What’s Wrong With Training Existing Employees in New Skills?

Mention the word apprenticeship and what picture comes into your head?

For many people, it is still someone young, probably straight out of school, entering the workplace and learning a trade for the first time.

And there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. Apprenticeships remain a fantastic way to bring new people into an organisation and give them a career.

But why do we still find it strange to use an apprenticeship to develop someone who has been working for 5, 10, 15 or even 20 years?

What's wrong with training existing employees in new skills?

I'd argue that in many cases, they are exactly the people we should be investing in.

They Already Know the Business

Over the last 37 years, I've spent a lot of time walking around businesses and talking to the people who actually do the work.

And one thing has always struck me.

If you want to know where the problems are, ask them.

The production operator knows which process causes problems every Friday afternoon. The warehouse team know where the wasted journeys are. The Quality team know which defects keep coming back. The person in the office knows which report takes three hours to produce and nobody reads.

There is an enormous amount of knowledge sitting inside most organisations.

These people don't necessarily need somebody to teach them their job.

They already understand their job.

What they may not have been given are the skills, confidence and opportunity to use that experience to improve it.

And that's a very different type of development.

Experience Is the Starting Point

Valuing your people means valuing what they already know.

Someone who has worked in an operation for ten years might not have been taught structured problem solving, root cause analysis, Lean thinking or how to analyse data effectively.

But they know when something isn't working.

They know the workarounds.

They know the frustrations.

They know where time gets wasted.

Lean operational skills give that experience a structure.

Instead of:

“That happens all the time.”

We start asking:

“Why does that happen all the time?”

And eventually:

“What can we change so it doesn't happen again?”

That's when experience starts turning into improvement.

And Leaders Don't Need to Have All the Answers

The same principle applies to leadership.

We don't want to develop managers who become the person everyone runs to whenever there's a problem.

We want to develop leaders capable of creating teams that can solve problems themselves.

A good leader asks questions. They coach. They involve the people doing the work. They create the confidence for somebody to say, “I think there's a better way of doing this.”

Great leaders don't create followers waiting for answers. They create problem solvers.

Imagine the business benefit when that starts happening across an organisation.

Instead of improvement depending on a handful of managers or specialists, you start building problem-solving capability throughout the workforce.

This Is Where Apprenticeships Become Interesting

This is the part I think many businesses still don't fully appreciate.

Apprenticeships can be a funded vehicle for developing your existing workforce — not just recruiting new employees.

That creates an interesting opportunity.

Someone in manufacturing can develop Lean operational skills.

Someone in warehousing and logistics can use the same principles to improve flow and remove waste.

Someone developing in Quality can use data and structured problem solving to prevent recurring issues.

A Team Leader can learn how to develop a problem-solving team rather than becoming the person who fixes everything themselves.

And people working with AI and automation can learn how to apply new technology to genuine operational problems rather than simply introducing technology for technology's sake.

Different roles. Different skills.

But the principle is the same:

Build on the experience you already have.

Use the Business as the Classroom

For me, this is where workplace development becomes particularly powerful.

If someone is learning problem solving, don't give them an imaginary problem.

Give them a real one.

If they're learning leadership, let them develop their team while tackling a genuine workplace challenge.

If they're developing Quality skills, tackle a recurring Quality problem.

If they're learning Lean, improve the process they work in every day.

Use real projects and real improvements as learning opportunities.

Now the employee isn't disappearing on a training course and returning with a folder that nobody ever opens again.

They're learning while improving the business.

Waste gets removed.

Quality improves.

Productivity increases.

Problems get solved.

And sometimes something that has frustrated employees for years simply disappears.

The individual develops. The business improves.

Maybe That's Employee Engagement Too

We spend a lot of time talking about employee engagement.

But there's something very powerful about saying to an experienced employee:

“We value what you've learned here. We value your experience enough to invest in you. Now let's give you some additional skills and the opportunity to make things better.”

That's not asking somebody to work harder.

It's enabling them to work smarter and to have a greater influence over the environment they work in every day.

And surely that's part of showing respect for people.

Final Thought

So perhaps when businesses next discuss apprenticeships, the question shouldn't only be:

“Who could we bring into the organisation?”

It should also be:

“Who have we already got that we could develop?”

Because some of your most experienced people may already understand the problems you're trying to solve.

Give them the right knowledge, confidence and opportunity, and they can start doing something about them.

And if funded apprenticeship development can help make that happen, why wouldn't we use it?

— Richard Pounder

Founder, Complete Lean Solutions

(Ex Toyota TPS Office)