Employee
Development
Training as a Communication Strategy
Learning
Objectives
There are many issues to take into account when considering the field of employee development that training alone cannot resolve. Leadership, career paths, diversity, and performance appraisals are just a few.
Organizations that
want to keep a stable, motivated workforce must take into account the realities of today’s
employee who may want multiple paths during their careers.
By identifying how the employees’ interests can coincide with the
organization’s, organizations can have motivated, productive employees for years.
The Difference Between “Training”
and “Development”
Work-based training
naturally focuses on the skills individuals need in their current jobs or possible future
positions in the organization. Other forms of training may focus on the skills needed to
secure employment or to become a more well-rounded employee, such as communication skills
or the skills of information technology.
When we think of development, on the other hand, we are likely to have in mind considerations of wider personal growth and change. Here we may not be proposing any particular goal, instead sensing that the individual is capable of more than they are achieving in their current position. The frame of reference is longer-term and more open-ended, not directed at a specific organizational need.
Development with it carries some dangers. Often its vocabulary is that of "personal growth." Whereas training is generally given to groups of employees, development tends to focus on the individual and his or her “growth,” not just in the organization, but in general in their personal life as well. This moves the focus of concern from the organization to the individual, with the corollary that if failure occurs it is the individual, exclusively, that is to blame. Investment in too personal a notion of development may be an excuse for not thinking about the contexts - political, organizational and economic - in which these "developed" people are going to live their lives in the future, in or out of work.
Management Development
Management education encompasses a broad range of philosophies, techniques, and topics concerned with helping managers become more effective in their job. Management education sometimes focuses on specific skills (e.g., negotiation, budgeting), general abilities (e.g., communication, planning), or personal development (e.g., leadership, handling stress).
Roth feels that creativity, and problem-solving are usually considered important topics in management education. A major focus of management development is to teach managers how to be more flexible in solving problems and decision-making.
According to Argyris’ double-loop learning theory, individuals must learn to discriminate the difference between their perceptions or intentions and reality. This is an example of espoused theory versus theory-in-use. Such learning takes place through interaction with others.
Because of the importance of human interaction in management, modeling and role playing provides a general framework for many aspects of management education. Coaching and mentoring are also commonly used management development techniques that attempt to harness social learning in the workplace.
The theoretical framework of action learning has been widely applied to management education. Action learning involves structured projects in organizations rather than traditional classroom instruction. Its key elements are a commitment to learning, social interaction, action plans, and assessing the results of actions.
It is up to Training and Development to be aware of these theories and how to apply them to the organization’s culture and future managerial needs.
Mentoring
Most people are familiar with the concept of a mentor as the older wiser manger passing down knowledge and contacts to the star fast-tracker.
These days, mentoring is defined as the facilitation of an individual's learning process, enabling the individual to take ownership for his/her own development. Mentors offer clear thinking space, challenge assumptions and help the individual to 'raise the bar' in terms of realizing their potential.
Mentoring is a powerful tool in taking account of both the short and long term of employee development. First, it explores and acts on what's happening 'right now', whether problems or opportunities. Secondly, it looks ahead to the future. Mentoring encourages the generation of ideas but is also very action or goal oriented, assisting the person being mentored in defining career and life goals and developing appropriate plans to achieve them, although vast majority of mentors will agree that the relationship and learning experience are very much two-way.
Organizations are increasingly adopting mentoring as an effective way of developing staff in the ‘real world’. Training has its place in the acquisition of new skills but is less suited to fine tuning skills or exploring specific individual in 'real time'.
The organizational benefits manifest themselves in many and varied ways - greater productivity and profitability perhaps, but also improved communication, morale, two-way loyalty and reduced staff turnover.
There are many factors influencing the success of a mentoring program. Who should be the mentors and those they mentor? They should be the current and future leaders of the organization.
Naturally, the leader picked to be a mentor should be matched with someone with a similar philosophy. If there are large discrepancies between the mentor and the person being mentored when it comes to leadership styles, the potential conflicts could wreck the relationship and spoil the mentored employee’s career development.
