger and Yang, “Millennials Job-Hop More Than Previous Generations.”

2    Wingard, “Want Millennials to Stay?”

3    United States Department of Labor, “Employee Tenure News Release.”

4    Wingard, “Want Millennials to Stay?”

5    Spencer, The Purposes of Adult Education.

6    Livingstone, “Exploring the Icebergs of Adult Learning.”

7    Godard, Industrial Relations, the Economy and Society.

8    Munro, “Developing Skills.”

9    Statistics Canada, Women in Canada.

10  Hyman, The Political Economy of Industrial Relations.

11  Barnetson, The Political Economy of Workplace Injury.

12  Alberta Workers’ Health Centre, Injured Worker Case Study.

13  Percival, Cozzarin, and Formaneck, “Return on Investment for Workplace Training.”

14  Blundell et al., “Human Capital Investment.”

15  Margison, “Rethinking Education, Work and ‘Employability.’”

16  Senge, The Fifth Discipline.

17  McShane, Organizational Behaviour. 23.

18  Argyris and Schön, Organizational Learning.

19  Percival, Cozzarin, and Formaneck. “Return on Investment for Workplace Training.”

20  Senge, The Fifth Discipline.

21  Marglin, “What Do Bosses Do?”

22  Braverman, Labor and Monopoly Capital.

23  Serenko, Bontis, and Hardie, “Organizational Size and Knowledge Flow.”

24  Finger and Brand, “The Concept of the ‘Learning Organization.’”

25  Tuggle, “Gaps and Progress in our Knowledge of Learning Organizations.”

26  Sanchez, “‘Tacit Knowledge’ versus ‘Explicit Knowledge’ Approaches.”

27  James, “Emotional Labour.”

28  Canada’s New West Partnership, “New West Partnership Agreement.”

29  Townley, Reframing Human Resource Management.