Category: Human Resources

In a previous post, I discussed the need to not ignore the informal learning systems that are working within your organization. Research indicates that 70-80% of all learning comes in the form of informal learning; however, it seems to be largely ignored in training and HR departments across organizations. (By the way, if you are already thinking of ways to formalize informal learning, you are missing the mark.) Consider some of the characteristics of informal learning:

• It is something that is not highly conscious
• It is part of a daily routine
• It is self-directed and is often triggered by either internal or external motivation
• It can be unintended, casual and unplanned

The people within your organization are learning every day by watching, observing, talking and listening to peers, supervisors, customers or clients, and vendors. Their behavior is heavily influenced by what I like to call the silent trainer in the organization, otherwise known as the culture of the organization. So what is your culture teaching your employees?

The handbook and training manuals can be full of best practices, respectful workplace behavior policies, and conduct guidelines. During the new hire orientation, training sessions, monthly meetings, and written communications, you may repeat these policies and guidelines. You may even have employees complete a number of acknowledgement forms to prove you covered the policies. Further, you most likely ensure that you have the best of the best training professionals, mentors, and others teaching these and even modeling these policies. As an HR pro, are finished at that point?

If you answered yes, then you’re missing the mark, again. The more important thing to monitor and measure is what happens in the real world? What happens out of your HR headquarters or offices? What’s going on in the field? What is the culture teaching your employees?

Your thoughts are always encouraged and welcome!!

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For more resources, See the Human Resources library.

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Sheri Mazurek is a training and human resource professional with over 16 years of management experience, and is skilled in all areas of employee management and human resource functions, with a specialty in learning and development. She is currently employed as the Human Resource Manager at EmployeeScreenIQ, a global leader in pre-employment background screening.

Mentoring programs seem to be coming of age in the corporate world and other places such as public and private school systems. Who do these programs benefit? While I was a grad student one of my group projects was to find a way to capture tacit knowledge and find an organization who is doing this. We found through research that mentoring was a perfect way to capture such knowledge. We also found a Middle school who was in the 2nd year of their mentoring program and that it was not working out the way they wanted. So we took them on.

We found that if the teachers had more time together the program would work much better. So we solved that problem by suggesting that all mentors and mentees set aside one hour a week to meet in person at a coffee shop or some other location for coffee and to discuss problems and solutions, and then we also set up a system where the mentees were able to email their mentors with problems or questions they might have. Then they saved all the correspondents between parties and compiled a notebook which was past onto the next set of mentors and mentees.

This mentor program along with others I have researched benefits all parties involved, the reason being that everyone brings some type of knowledge to the table which is then shared. We found a big challenge for the mentors in this school was the technology component. The younger teachers assisted by teaching their mentors computer programs and other ways to make the technology work for them. The mentees were having problems such as unruly students or having problems getting parents involved, the mentors helped in those areas, this program ended up benefiting even the school itself by building better teachers all around. I believe this is true for the corporate environment too. Sharing tacit knowledge especially helps lower costs of training newbees. What a case in support of KM!

As always Happy Training and comments questions concerns and guests are always welcome!

Leigh

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For more resources about training, see the Training library.

– Looking for an expert in training and development or human performance technology?
– Contact me: Leigh Dudley – Linkedin – 248-349-2881 or 248-277-2966
– Read my blog: Training and Development

If I asked you who is responsible for training the employees in your organization, I would expect your response to include the training or the human resource department in one form or another. If I continued to question you on how that training is conducted, I would expect to hear the names of different classes or training modules and a description of delivery methods that would include classroom training, web-based training, seminars, webinars, or perhaps even on-the job training. You may even include required skills, experience or certifications that persons responsible for training must possess such as knowledge of adult learning theory, facilitation skills, and knowledge of instructional design.

I would of course, expect your answer to include the formal learning systems used within your organization. However, if you are failing to recognize the informal learning structures as powerful teachers in your organization, you are making a mistake.

Consider this scenario. Suzie is a new employee and has just completed the new employee training program. She has moved from her desk in the training area to her permanent cubicle located next to the cubicle of Bob, a tenured employee. Suzie feels confident that she can handle her new role and eagerly gets started. Within the first day on the job, she discovers that she still needs clarification on a few things. Does she call the training manager? Does she consider calling her supervisor? Or is it just easier to ask Bob. He is right there and he has been with the company for a while. Suzie decides to ask Bob. Bob responds with something like this, “Well, we’re supposed to do it like this, but…”

In the above scenario, Suzie would have no reason at this point in her tenure to assume a tenured employee would provide her with anything but an acceptable answer to her questions. She could reasonably assume that If he wasn’t doing his job correctly, he wouldn’t still be working there.

