Businesses should train in culture

Colleges too occupied with remediation of fundamentals to take on a new program.

It’s not crazy to assume that college graduates should be able to conduct themselves in a professional environment and understand core values that companies look for in all employees.

Business leaders from around San Antonio seem to think that it’s understandable to have a college graduate looking for work not know the fundamental principles of a work environment such as attendance and basic work ethic.

Assuming a graduate has been in school for 16-18 years, how is it understandable that during that time they didn’t pick up these principles?

During the Alamo Colleges’ 2016 strategic stakeholder retreat, Peter John Holt, vice president of commercial engine sales of Holt Caterpillar, said it is not uncommon for employees to struggle early on at a new job to understand how it operates.

That does seem understandable, as it’s logical for employees to learn things on the job and be provided training by an employer on how things may be done.

What doesn’t make much sense is having to teach them that it’s important to go to work every day, to do your job eight hours a day or to work as a team.

If students aren’t self-sufficient and don’t know these basic skills, maybe they shouldn’t be looking for a job with much responsibility.

The leaders suggested the idea of instructors venturing out to these companies and spending a day learning about the corporate culture, then returning with the information and teaching students how they should carry themselves.

Why should college instructors have to do what students should have learned in their years of being in a regimented environment like school where these principles should be stressed anyway?

With the new integrated planning and performance excellence division and their assessments that instructors have to now take care of, they shouldn’t have to be responsible for yet another herculean task.

Instructors already struggle with trying to help unprepared students succeed at college-level courses.

If employers are truly concerned with students entering the workforce prepared, then they should be the ones that plan, provide and pay for the training for new employees.

It shouldn’t be at the expense of the colleges.

New hires will learn the corporate culture soon enough and, really, if they haven’t learned core values by the time they graduate college, it’s not likely they will learn.