Book excerpt: Don’t Leave On-the-Job Training to Chance People become experts at their job by learning while doing. But when your employees need to develop a new skill, how do you ensure they all receive the same experience if a trainer isn’t leading and guiding them? Most on-the-job training programs leave learners to sink or swim with whomever is overseeing their work. One worker may excel with a mentor who allows her to take charge of what she learns—while a second may get someone who uses the opportunity to offload paperwork and other administrative tasks. Learning While Working: Structuring Your On-the-Job Training shows you how to provide the focus and direction needed to track on-the-job progress and build a pipeline of better-skilled workers. Author Paul Smith combines real insight into building a structured program for project managers at the Waldinger Corporation with in-depth interviews of experienced learning and development professionals. Discover how a well-designed structured on-the-job training program can be your company’s talent development answer to a Swiss Army knife. This book doesn’t prescribe a one-size-fits-all solution. Instead, it will help you prepare a tailored, sustainable structured on-the-job training program for your organization. Included are practical tips to set defined roles for the learner, mentor, and trainer; create a tracking tool to clearly document skill growth; and ensure organizational learning gets put to use. On-the-job training won’t replace all employee development happening in the classroom, online, or through peer sharing of best practices. But by bringing order to these often disconnected and siloed efforts, you can fortify the learning structure that your organization needs to succeed.