essay

The Learning Organization

A learning organization is a company that has an enhanced capacity to learn, adapt, and change. In learning organizations, where employees seek, share, and apply new knowledge and skills to improve both their personal and organizational performance. Learning is part of the organizational values. In a learning organization, training is one part of a system designed to create human capital. High performing companies are five times more likely than low performing companies to have a strong learning culture. The following are characteristics of a learning organization.

Supportive Learning Environment

· Employees feel safe expressing their thoughts about work, asking questions, disagreeing with managers, and admitting mistakes.

· Different functional and cultural perspectives are appreciated.

· Employees are encouraged to take risks, innovate, and explore the untested and unknown.

· Thoughtful review of the company’s processes is encouraged.

Learning Processes and Practices

· Knowledge creation, dissemination, sharing, and application are practiced.

· Systems are developed for creating, capturing, and sharing knowledge.

· Every employee has a development plan and they are accountable for completing the learning included in those plans.

Managers Reinforce Learning

· Managers actively question and listen to employees, encouraging dialogue and debate.

· Managers are willing to consider alternative points of view.

· Time is devoted to problem identification, learning processes and practices, and post-performance audits.

· Learning is rewarded, promoted, and supported.

IMPLICATIONS OF LEARNING FOR HUMAN CAPITAL DEVELOPMENT

The emphasis on learning has several implications.

· Learning has to be related to helping employees' performance improve and helping the company achieve its business goals.

· Unpredictability in the business environment will continue to be the norm.

· Companies need to support informal learning because tacit knowledge is difficult to acquire in training programs.

· Learning has to be supported not only with physical and technical resources but also psychologically.

· Managers need to understand employees' interests and career goals to help them find suitable development activities.

The following capabilities are critical for strategic training and development:

· Alignment of learning goals to business goals

· Measurement of the overall business impact of the learning function

· Movement of learning outside the company to include customers, vendors, and suppliers

· A focus on developing competencies for the most critical jobs

· Integration of learning with other human resource functions, such as knowledge management, performance support, and talent management

· Delivery approaches that include classroom training as well as e-learning

· Design and delivery of leadership development courses

THE STRATEGIC TRAINING AND DEVELOPMENT PROCESS

The strategic training and development process involves four steps:

· Identifying the organization’s business strategy

· Determining strategic training initiatives that align with this strategy

· Translating initiatives into concrete learning activities

· Identify metrics to determine whether training has contributed to goals related to the business strategy

Business Strategy Formulation and Identification

Strategic training begins with the knowledge of an organization’s business strategy. Formulating a business strategy involves several interrelated steps.

· Determining the company’s mission—the company’s reason for existing

· Establishing company goals—what the company hopes to achieve

· Conducting an external and internal analysis, which is known as a SWOT.

A SWOT analysis consists of an internal analysis of strengths and weaknesses and an external analysis of opportunities and threats that currently exist or are anticipated.

· Determining strategic choice based on the company’s mission, goals, strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.

Identify Training Initiatives that Support the Strategy

Strategic training initiatives are based on the business environment, an understanding of the company's goals and resources, and insight regarding potential training options. They provide the company with a road map to guide specific training and development activities. They also show how the training function will help the company reach its goals.

Common strategic initiatives include:

· Diversify the learning portfolio—provide more training than traditional programs

· Expand who is trained—provide more training to more groups of employees

· Accelerate the pace of learning—provide more just-in-time training

· Improve customer service—training should place a greater emphasis on service competencies

· Provide development opportunities and communicate with employees—ensure employees recognize they have opportunities to learn and grow

· Capture and share knowledge—capture and share knowledge to ensure it is not lost if key employees leave

· Align training with the company’s direction—link training to strategy

· Ensure that the work environment supports learning and transfer of training—ensure there exists a positive learning climate for training

Questions to ask in developing strategic training initiatives include:

· What is the vision and mission?

· What capabilities and competencies are critical for success?

· What types of training will best attract, develop, and retain employees?

· Does the company have a plan for making sure the link between training and business strategy is communicated to key constituents?

· Does senior management support training?

· Does the company provide training for individuals and teams?

Provide Training and Development Activities Linked to Strategic Training and Development Initiatives

After a company chooses its strategic training and development initiatives related to its business strategy, it then identifies specific training and development activities that will enable these initiatives to be achieved.

