Training and Development 309
new skills. Jobs are requiring employees to assume more challenging
responsibilities. The downsizing of managerial staff in many organizations
has required that fi rst - level supervisors possess conceptual and communi-
cation skills in addition to their technical and applied skills. Higher - level
managers must develop skills that will enable them to understand the
external environment and develop organizational strategies. Organiza-
tions use training and development to improve the skills of employees and
develop their capacity to cope with the constantly changing demands of
the work environment. Agencies that wish to provide high - quality services
must develop strategies to maximize their human resources.
Change has become an inevitable part of organizational life, and orga-
nizations must learn how to manage it. Public and nonprofi t agencies need
to help employees deal with change. Strategic training and development
activities must be planned for if agencies are going to thrive.
Technology is being used to communicate with many people across
large geographical areas, eliminating the need to be nearby for personal
interactions. Demographics are changing; for example, senior citizens are
now a signifi cant percentage of the population, and there has been an
increase in the number of racial and ethnic minorities employed in pub-
lic and nonprofit agencies. Jobs have become less specialized, forcing
employees to work in teams to deliver services, and productivity needs to
be improved despite declining personnel and fi nancial resources.
Changes in goals, the purchase of new equipment, the enactment
of new laws or regulations, fl uctuations in the economy, increased pres-
sures from stakeholders, and the actions of competitors are some variables
that infl uence change. Today you often fi nd four generations of workers
with different priorities and career objectives working together in a unit:
traditionalists (those born between 1920 and 1945), baby boomers (born
between 1946 and 1964), Generation Xers (born between 1965 and 1980)
and millennials (born between 1981 and 2000). Each generation has dif-
ferent characteristics in regard to their training and development needs, as
well as their learning styles. As traditionalists and baby boomers begin to
retire, departments need to make sure they have employees who can pick
up the knowledge and skills that will be lost. They need strategies to retain
their knowledge.
As the demands on organizations keep changing, it is critical that
organizations implement training and development activities to ensure
that their staffs have the requisite knowledge, skills, abilities, and other
characteristics (KSAOCs) to confront these new challenges. Training can
be targeted to help employees learn new job - specifi c skills, improve their