The study does include recommendations for supervisors that mirror the broader advice for agencies as a whole. It recommends that supervisors increase the frequency and quality of career development planning by factoring in considerations of trainability to training decisions.
Supervisors should include in their review of employee training requests the trainability of the target competency and how prepared the employee is to benefit from the training, as well as talk to the employee about these issues, said MSPB.
It stopped short of saying difficult to acquire competencies should not be the subject of any training whatsoever among federal workers, just that it should be approached with caution and perhaps a little skepticism.
The report added that supervisors should conduct training needs assessments of their employees and consider how trainable identified needs are when developing training plans, and when conducting needs analyses supervisors should not rely solely on identification of gaps between current and optimal employee ability levels.