Nancy Halverson, v.p. for talent management at Spherion, has bad news. Although "companies spend more than $70 billion a year on employee training programs," she says, "workers simply have not responded with any enthusiasm."

$70 billion doesn’t even buy a little enthusiasm? Yikes…

Spherion found that 90 percent of senior HR executives claim their training programs are growing, and many position their efforts in the context of employee retention.

But:

• employees rank training and development dead last on a list of reasons to stay put
• less than half of employees express satisfaction with company training programs and a fifth are not satisfied at all
• barely more than a quarter of employees say they are aware their companies fund attendance at industry seminars and trade shows.

So, where is that $70 billion going every year? It’s not exactly racing to the bottom line.

But it’s not all wasted either (even if a lot of it appears to be screwed on backward). Training may not contribute to engagement nearly as much as engagement creates an appetite for training — or, more precisely learning. It’s a subtle distinction until you consider which direction the spotlight shines. In the training ethos, the spotlight is on the trainer; in the learning ethos . . . well, you can see where this is going.

On his way out the door, Jack Welch said, "The most significant change in GE has been its transformation into a Learning Company. Our true ‘core competency’ today is not manufacturing or services, but the global recruiting and nurturing of the world’s best people and the cultivation in them of an insatiable desire to learn, to stretch, and to do things better every day."

Learning is not a static condition — especially now.

In a time of drastic change, it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned usually find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists"

— Eric Hoffer Reflections on the Human Condition, New York, Harper and Row, 1973, p 22

In the face of shifting market realities, Cambridge Technology Partners reboots experienced employees by bringing them to the home office to revisit core values. "If we can train people in a common set of beliefs," President James Sims told Fast Company, "then clients will receive services of a consistent quality, regardless of where our people are working."

Engagement and performance interact in a virtuous circle. High-performing people can’t learn enough, and everything they learn contributes to performance.

Ken Coogan & Partners found that companies that out-perform the market in their category are far more likely than under-performers to involve their people in industry conferences, seminars, associations and peer-share groups as well as internal training groups, formal mentoring programs and graduate-level seminars (The Coogan study also found an inverse relationship between the presence of MBAs in the marketing department and performance, but that’s another story).

Learning isn’t about content, it’s about relationships between actions and outcomes and, most of all, between people in synergy.

In London, St. Luke’s Communications Ltd lives by the 35 rule. "When you let groups in your company get bigger than 35 people," chairman Andy Law says, "you cease to care about those people — about what they’re up to, whether they’re being trained properly, and whether they’re happy." When a work group reaches 35 members, St. Luke’s breaks it up.

People don’t learn what they’re supposed to learn nearly as well as what they’re prepared to learn. There’s nothing like staring down a crisis (or an opportunity – or both) to prime people and teams for what’s next.

U.S. Army officers Nate Allen and Tony Burgess, skirted around a ponderous chain of command to launch CompanyCommand.com and PlatoonLeader.org — sites that give military unit commanders almost real-time, peer-to-peer insight on everything from avoiding mortar attacks in Baghdad to grief counseling. The Army — at first grudgingly, then enthusiastically — embraced and now funds the sites. Allen and Burgess are joining the faculty at West Point.

All this (and quite a bit more) leads us to conclude that scaling back training because "it doesn’t work" or "no one cares" is not a reasonable solution. Getting it right is a reasonable solution. Turning the spotlight around on the learner is a reasonable solution.

Ken Dychtwald, Tamara J. Erickson, and Robert Morison bring it to a fine point in Workforce Crisis: How to Beat the Coming Shortage of Skills and Talent (Harvard Business School Press, 2006). In HBS Working Knowledge they write: "Simply put, your company must excel at enabling employees to learn." Their national survey of worker preferences found that:

"Work that enables me to learn, grow, and try new things" ranked third among ten basic elements of the employment deal, behind a comprehensive benefits package and a comprehensive retirement package. It ranked higher than more pay, more vacation, flexible schedule, flexible workplace, work that is personally stimulating, and even (by a small margin) a workplace that is enjoyable.

Take care of big picture concerns first (benefits, retirement), then swing the spotlight around on learning, growth and professional adventure — the lesson could hardly be clearer. Now, if we can just execute . . .