These activities include developing initiatives related to the use of new technology in training, increasing access to training programs for certain groups of employees, reducing development time, and developing new or expanded course offerings. Such activities will vary based on the initiatives that were developed.

Identify and Collect Metrics to Show Training Success

The final step of the strategic training process is to determine if training investments were successful in helping an organization achieve its goals and objectives. Strategic training evaluation is not intended to evaluate the effectiveness of an isolated training program, but rather the value of a set of training activities.

The business-related outcomes examined should be directly linked to the business strategy and goals. Metrics could evaluate customer service, employee satisfaction or engagement, employee turnover, number of product defects, time spent in product development, number of patents, or time spent filling management positions.

Some companies use the balanced scorecard as a process to evaluate all aspects of the business. The balanced scorecard is a means of performance measurement that provides managers with a chance to look at the overall company performance or the performance of departments from the perspective of internal and external customers, employees, and shareholders. The balanced scorecard considers four different perspectives:

· Customer (time, quality, performance, service, and cost)

· Internal business processes (processes that influence customer satisfaction)

· Innovation and learning (operating efficiency, employee satisfaction, and continuous improvement)

· Financial (profitability, growth, and shareholder value)

ORGANIZATIONAL CHARACTERISTICS THAT INFLUENCE TRAINING

Company Size

Most training in small firms is usually informal and on-the-job. Company owners, managers, or more experienced employees take responsibility for training. Employees are trained to do their jobs in the way that the owner prefers. Training tends to focus on the knowledge and skills that employees need for their current job not on developing skills needed for future positions. If any type of formal training and development is conducted, it is done through trade associations, short courses, and courses provided by the company’s owners and managers.

As firms grow in size there is a greater need to provide more formalized training and development to prepare current employees for internal promotion opportunities and retain them.

Roles of Employees and Managers

Traditionally, employees’ roles were to perform their jobs according to the managers’ directions. However, with the emphasis on the creation of intellectual capital and the movement toward high-performance work systems using teams, employees today are performing many roles that were reserved for management, such as hiring, scheduling work, and interaction with customers and suppliers. As such, employees require greater expertise.

Given the greater prevalence of teamwork, employees may require more cross training and training in interpersonal skills.

Managers’ jobs are highly complex, requiring training and a high level of skill. For example, they must:

· manage employee performance

· develop employees and encourage continuous learning

· plan and allocate resources

· coordinate activities and interdependent teams

· manage team performance

· facilitate individual and team decision-making processes

· create and maintain trust

· represent one’s work group to others

Top Management Support

Top management plays a key role in determining the importance placed on training and learning. Top management may assume any of the following roles:

· setting a clear direction for learning

· providing encouragement and resources

· taking an active role in governing learning

· developing or teaching new programs

· serving as a role model by demonstrating a willingness to learn

· promoting learning through various communication channels

Integration of Business Units

The degree of integration of business units affects the approach to training. In a highly integrated business, employees need to understand all parts of the company, and training must address those needs.

Global Presence

For companies with global operations, training is needed to prepare employees for overseas assignments. These companies must decide if training will be coordinated through a central U.S. facility or through satellite locations near overseas operations.

Business Conditions

When unemployment is low and/or businesses are growing at a high rate and need more employees, companies often find it difficult to attract new employees, find employees with necessary skills, and retain talent.

For companies in unstable business environments, characterized by mergers, acquisitions or disinvestments of businesses, training may be left up to managers and become short-term oriented.

For companies experiencing growth, training may be in greater demand among employees who want to qualify themselves for lateral job moves and promotions.

When companies are trying to revitalize and redirect, earnings may be flat and there are likely fewer incentives for participation in training programs.

When companies downsize, training must focus on ensuring continued employability.

Other HRM Practices

Companies that adopt state-of-the-art HRM practices that link to business strategy tend to demonstrate higher level of performance than firms that do not. Training, along with selection, performance management, and compensation influence attraction, motivation, and retention of human capital.

Staffing strategy refers to a company’s philosophy regarding where to find employees, how to select them, and the desired mix of employee skills and statuses (temporary, fulltime, etc.). Companies vary on such issues as the extent to which they rely on the internal labor market (i.e., current employees) versus the external labor market (i.e., job applicants from outside the company). Companies also vary to which they make promotion and job assignment decisions based on individual performance versus group or unit performance. These two dimensions can be crossed, resulting in four distinct companies.

