Research paper

UNIT 8 Research Paper

Take some time to think about the following

situation. Wendy has just come back from a week-long training, ready to take her job to the next level.

She learned about a brand new software program that was going to make her job easier. Sounds great,

right?

On her first day back, her supervisor tells her that the approval for the new software had been delayed in

the accounting office and that it probably wouldn’t be available for two or three weeks. Due to

incompatibility issues with the current system, she would also have to get a new workstation and several

new passwords.

Her supervisor also sent her an email that said she could use the new software when it was ready, but

she would have to continue to produce reports through the old software since that was what everyone

else was using. When it came time to submit her expense report for the training week, Wendy found

herself wondering why she had gone to the training at all.

Does this scenario sound familiar to anyone? Learning sounds so commonplace that many of us do not

think about what it means. Formally, learning is a permanent change in our behaviors and/or our mental

representation of the world brought about by practice and experience. In training and development, every

action is focused on helping trainees make these changes and ultimately benefiting from them.

In our final unit, you will read about the challenges of human capital measurement and reporting. We will

examine the value of work–life balance and the return on investment of effective training processes.