Leadership
While there is vast disagreement over what exactly leadership is, most of us agree that whatever it is, it seems to make a substantial difference to organizations. Leadership is typically offered as a solution for most of the problems we have.
What really differentiates a leader from others centers more on the nature of the followers and goals of the organization, than the leader. How can one become a leader? By finding the right followers and the right goal: one of the two is no good without the other.
The Four Framework approach of Bolman and Deal suggest that leadership and leaders can be put into four categories: structural, human resource, political, and symbolic.
Structural leaders focus on structure, strategy, and the environment. They also focus on implementation, experimentation, and adaptation.
Human Resource leaders believe in people and communicate that belief. They are visible and accessible. They empower, increase participation, support, share information, and move decision making down into the organization.
Political leaders clarify what they want and what they can get. They assess the distribution of power and interests. They build linkages to other stakeholders, using persuasion first, then negotiation, and then coercion only if necessary.
Symbolic leaders view organizations as a stage or theater to play certain roles and give impressions. These leaders use symbols to capture attention. They frame experiences by providing plausible interpretations. Finally they discover and communicate a vision.
360-Degree Performance Appraisals
In a
360-degree review, managers get rated by the people who directly report to them, by
colleagues in similar positions inside the organization, by their boss, and sometimes even by
outsiders who have regular contact with the manager.
360-degree evaluations use detailed questionnaires to elicit perceptions about a manager. Participants are guaranteed anonymity and are asked to give the manager an overall rating from "outstanding, one of the best" to "very weak, one of the worst." Then respondents, some of whom are picked by the manager, are asked to go through a long series of statements asking bout specific behaviors, and rating how they apply to the boss. Answers range from "not at all" to "to a very great extent." Because the evaluations are anonymous, the fear is taken out of confronting the boss or of negative consequences from giving the boss a poor evaluation.
Once
the organization that developed the evaluation program tallies scores, results go to the
managers, their boss and the organization's human resources department. Many organizations follow
up the surveys with seminars that focus on skill areas where the managers have fallen
short. Unfortunately some organizations just do such analysis to say they’ve done it. It’s imperative that a organization’s
performance appraisal system is seen as useful and applying to all employees.
One important aspect of employee development is career planning. The first and possibly the most critical step in the career planning process is to figure out exactly what you want to do. If relevant career options are not identified, the remaining steps (researching career options, resume writing, job searching, and interviewing) become more and more difficult to complete and, when completed, are more likely to result in job dissatisfaction.
Once you have identified what you most want to do, everything else that follows falls into place more easily. Researching career ideas is more focused, resumes are easier to complete and reflect greater direction, job searching and networking efforts are often more productive and oral presentation/interviewing skills more effective.
The best way for job seekers today to best prepare themselves for whatever follows is to understand the career planning process and complete all the steps thoroughly. When identifying career options, do the necessary self-assessment, understand what your preferred interests, skills, and values are and assess their relationship to career possibilities. As you explore options, concentrate on two questions: what aspects of the career areas you're considering will be more up-and-coming (and thus make you more employable) in the future; and, how can you best maintain flexibility in how you can fit into the world of work? Only good research (through written material and networking resources) on your part will help you to find the answers to these questions.
Everyone needs
to take charge of their own career as if it were a project/programme purpose and not rely on others to
insure security in the tumultuous job market of today and the future. By building in
career options that have favorable employment outlooks and offer greater flexibility,
job-seekers can be better prepared for the next opportunity.
Choosing a Career Path
Statistics show that
in recent years people in the
As a person continues
to climb the ladder to a successful career, the prospect of additional promotions within
or outside the organization, continued educational opportunities, and the even the possibility
of starting his or her own project/programme purpose provide additional career pathing options.
Often career
counselors in your Human Resources department will conduct career pathing sessions with
employees to assist in matching innate skills and abilities with short and long term goals.
Such a career counselor can often talk with the person at length to explore the subjects
the individual liked in school, what he or she considers to be personal strengths and
abilities, as well as what other people have said through evaluations at work or volunteer
activities. The counselor will ask about the person's daydreams, his or her ideal job, and
personal aspirations. Employees often feel that the time spent with the counselor leads to
more insight and investigation regarding several possible career paths.
