Learning to Recover
Recent economic data suggests that the economy has turned a corner and is moving into a recovery stage.  Although the unemployment rate may continue to increase, unemployment is a "lagging indicator" and historically has often continued to rise even long after a recession has officially ended.

By all accounts, this recovery will be a "jobless" one for the foreseeable future.  This will require that employers squeeze more productivity from their existing workforce.  Just how will they go about doing that?  There are really only three options: require people to work longer hours, get people to work harder (perhaps by using fear-based tactics - implicit or explicit), or help people to work "smarter."

In addition to being distasteful, the first two tactics are likely to be unsustainable.  The third option - helping employees to work smarter - seems like the only sustainable path forward.  But in order to work smarter, employees and their organizations need opportunities to learn something new.  This doesn't happen out of thin air (or it already would have happened).  Effective learning investments require time, money, or (most realistically) both time and money.

Organizations that have taken the path of least resistance and cut their training and development budgets are the ones that will find it most difficult to recover.  [See our recent white paper, Training Investments as a Predictor of Banks' Subsequent Stock Market Performance for some startling evidence on this point.]

But having already shot yourself in one foot is not a good reason to shoot yourself in the other.  If you work in an organization that has already made significant cuts in its investments in developing people, our advice is to argue long and loud to get that mistake reversed as soon as possible.  Your organization's very future may depend on it.