Barriers to Effective Learning within Organizations - Essay Example

? Employee Development Methods & Barriers to Effective Learning within Organizations By 29th April The term ‘employee development’ also known as human resource development involves employee growth and deals with the plan that encourages the employees to develop new skills and gain new work based information by providing the employee with vast learning and training facilities. For any organization to succeed it must groom its most important resource i.e. the human resource. “Employee development is an extension of externally oriented instruction because it helps employees of an organization adapts to change and build their competencies.” (Rothwell and Kazanas 2003) Training and development of employees keep them motivated and improves their goal oriented focus thus resulting in better results for them as well as for the organization. “Development is a continuous improvement process that occurs at both the organizational and individual level. At the organizational level, leaders must actively manage the overall talent mix. Effective leaders recognize the need to fill key positions with individuals who have a competitive advantage in performing their roles when compared with their peers across the industry.” (Koch 2007) This competitive advantage stems from the organizational efforts to train and develop its individuals in a way so as to add value to their expertise as well to the overall organization. History is filled with examples where companies have placed immense emphasis on its employee development programs. Organizations come up with new and novel ways to train and motivate their employees and build their career for the benefit of both the employee and the organization. The learning based interactive system developed by IBM in the 1980s lead to marked improvement in the work quality of its employee. Although when this system was developed IBM was losing from its competitors and incurring loses, but the company in its difficult time did not let do of its employee development and the new and innovative learning system helped the firm come back in business. The employee development methods form the basis of improving employees’ skill and technical expertise. “Employee Development methods fall under two general categories: on-the-job and off-the-job methods. The on-the-job methods consist job rotation, assistant-to positions, mentoring, special projects, and committee assignments, while off-the-job methods consist of formal education and outdoor training.” (Medina 2006) Talking of the on-the-job training, the most common method is the job rotation which is the systematic movement of an employee from one position to the other in the same or different departments. This method claims to develop employee understanding of the overall organization by moving the employee and making him actually do what is required in each unit of the organization. “Numerous firms have used job rotation, including American Cyanamid Baker Hughes, Ford and Prudential Insurance,” (Griffin & Moorhead 2011) The proponents of this method argue that this type of development is required by the organization in order to familiarize the employee with all the departments and technologies and methodology that the firm uses. But the opponents argue that it makes the employee jack of all trade and master of none. According to them when employees move from one department to the other, the shorter time span adds to the confusion resulting in errors that decreases the productivity of the employee. Another off shoot of the job rotation is the job enlargement which is also known as the horizontal loading of work. It involves the increasing of number of tasks in the same job as performed by previous employees. The rationale behind the inclusion of increasing number of tasks is to reduce monotony of the worker. But this kind of loading takes a toll on the time required to complete the job thus resulting in a decrease in the efficiency. However firms have gained some advantage such as employee motivation due to newness of tasks etc through this method. The above two techniques fail to provide specializations and were not very result oriented. A third method in this job loading category was the job enrichment which involved the vertical loading of job involving the increase in tasks along with the increased work control. This increase in job responsibility and authority resulted in positive reinforcement and increase in employee efficiency. “In particular job enrichment removes many controls from jobs, gives workers more authority, and assigns work in complete natural units. Moreover, employees frequently are given fresh and challenging job assignments. By blending more planning and decision making into jobs, job enrichment gives work more depth and complexity.” (Pride et al 2010) Other method like assistant-to position involves directly assisting managers in order to produce promising new managers. Also mentoring is a method of employee development in which a senior employee supports a new employee. The method of mentoring may involve coaching and counseling the new employee in order to increase its understanding of the job and improve its efficiency. The other side of employee development involves the of-job training in which companies conduct formal education of their employees. Special organizations work for educating the professionals in different fields of work. The formal education involves specific job related know how and new developments in this area of work. This gives employees a current view about his job and increase job efficiency. Outdoor training involves sending employees abroad or to other organizations in order to learn the better and new ways of performing their duties. But unless panned properly, these out-of-job methods can be very expensive and time consuming. Having critiqued the employee development methods one comes to think about the effectiveness of such models and the extent to which these models increase productivity. “There is a growing body of compelling evidence from a variety of sources that clearly indicates development efforts work when properly designed and carried out.” (Laird et al 2003) The effectiveness of the employee development methods depend upon the implementation of these methods. The different barriers to learning hinder the effectiveness and viability of these methods. The main barriers are the lack of communication, lack of proper implementation, lack of performance management post the implementation of an employee development program. The training of managers to assess the employee development is also very crucial in the entire process f developing the workforce. “Without proper training many managers believe that performance management is a once a year activity during which faults should be revealed.” (Chisholm-Burns et al 2010) One of the major barriers to effective learning is the communication process between the employees and their higher-ups in the development process. “Despite its apparent simplicity communication process rarely operates flawlessly.” (Lewis el at 2007) Therefore even though management formulates and uses different methods to develop employees’ skills and expertise if the communication is not effective. The time management is also a very important factor in employee development programs, deciding when to rotate a job, when to introduce formal education or outdoor training is very crucial. Inappropriate time management may result in the loss of time and money and no improvement on employee’s part as well. Thus wise organizations use the most important tool ‘employee development’ with great care and precision in order for the activities to be fruitful and rewarding for both the employees and the organizations. References Chisholm-Burns, M. et al. (2010) Pharmacy, Management, Leadership, Marketing and Finance, London: Jones and Barlett Publishers, p.375 Griffin, R. and Moorhead, G. (2011) Organizational Behavior - Managing People and Organizations, 10th ed. Mason: South Western Cengage Learning, p.127 Koch, C. G. (2007) The Science of Success - How Market Based Management Built the World's Largest Private Company, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., p.89. Laird, D. et al. (2003) Approaches to Training and Development - New Perspectives in Organizational Learning, Performance and Change, 3rd Ed. New York: Basic Books, p.291. Lewis, P. et al. (2007) Management - Challenges for Tomorrows Leaders, 5th ed. Mason: Thomson South Western, p.301 Medina, G. R. (2006) Personnel & Human Resource Management, New York: Book Store Inc., p.91. Pride, W. et al. (2010) Business, 11th ed. Mason: South Western Cengage Learning, p.291 Rothwell, W. and Kazanas, H. (2003) The Strategic Development of Talent - A Framework for Using Talent to Support Your Organizational Strategy, MA: HRD Press, Inc., p.237 Read More