Developing People: Analysis of Abacus - Case Study Example

Developing People: A Case Analysis of Abacus Table of Contents Section Page Number Introduction 3 Coaching as a Learning and Development Tool 3 Different Types of Apprenticeship and its Contribution to the Closing of the Skills Gap 5 Business Case for Expanding E-learning 7 Conclusion 9 Introduction New technologies are radically transforming the service industry, especially call centres. In order to gain competitive advantage in an aggressively competitive marketplace of today, companies should develop and implement three major organisational components—coaching, apprenticeship programmes, and e-learning. These three components have both strengths and weaknesses. This essay analyses the Abacus case study based on these three important issues: (1) the contribution of coaching as a learning and development tool, as well as its drawbacks; (2) the different types of apprenticeship and its contribution to the closing of the skills gap; and, (3) a business case for expanding the E-learning provision for other departments. Coaching as a Learning and Development Tool Coaching is difficult to achieve or manage separately from learning and development programmes. Without a doubt, coaching is not only exercised for developing and enhancing human resources of an organisation; as a management field, it must be a building block of a skills range of a manager. Nevertheless, coaching can significantly contribute to the learning and development plan of an organisation. First and foremost, coaching can help people merge and use learning in reinforcing other types of training.1 Even in instances where coaching is carried out separately from learning and development activities, it is thus vital that its possible contribution is thoroughly assessed according to evolving training requirements and demands. For instance, this fact obliges the Team Coach to be active or engaged in coordinating with the training department management, not only when preparing for implementation at first, but regularly. Those in charge of the learning programme also have to completely understand the benefits that coaching could generate towards attaining certain goals established for their learning programmes and to understand the possibility of abandoning obligation for facets of human resource development when coaching could provide a better alternative to other choices. Coaching has become increasing popular recently. In the 2006 annual learning and development survey findings of the CIPD, 79% of companies that took part reported that they currently employ coaching.2 The survey further reveals that of the companies employing coaching, 80% claim that they aim to build a coaching system and 47% admitted that they are coaching line managers to work as coaches.3 Coaching, within the context of the Customer Support Centre at Birmingham, may be described as “the process of helping people enhance or improve their performance through reflection on how they apply a specific skill and/or knowledge.”4 There are several major reasons how coaching contributes to organisation as a learning and development tool. First, coaching is designed to address individual demands and needs and is thus more expected to generate direct, fast outcomes. Second, it allows the trainee to use their experience, expertise, and knowledge in actual situations, thus improving their competence as they can either use new learning in their current setting or apply current abilities differently.5 Coaching can guide decision makers or those trying to resolve conflicts; it can build a medium to verify the effectiveness or viability of new ideas in a secure and accommodating setting. Coaching focuses on helping people enhance their performance by creating the means wherein they apply their abilities and knowledge. This could be necessary for they are not using them in the mandatory standard or they have to apply them in a new setting. When a person has joined a training programme to obtain new knowledge of abilities, coaching is helpful to guide and assist them as they use and enhance their learning. Coaching can be employed to assist an individual in familiarising him/herself to a new task.6 Those who have been classified as potential leaders or ‘high flyers’ can gain from coaching so as to equip them with necessary skills and knowledge for their future professions; senior managers also receive coaching, called ‘executive coaching’, because numerous of their development requirements are quite particular and distinctive to the people and to the firm.7 However, inserting focus groups and interviews to determine and focus on the major skills still do not shed light on the details of what makes people in any company competent, successful leaders. This is an exploratory, descriptive technique, at best. When somebody asks a person what makes him/her effective in his/her job, that person’s answer could be considerable different than what can really be seen on a daily basis.8 Individuals have a tendency to be more perfectionistic when portraying their jobs than what reality shows. Moreover, internal coaches often have less experience in coaching than external coaches, with a smaller number of chances or prospects to exercise and sustain their coaching abilities. They may see the coaching task to be less essential than the other duties or tasks they have to fulfil. Because they often do not have the needed professional education or experience, internal coaches could overlook symptoms of family problems, substance abuse, depression, etc.9 Different Types of Apprenticeship and its Contribution to the Closing of the Skills Gap The right place to begin with in formulating an apprenticeship programme is to explore the measures or standards used to create an apprenticeship job. These standards comprise both the on-the-job skills that a person should acquire and enhance and knowledge areas that a person should obtain by means of relevant training. Employers must be definite about the type of apprenticeship is being provided and the opportunities of movement that could be obtainable. There are three major types of apprenticeship: intermediate, advanced, and higher.10 In intermediate apprenticeships, apprentices try to fulfil job-related learning requirements like Key Skills, NVQ Level 2, and a pertinent knowledge-related requirement. These furnish the competencies needed for the selected profession of the apprentice and enable admission to an advanced apprenticeship. To begin the advanced apprenticeship programme, the candidate must preferably have accomplished an intermediate apprenticeship programme and have grade C for five GCSEs.11 Lastly, those in higher apprenticeship programmes pursue job-related learning requirements like NVQ Level 4 and, in several instances, a knowledge-related requirement. Apprentices can advance to higher education.12 Apprenticeship contributes to the closing of the skills gap. Apprenticeships can provide an accurate fit between the competencies employers seek and the training employees get. It is an effective approach for transmitting competencies from one generation to the next. It results in lower turnover rates and higher levels of retention and creates a competitive advantage over nonparticipants. Apprenticeship programmes restores and refreshes the skills of journeypersons resulting in higher efficiency.13 It helps sustain premium quality and standards at work and enhance abilities and knowledge that satisfy industry benchmarks and produce superior products. Efficiency and productivity is enhanced since apprentices are educated about the organisation’s