· Fortress (external, group focus)—companies with limited resources for training that tend to recruit from the outside

· Baseball team (external, individual focus)—companies that require innovation and creativity; recruit from other companies or new graduates with specialized skills

· Club (internal, group focus)—companies in highly regulated industries that rely on developing their own talent

· Academy (internal, individual focus)—companies that require specialized skill and focus on developing their individual employees

Strategic Value of Jobs and Employee Uniqueness

Uniqueness refers to the extent to which employees are rare, specialized, and not highly available in the labor market. Strategic value refers to employee potential to improve company effectiveness and efficiency. These dimensions can be crossed to characterize four types of employees:

· Knowledge-based workers (high value and uniqueness)—require heavy training

· Job-based employees (high value and low uniqueness)—require less training than knowledge workers

· Contract employees (low value and low uniqueness)—require limited training

· Alliance/partnerships (high uniqueness and low value)—training would focus on sharing expertise and team training

Human resource planning allows the company to anticipate the movement of human resources in the company because of turnover, transfers, retirements, or promotions. Such planning can help identify where employees with certain types of skills are needed in the company. Training can be used to prepare employees for increased responsibilities in their current job, promotions, lateral moves, transfers, and downward moves or demotions that are predicted by the human resource plan.

Extent of Unionization

The presence of a union leads to joint union-management programs for preparing employees for new jobs, ensuring that all parties buy into the necessary training or changes. Given that unions have a significant impact on HR practices, they must be involved in determining strategic training priorities.

Staff Involvement in Training and Development

Managers need to be involved so that training stays related to business needs and training transfer can be supported. Managers become more involved in the training process if they are rewarded for participating. An emerging trend is to have employees initiate the training process, bearing the responsibility for planning their own development, with the company supporting their initiatives.

TRAINING NEEDS IN DIFFERENT STRATEGIES

It is important to recognize that there are different training needs for different business strategies.

A concentration strategy focuses on increasing market share, reducing costs, or creating and maintaining a market niche for products and services. Key human capital issues include: skill currency and the development of the existing workforce.

An internal growth strategy focuses on new market and product development, innovation, joint ventures, mergers, and globalization. Key human capital issues include: creation of new jobs and tasks, innovation, and talent management.

An external growth strategy focuses on acquiring vendors and suppliers or buying businesses to enable the company to expand into new markets. Key human capital issues include: integration, redundancy, and restructuring.

A disinvestment strategy focuses on retrenchment, turnaround, divestiture, and liquidation of businesses. A key human capital issue is efficiency.

MODELS OF ORGANIZING THE TRAINING DEPARTMENT

Centralized Training

One of the important decisions that companies have to consider in choosing how to organize the training department (or learning function) is the extent to which training and learning is centralized. Centralized training means that training and development programs, resources, and professionals are primarily housed in one location and decisions about training investment, programs, and delivery methods are made from that department.

There are several advantages of centralization.

· It helps drive stronger alignment with business strategy.

· It allows development of a common set of metrics or scorecards to measure and report rates of quality and delivery.

· It helps to streamline processes, and gives the company a cost advantage in purchasing training from vendors and consultants because of the number of trainees who will be involved.

· It helps companies better integrate programs for developing leaders and managing talent with training during times of change.

The Corporate University Model (Corporate Training Universities)

A corporate university includes employees, managers and stakeholders outside the company, including community colleges, universities, and high schools. Corporate universities can provide significant advantages for a company’s learning efforts by helping to overcome many of the historical problems that have plagued training departments (e.g., excessive costs, poor focus, and inconsistent use of training practices).

The corporate university model provides many training advantages:

· Dissemination of best practices

· Alignment of training with business needs

· Integration of training initiatives

· Effective use of new technology and methods

· Clear vision and mission

· Evaluation of learning focused on employee and business results

· Partnership with academia

The following are the steps involved in creating a corporate university:

· A governing body is formed by senior managers

· A vision statement is developed

· Funding sources are determined

· The degree to which all training will be centralized is assessed

· The needs of the university customers are identified

· Products and services are developed.

