As supervisors of preschool teachers, childcare center directors are well-situated to mentor their staff to pursue higher education. Telephone interviews with 78 directors examined their role as mentors in encouraging preschool teachers to take college classes. Educational mentoring was shown to be distinct from career mentoring. Logistic…

Drawing upon interviews with key stakeholders including policy makers and providers of the flagship welfare reform programme--the New Deal for Young People, this article contributes to analysis and debate through an exploration of skills investment policy and practice in this key UK "welfare to work" programme. It concludes that the…

Over the next few decades, demographic change will cause significant changes in the working population. how businesses prepare for these changes will have a decisive impact on whether this transformation has a beneficial or detrimental effect on the economy. Small and medium-sized businesses do not possess the resources required to develop and…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to find a model for the individual employee, the employer, the supervisors and the personnel at HR to manage organizational and individual changes. The objective of the model is to manage the changes in parallel with the competence (HRD) and employment (HRM) aspects. Design/methodology/approach: The research…

This article presents a process for valuing a portfolio of learning assets used by line executives across industries to value traditional business assets. Embedded within the context of enterprise risk management, this strategic asset allocation process is presented step by step, providing readers the operational considerations to implement this…

Companies doing business internationally face the competitive challenges of a constantly changing operational environment. Employees need to update their international knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSA) frequently by attending training programs. A survey of Minnesota firms indicate that almost all companies are willing to cover the time and…

Internationally there are growing numbers of migrant workers in the field of health who may represent an untapped resource in terms of workforce development. Although these workers often have higher-level skills and qualifications, they often find themselves in unskilled roles. This paper reports on a case study in the South West of England that…

Purpose: Disparities in learning opportunities endure. This paper aims to investigate whether the learning representative schemes in the UK and New Zealand (NZ) may redress disparate opportunities for learning. Design/methodology/approach: An interview study of UK trade unions' educational officers and an interview study of representatives of…

"Nationwide employers invest nearly $30 billion annually in employee training. Community colleges can provide training more cost effectively than many other public and private organizations, because most already have the capacity to provide technical training or can develop it at a lower cost" (Drury, 2001, p. 2). This study investigated…

Workforce development programs provide training and education to welfare recipients to prepare them to obtain and retain employment in their communities. Federal, state, and local investments are made to develop and implement programs. But, do these programs have relationships with local employers to obtain their input to provide the education and…

This descriptive phenomenological study explored the perceptions and experiences of followers in the development of the leader-follower relationship, within a long-term health care environment. This study is also framed within the disciplinary context of human resource development (HRD). This study addressed the research question, "During your…

This study provides an in-depth analysis of the Community-Based Job Training Grants awarded by the U.S. Department of Labor from 2005 to 2008. The primary research question is designed to identify the most important factors in meeting grant-training outcomes; however, numerous secondary questions were addressed to provide the reader with in-depth…

Within the City of Chicago, a wide variety of public and private programs are geared towards preparing adults and youth for the workforce. This report of workforce development programs provides an overview of federal, state, and city workforce development programs within the City of Chicago through a detailed inventory table of the programs…

Institutions--even entire sectors of the education system--too often operate independently of each other, maintaining discrete student-record systems. This makes it difficult to trace a student's progress through higher education and into the workforce--and that disconnection hampers efforts to improve the system. Only by systematically collecting…

Community colleges across the country are engaged in large-scale federal and state initiatives to train low-income individuals for the nascent field that's become known as "green jobs." Many green economy advocates believe that green jobs training can be part of career pathways that help move unemployed and disconnected individuals--who are often…