Can’t she?

What do you think? Your comments are always encouraged.

Look for more on informal structures of learning in organizations in my next post.

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For more resources, See the Human Resources library.

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Sheri Mazurek is a training and human resource professional with over 16 years of management experience, and is skilled in all areas of employee management and human resource functions, with a specialty in learning and development. She is currently employed as the Human Resource Manager at EmployeeScreenIQ, a global leader in pre-employment background screening.

Evaluation is not just for the trainers and learning professionals, it’s for the adult learner, the middle managers and everyone involved in the process of training and development – Even more important, in today’s recession, training is unfortunately one of the first areas in a business to be trimmed or cut. So we have to have an effective instrument to evaluate post training, showing the people who “hold the purse strings” the value training and development plays in organizations.

Instruments include feedback, Donald Kirkpatrick’s training evaluation model, and Bloom’s taxonomy of learning domains are invaluable in post training evaluation. Here is a that you may want to look at to explore more evaluation tools http://www.businessballs.com/trainingprogramevaluation.htm#workplace_training_evaluation – there are free instruments you can look at too.

Learners and trainers alike benefit from evaluation at the end of training, it is a reinforcement for both parties. As we end the training remember to try and be positive and give constructive criticism try and show the positive outcomes and if there are negative outcomes discuss these in a positive manner.

There are several ways to evaluate training from surveys, interviews, performance reviews etc. One important thing to keep in mind is follow-up, make sure each training is followed up at intervals of 3, 6 12 months and depending on the extent of the training you might want to follow up at 24 months. (This could be useful when doing an ROI).

There are many websites that can help provide templates and such for evaluation just google instruments used in training evaluation and there you go!

Happy training and comments, concerns and guest writers are always welcome.

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For more resources about training, see the Training library.

– Looking for an expert in training and development or human performance technology?
– Contact me: Leigh Dudley – Linkedin – 248-349-2881
– Read my blog: Training and Development

Imagine that you have just returned from attending a concert or play. When asked if your enjoyed the event, you reply “It was good.” What do you really mean by this statement? Do you want it understood that the musicians, actors, and support staff were talented or that the basic sheet music or script was entertaining? Or is it that the musicians or actors worked together with the proper leadership from the conductor or the director to produce something that you thought was valuable (and that is why you were willing to spend your hard-earned money on expensive tickets)?

Performance is about factors such as culture, mission, work-flow, goals, environment, knowledge, and skills all working together to produce something that is valuable to the consumer. So performance, regardless of the organization that produces the performance (be it a baseball team, software company, girl scout troop, or law firm), is about outputs or results. There are 3 levels of performance

1. Organization

2. Process

3. Individual

When the sheet music or the script has potential, but the musicians or actors just are not talented, the performance fails. Perhaps the musicians or actors are talented individuals, but they just are not working well together. The performance just was not “good.” Performance, therefore, needs to occur on many levels. Performance needs to occur on three levels:

1. The performer
2. The process
3. The organization

Optimal performance is obtained when all three levels work in harmony. The three levels of performance above presents a visual rendition of this process. A breakdown at any one of the levels will prevent optimal performance, thereby requiring some type of planned action to improve performance.

The organizational level establishes the necessary circumstances for the other levels of performance. When performance is not optimal, examine first the organization’s culture, policies, mission, goals, and operating strategies. These factors delineate the boundaries by which we define processes and jobs.

The process level is where the actual work gets accomplished. When performance is not optimal, examine factors such as workflow, job design, required inputs and outputs, and the performance management procedures to see if these processes actually work and support the organizational goals.

The individual performers within the organization affect the processes. When performance is not optimal, determine if the individual performance goals, knowledge and skill, work environment, availability or support tools, coaching, and feedback support the processes.

Seldom is it true that only one set of factors (organization, process, or performance) are adversely affecting performance. When trying to identify why the performance problem exists, it is critical, therefore, to examine factors at all three levels of performance.

As always happy training and comments, concerns and guests are always welcome.

Leigh

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For more resources about training, see the Training library.

– Looking for an expert in training and development or human performance technology?
– Contact me: Leigh Dudley – Linkedin – 248-349-2881
– Read my blog: Training and Development