The United States is facing a shortage of skilled workers, even though employers are paying the average four-year college graduate 75 percent more than they pay high school graduates, up from a 40 percent differential 25 years ago. The shortage is being created because the nation's pool of educated workers is not expanding rapidly enough to fulfill demand. One factor behind this is that a smaller cohort size currently exists due to fewer births following the baby boom era. In addition, approximately one in five American 18-year-olds does not graduate from high school. Harvard University economics professor Claudia Goldin says the American educational system's tendency to provide second chances may be detrimental for young people's motivation to finish school. Another factor is that although roughly two-thirds of new high-school graduates enroll in college right after graduating, a large number drop out even before they complete a two-year degree or certificate. The steps needed to counteract this trend include improving pre-K and K-12 education, motivating teens to finish high school, providing more guidance to community college students on learning marketable skills or transferring to four-year colleges, and improving and streamlining student financial aid, experts say.

Recruitment experts have noticed that the four generations mingling in today's work force have different perspectives toward work, and require different hiring and management strategies. While "radio babies" and baby boomers tend to measure productivity by the amount of time spent at the office, Generations X and Y are increasingly using technology to work off-site. Where younger workers tend to want positive reinforcement from managers, older workers usually assume they are doing well unless told otherwise. Moreover, because younger employees change jobs more frequently than radio babies and boomers, they may have more difficulty understanding concepts like company loyalty. Unlike the baby boomers, younger generations' interviews with firms generally help the worker gain a sense of whether the company will fit their career needs; and concepts like teamwork or "this is the way we do it here," are not always easily accepted. Therefore, to increase productivity and morale, companies should urge the different generations to educate each other. This strategy, dubbed "reverse mentoring," combines innovation and experience as "each group draws from the other's wisdom," says Robin Throckmorton, co-author of "Bridging the Generation Gap." She also notes that employers interested in hiring radio babies or baby boomers find that strong work ethics propel greater productivity among these workers.

Many Indiana businesses are creating training programs to develop their employees' skills, as one-third of Indiana workers have fallen below national workplace skill standards. The ability to communicate, work well with others, budget time efficiently, and adjust to change are some of the skills needed in modern organizations. Employers gain myriad benefits from training workers, including heightened operational efficiency and increased worker loyalty. Training can also solve problems caused by the national talent crunch and the number of retiring baby boomers, as it attracts new hires and facilitates the transfer of knowledge. Training for ethics and diversity issues can also reduce a company's compliance risks. To maximize their effectiveness, training programs should be tailored to the skills employees lack, and should include measurable goals like increased customer satisfaction or sales growth. In this way, companies can quantify their return on training investments.

MIT Sloan School of Management professor and co-author of "X Teams: How to Build Teams That Lead, Innovate, and Succeed" Deborah Ancona explains in an interview that the traditional teamwork approach is flawed in that it focuses solely on internal functions and issues, which can lead to a lack of effectiveness despite the team's proficiency. "The problems we face are very complex, meaning the probability of having all [of] the needed expertise and knowledge within the team itself is very low," she says. The rapid changes the world around the team is undergoing in terms of technology, customer perspectives, competitors' strategies, and the behavior of the intended markets also complicate matters. Thus one sees the value of x teams, which are designed to monitor and use available outside resources to facilitate the best course of action, according to Ancona. Her book identifies three external activities for x teams: Engagement in tasks such as scouting (looking for formerly unnoticed threats or opportunities), ambassadorship (finding project supporters and opponents in the executive branch), and task coordination (outreach to committees doing related work); execution, in which the team moves its emphasis from information collection to outcomes; and exportation of the team's enthusiasm to the rest of the organization as the product is launched. A concentration on the core client can help x teams transcend personal agendas, says Ancona. "An internally focused team is usually focused on producing a great product; an externally focused team is focused on how to make the organization successful," she notes. She reasons that the x team model would be appealing to volunteer teams, because x teams will be very successful in comparison to their traditional team equivalents, while research shows that members of x teams leave with a network of people and a better idea of how to embed that network into other tasks.