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iQuestions Faculty, Ron Price 
 
 
Question: 
 
Is it reasonable to expect on-the-job training or am I responsible to 
seek training outside of my employment? 
 
Answer: 
 
A lot of times people ask me, “Is it reasonable for me to expect my 
boss or my company to provide on-the-job training, or do I have to 
get all that training done myself?” and really, my answer is, “Both.” 
 
On the one hand, if you work for a great company or a great 
organization, they will recognize the value of training and helping you 
to enhance your skills, your knowledge, and your expertise.  
 
Oftentimes in their employee handbook—or if you go to the human 
resources department—they have set policies for how you can get 
training related to the job, or even maybe how you can get some 
tuition reimbursement if you go to college or take some post-graduate 
classes.  
 
On the other hand, ultimately, you’re sort of “You, Incorporated.” In 
other words, you’re the CEO of your career, and you should take the 
responsibility for learning. 
 
I realized this several years ago, and I started reading for 30 minutes 
a day, just to try to enhance my knowledge and my awareness of the 
world that I live in and how I could do my job better.  
 
Over the years the kinds of books that I’ve read have changed, as my 
career has evolved and as I’ve taken on other responsibilities. 
 
 
 
Did you know that if you spend 30 minutes a day educating yourself, 
that you can end up reading 20 or 30 books a year? If you do that for 
five or ten or fifteen years—well, the truth of the matter is, I’ve got a 
library right now that has thousands of books in it.  
 
I can’t tell you where all the ideas come from that I get, but I know 
that none of them are original. They all came out of a book, they all 
came from an author, and that’s the way you can continue to invest in 
your own training.  
 
Be committed to learning all the time—never thinking that you’ve 
arrived, or that now you know it all and you don’t have to listen to or 
learn from anybody else. I think that if you have that kind of an 
attitude your boss is going to be a lot more excited about investing in 
you for on-the-job training. 
Price -2- 
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