structures and job processes. The process of accepting an apprentice has to be explained. Employers might not realize what is included or required in coaching and thus might be hesitant to accept an apprentice.14 Industry structures the process of transfer in apprenticeship programme and various training provision alternatives are obtainable. Incentives are an essential means to sustain and improve involvement in apprenticeship program, and certain employers may require explanation about the territorial/regional incentives offered.15 Apprentices have to know their importance to a company and be knowledgeable about tax credits and wage grants so they can demonstrate what they can give or contribute to a firm when attempting to look for a benefactor. Participating employers must tell their associates about the advantages of apprenticeship programme.16 Employers will take part in apprenticeship programme if consumers and customers begin requiring that they have a competent and skilled workforce and their workers have trade warranty. Business Case for Expanding E-learning In order to survive in difficult economic periods, organisations normally seek to lower or control costs. Abacus’s training departments can positively contribute to these attempts. Abacus, being a customer-oriented company, acknowledges that thoroughly trained frontline staffs are crucial to the company’s performance because they are the means to sustain excellent customer service. To continuously motivate agents to perform well, Abacus should look for the correct training technique—one that can sustain their interest and make sure that they keep on learning. Continuous technological developments will certainly affect the training approach of Abacus. The literature verifies the significance of pursuing the correct training policy. Organisations understand that to survive they should embark on constant change. This necessity to change drives organisations to view continuous learning as a means to attain steady performance progress. To stay competitive, a company should continuously monitor the number of its employees. To improve profitability, it should have the correct or appropriate number of trained individuals giving high quality customer service while boosting profits at the same time. Even though assisted training must not be totally removed, the correct learning management system can significantly lower the agents’ unproductive work hours by installing training mechanism to the computers.17 Abacus should design its learning management system according to the computer programme’s functionality, the merchant’s use of e-learning process in its customer services provision, and the merchant’s repute for improvements or upgrades after the execution. The non-invasive Internet-based training process of the system sustains regular-learning teaching procedure by delivering training in smaller ‘pieces’ to improve the trainee’s capability to retain or remember information while reducing total training time. Abacus should carry out a total renovation of its training resources before the execution of the learning management system, which would considerably simply the shift from an assisted training process to an e-delivery process. Once these changes are made, the next task is to use e-learning instructional system premises to the current courses. Such early attempt on the part of Abacus guided and motivated internal champions of the programme to establish the usefulness and efficiency of the system. The execution of the e-learning system will produce a return-on-investment that involves indirect and direct elements. A major direct effect is decreased talk-time.18 The processes of the learning management system are derived from regular learning practise. This places emphasis on brief, oft-repeated learning assemblies that improve retention, which consequently results in better proficiency in dealing with customer issues. This must also result in higher sales conversion percentage, for agents will perform better and more effectively at dealing with closing sales and customer complaints. Another immediate advantage of e-learning for Abacus will be reduced training costs related to agents’ idle time. Rather than obliging trainees to vacate their posts, training is provided straightaway to the agents’ computer units during downtime. Greater range of obligation is another possible advantage, as more informed and trained agents will lead to a smaller number of calls being transferred to supervisors.19 The ultimate growth in efficiency eventually involves the supervisors, who will be capable of more successfully handling their agents for they will be dealing with a smaller number of customer complaints themselves. It will also give them extra time for mentoring or guiding low-performing agents and collaborating with new recruits. Lastly, e-learning has the capacity to lower rates of turnover during preliminary training, when new recruits frequently leave their jobs. The causes of this involve ill-timed training sessions, boredom throughout assisted training, or miscommunication.20 E-learning, in contrast, will enhance the participation of agents in their personal training, enabling them to have power over the pace of their learning and providing them chances for self-assessments. These outcomes can influence total job satisfaction, motivation, and retention. E-learning is beneficial insofar as it is self-paced, integrates programmed support and assistance, and enables consistency. However, there are also setbacks. E-learning has a tendency to bring about trainee uncertainty, since some may not be willing or prepared to agree to use or have access to the Web and computers.21 Moreover, e-learning demands substantial initial cost and capital and substantial support from senior management to be effective. As a component of e-learning, Abacus may employ web-seminars, or ‘webinars’. Numerous HR practitioners are making use of webinars to structure training sessions to inform or update new recruits, and improve soft skills, especially when they have to handle or take care of globally diffused agents.22 Moreover, webinars may help Abacus in announcing and explaining new company policies and organizing a database. Conclusions Coaching, apprenticeship programmes, and e-learning have helped Abacus become one of the UK companies that is known for an excellent customer service. By executing an e-learning system, Abacus understood that they are not tapping the full potential of their existing learning management system. The implementation of e-learning has opened up better chances for facilitating interaction and communication between groups and individuals and enabling them to receive and obtain information. As industry ever more embraces new technologies to make important information accessible anytime and anywhere to employees by means of a wide-ranging group of Web-based interactive technologies, organisations transform into cybernetic or virtual workstations. Word Count: 2,276 Bibliography Clifford, Jackie. Workplace Learning and Development: Delivering Competitive Advantage for your Organisation. UK: Kogan Page Publishers, 2007. Deitmer, Ludger et al. The Architecture of Innovative Apprenticeship. UK: Springer, 2012. Ehlers, Ulf-Daniel & Jan Martin Pawlowski. Handbook on Quality and Standardisation in E-Learning. UK: Springer, 2006. Moser, Franziska. The Strategic Management of E-Learning Support. Germany: Waxmann Verlag, 2007. Ryan, Paul. Large employers and apprenticeship training. UK: CIPD, 2006. Van Tiem, Darlene et al. Fundamentals of Performance Improvement. UK: John Wiley & Sons, 2012. Read More