The point of career planning is that change is a constant, and people are always forming career paths. What they need to do is to take some aspects of the job that they presently hold or some aspects of their schooling and parlay those favorite work functions into their new or anticipated job. Some people can market themselves to employers and communicate their skills and abilities so effectively they eventually wind up creating their "ultimate dream job." Career counseling and pathing is especially important for new employees so that they and the organization can anticipate and create a good fit between the person and the job.
New Employee Orientations
All effective
organizations view orientation as an ongoing process, not just a one-day
program. The process
usually begins with the hiring decision and continues well into
the first year of
employment. New employee orientation (NEO) becomes the umbrella program for other programs
that include performance reviews and training.
The benefits of orientation are clear and visible to both the new employee and the organization. Organizations identify such factors as reduced turnover or improved productivity as a few of the benefits of a systematic orientation. Employees feel valued, are able to "fit in" to the new job more easily and quickly, and feel more connected to the organization and the people in it.
Successful orientation
programs share their "organizational culture" (philosophy, how to get along, how
project/programme purpose is done, etc.). New employees also need to be told the organization's norms,
customs and traditions.
The employee's first
day is vital. How many times have
new employees arrived at your organization and everyone is too busy to direct their
activities or teach them the job? Several successful organizations set up a welcome,
introductions, and a tour that ends in the new employee's work area. The new employee is
then paired with an experienced "buddy" to teach a specific task.
The role of the new
employee’s supervisor should be made clear. The human resources department is
usually best equipped to share organization policy, history and benefits. Supervisors
usually prefer to explain safety rules, reporting requirements and job tasks.
Programs that include some skills training (operating the telephone system or practice in using a fire extinguisher) often provide a balance of activity and pacing that makes orientation interesting, not boring.
Diversity Training
In
2005 85% of new workers entering the labor force in the
This trend toward a diverse workforce is not limited
to the
In addition, there are compelling bottom-line reasons to embrace diversity, not because it is the right thing to do, but because of higher profits. Findings also point to diversity as a critical success factor. Standard & Poor's 500 found the average returns were 18.3% for organizations with the best track record in hiring minorities and women, as opposed to the lowest average returns of 7.9% belonging to those with the lowest track records in diversity recruitment and retention. organizations with increased diversity on their boards had 21% better stock returns, at less risk, than organizations with less diverse boards.
It is important to focus less on diversity training programs and more on developing practices linking managers' compensation and advancement to their success at recruiting and retaining minority employees. Diversity training should be integrated with other aspects of leadership training. They should be folded into the portfolio of the person in charge of leadership and staff development whose job is to build an effective workforce.
Women Employees and the “Glass Ceiling”
Approximately only
7%-9% of senior managers at Fortune 1000 organizations are women, yet women make up almost one
half of the nation's workforce. Highly educated and/or experienced women face their
biggest challenges at upper levels of organizations. Well-qualified women face barriers
spawning from stereotypes or preconceptions, employers who feel an aversion to taking a
risk by hiring a female, or not carefully planning their careers or job assignments to
benefit them.
A recent survey found that less then 1% of CEOs see
the development of high potential women as a priority. If a organization chooses to continue to
exclude qualified women from top management positions it is most probable that they will
find themselves unable to compete in an increasingly diversified marketplace and will lose
an extraordinary amount of talent, creativity and productivity.
Women today are
leaving the organizational sector in vast numbers, at twice the rate of men, to seek positions
that are more satisfying and rewarding or to start up their own project/programme purposees. Women own
approximately 7.7 million organizations, an increase of 43% since 1990. Women are forming new
project/programme purposees at double the rate of men. Thus organizations are losing valuable players. This
loss is becoming more and more costly to organizations that have invested time and money
in their employees. It would serve both organizations and women to reexamine the obstacles
that prevent females from advancing and from being valued in the workplace.
Management must
learn to recognize and appreciate gender differences as positive qualities, which can
serve as assets for the organization. Males and females differ in their communicative,
problem-solving, and decision-making approaches. It’s important to permit each
individual to walk through a situation in his/her own way.