· Learning partners are selected

· Technologies to train employees more effectively are developed

· Learning is linked to performance improvement.

· The value of the corporate university is communicated to potential customers

Business-Embedded (BE) Learning Function

A BE helps to ensure that the learning function is centralized to some extent so that companies can better control their training costs and ensure that training is aligned with the business strategy, but at the same time respond quickly to client needs and provide high-quality services

A BE learning function is characterized by five competencies: strategic direction, product design, structural versatility, product delivery, and accountability for results. It views trainees, managers, and senior-level decision makers as customers of training.

The most noticeable feature of a BE learning function is its structure. In BE learning functions all persons who are involved in the training process communicate and share resources. Trainers—who are responsible for developing training materials, delivering instruction, and supporting trainees—work together to ensure that learning occurs. Trainers not only have specialized competencies, but also can serve as internal consultants by providing a range of services, such as needs assessment, content improvement, and the like.

There is an increasing trend for the training function to be organized by a blend of the BE with centralized training that often includes a corporate university. This approach allows the company to gain the benefits of centralized training, but at the same time ensures that training can provide programs, content, and delivery methods that meet the needs of specific businesses.

Learning, Training, and Development from a Change Model Perspective

Change is a constant in organizations. There are many reasons why companies are forced to change, including the introduction of new technology, the need to better take advantage of employee skills and capitalize on a diverse workforce, and the desire to enter global markets. The process of change is based on the interaction among four components of the organization: task, employees, formal organizational arrangements, and informal organization.

Four conditions are necessary for change to occur:

· Employees must understand the reasons for change and agree with those reasons.

· Employees must have the skills needed to implement the change.

· Employees must see that managers and other employees in powerful positions support the change.

· Organizational structures, such as compensation and performance management systems, must support the change.

Four change-related problems need to be addressed before the implementation of any new training practice, which include: resistance to change, loss of control, power imbalance, and task redefinition.

· Resistance to change refers to employees’ unwillingness to change.

· Control relates to employees’ ability to obtain and distribute valuable resources. Changes can cause employees to have less control over resources.

· Power refers to the ability to influence others. Managers may lose the ability to influence employees as employees gain access to databases and other information.

· Task redefinition relates to changes in roles and job responsibilities. Employees may not only be asked to participate in training, but also take on new responsibilities.

MARKETING TRAINING AND CREATING A BRAND

Despite its value, some individuals may not necessarily value training. As such, training often needs to be marketed so that key constituents value learning. Internal marketing involves making employees and managers excited about training and learning. It is especially important for trainers who act as internal consultants to business units. A variety of internal marketing tactics, include:

· Involving the target audience in developing the training or learning effort.

· Demonstrating how a training and development program can be used to solve specific business needs.

· Showing an example of how training has been successfully used to solve specific business needs in the past.

· Identifying a “champion” who actively supports training.

· Listening and acting on feedback received from clients, managers, and employees.

· Advertising on e-mail, on company Web sites, and in employee break areas.

· Designating someone in the training function as an account representative who will interact between the training designer and the “customer.”

· Determining what financial metrics top-level executives are concerned with and showing how training will help improve these.

· Speaking in terms that employees understand—avoid technical jargon.

· Winning a local or national training industry award or recognition.

· Publicizing learner or manager success stories or feature those who have earned certifications or degrees using newsletters or websites.

OUTSOURCING TRAINING

Business process outsourcing refers to the outsourcing of any business process, such as production, call center operations, and HRM functions. Outsourcing of training refers to the use of an outside company that takes complete responsibility for and control of training activities, including administration, design, delivery, and development. Companies may outsource training for a variety of reasons:

· Cost savings

· Time savings that allow a company to focus on business strategy

· Improvements in compliance with training mandated to comply with federal, state, or local rules

· The lack of capability within the company to meet learning demands

· The desire to access best training practices

However, companies may not outsource training due to an inability of outsourcing providers to meet company needs and the desire to maintain control. Any decision to outsource training is complex. Training functions that do not add any value to the company are likely candidates for outsourcing. Many companies have training functions that do add value to the business, but still may not be capable of meeting all training needs. Thus, certain aspects of training may be outsourced. Even when training is outsourced, it must be strategically aligned with the business goals and objectives.

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