Policies tend to emphasize education and formal training. Most firms don't have strategies to optimize the gains from informal learning at work.

Andries de Grip professor of Economics and director of the Research Centre for Education and the Labour Market (ROA), School of Business and Economics in Maastricht University has written an article in the IZA World of labor, the independent economic research institute that conducts research in labor economics and offers evidence-based policy advice on labor market issues.

Some interesting points:

• In dynamic jobs, workers continuously face skills obsolescence. Workers who are employed in industries with high rates of technological change are better able to retain their productivity at an older age than workers in sectors that are less dynamic. Workers who experience skill obsolescence appear to learn more on the job and participate more often in training, which lowers the risk of employment loss. 

• The OECD’s Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) measures the relevance of informal learning at the workplace in its member countries. Many workers report that informal learning at work—learning by doing or learning from supervisors or co-workers—is relevant for them on a daily basis, although there are large differences across countries.  The percentage of workers who are involved in learning by doing every day ranges from 12% in Korea to 53% in Spain, while the percentage of workers who learn new things from supervisors or co-workers ranges from 10% in Korea to 36% in Spain.  

• Recent studies find that much of the performance of newly hired workers is driven by learning by doing or learning from peers or supervisors in the workplace. Descriptive data show that workers learn a lot from the various tasks they perform on the job. Informal learning is far more important for workers’ human capital development than formal training courses. Most firms do not have adequate human resource management strategies to optimize informal learning in the workplace.

Access to the article (full article): Informal learning at work (2017)

photo: Chinese-American children in San Francisco, 1936. Alfred Eisenstaedt—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
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