Continuous Professional Development Concept - Essay Example

?Human Resources I have always been assigned to different placements in the of my undergraduate studies. Such placements benefit me greatly because they help me to practice the principles that I learnt on a theoretical basis. In the course of my first internship, I became more familiar with different organisational procedures and quickly developed the skills that I needed. However, the orientation programs were not enough to acquaint me with the daily procedures that other workers were already accustomed to. Most workers only become conversant with such daily practices after some time has passed with them participating constantly in organisational functions. As a new intern, I was always impatient over such realities but learnt to allow myself time to adapt to my new environment. I observed that the workers who had mentors became accustomed to standard routines at a much faster rate than those who, like myself, for one purpose or another did not. I observed that interns with mentors were inspired by their mentors’ confidence in their abilities and made more efforts to learn about their new organisations than did the rest of us. Their mentors also invested time in coaching and encouraging the interns, thus transferring their work skills to the new workers (Forster 2005). It was obvious that organisational objectives can only be accomplished through the collective input of all employees, regardless of rank. Reflective and Reflexive Practice In most of my placements, I was a part of a team or group that was responsible for accomplishing certain objectives. I would have a time for personal reflection during which I considered my role in the group work and how to best accomplish my responsibilities. After this, I was able to put the gleanings from personal reflection into practice. I would then express my ideas about my emerging awareness about my role in group sessions. In each of these team sessions, team members shared on how they believed that their contributions would affect the realisation of company goals on a daily basis. After sharing with others about such experiences, the interns would then return to implement the suggestions from the group session, and then reflect all over again (Hofstede 2003). As interns, we all benefited from the collective practices suggested as well as the individual actions taken by all of us. My personal ideals actually influenced how I interpreted corporate decisions and policies. At times my personal values were at odds with some organisational maxims. At such time, I would actively seek for the opinions of other who I knew had also experienced some measure of conflict during the integration process. From them, I learnt that this is a perfectly normal occurrence which is faced by almost all interns during their orientation. These ‘older’ workers also helped me to discover ways in which I could make company ideals my own or change my own views to suit them. Reflexivity is descriptive of the process whereby a person’s self-awareness is developed to the place where reflection is swiftly followed by a response with no time in the middle (Guest and Conway 2004). Reflexive employees will make be confronted by problems and quickly find solutions for them with consistency. When such personnel come across policies that they oppose, they possess the vital self awareness to recognise their disagreement and express it in a comprehensible manner to all (Brooks 2003). This is a quality that I took time to develop during my internship. It only came after I had understood the basic functions of company operations. Moreover, it was obvious to me that this was a vital part for employees to be able to relate well with colleagues as well as accomplish their tasks (Debra and Quick 2006). Training was not the only thing that resulted in the reflexive trait being witnessed in employees; each individual employee had to learn at his or her own pace. Some researchers have in the past claimed that training and development practices in organisations ought to be combined as equal parts of the learning concept (Beardwell 2004). This elaborates that all these three principles are vital in the development of human potential. Including them all in a particular model merely serves to form well rounded employees who contribute towards a more efficient corporation. From the perspective of human resource development functions, the integration of training and development merely contributes to towards each element assisting the realisation of the other (Bolton 2005). In today’s human resource divisions, education and work related aspects are no longer considered to be different functions as was the case in the past. By training its personnel, both the corporation and the workers will gain. Past researches have proven that companies that train their workers have higher retention rates than those that do not (Mullins 2005). Talent management, which is descriptive of workers’ innate working abilities and knowledge, can also be counted as a vital element to be considered in human resource concerns (Armstrong and Baron 2005). I observed during my internships that it is mostly the companies that offered numerous training opportunities, and had incentives such as development programs for employees as well as competitive salary packages were able to attract the mainly skilled personnel (Ruona and Lynham 2004). Investing personal development, training, and education amongst workers is a way in which a company can become more competitive; thus increasing its relevance in an already crowded field. This is why in recent years talent management has grown to be a vital factor in companies’ strategic plans. During my first placement, I learnt that the provision of training is actually a factor that most employees take into consideration before applying for jobs. It is also important how a company spaces out the training schedule for its workers. In my first placement, I observed that the company offered training for workers who were already well acquainted with the operations. Some companies offer training to workers as soon as they are hired. This, I was to learn, is quite unwise; even though it seems to be something that would further convince the new worker of the wisdom of his or her choice. New workers already have the burdens of adapting to a new environment, settling into the new culture, and learning day to day operations (Fincham and Rhodes 2005). Adding more knowledge over that is likely to be counterproductive as the worker will be overwhelmed and unable to cope. Theories Such a reality will only result in less effectiveness for the organisation. Organisations are more likely to benefit if they begin to schedule training opportunities only after their workers have become accustomed to their new responsibilities (Dilworth 2003). In many situations, the scheduling of training opportunities is also dependent on the level of skill of an organisation’s workers. In my first placement, I observed that employees who are conducting the same operations can actually have different levels of motivation or understanding of their jobs. It would be unwise to recommend training for an individual that is still struggling to keep up with basic operations, even though all his other co-workers sign up for additional training that will give them the chance to learn more skills and be eligible for promotion. Also, every worker has a unique learning style that is different from that of his or her colleague. Learning styles are basically descriptive of how workers think, reflect, and absorb the knowledge they are offered (Gravells 2006). In situated learning, which is the learning style used in most organisations, learning is a process that is acquired socially, information is supplied to workers in a group and not on a personal basis. Instead of having a unidirectional approach, it has a multidirectional approach where the employee or worker is a part of a group that receives information from the trainer (Dowling and Welch 2004). It is also common, in this learning style, for all workers to contribute their ideas, and knowledge on different aspects of organisational operations. This is different from the behaviourists’ model in the instructor assumes control of the entire learning process (Wright and Hobfoll 2004). In my first placement, a behaviourist model was used to disseminate knowledge to all interns. Our instructor was of the opinion that if he positively reinforced our expressed desired behaviours, we would learn faster. He did not allow us to participate in the process more comprehensibly because he said there was little time and much work ahead for us, and he could not possibly answer all our questions. In some ways, he was correct because those of us who were really motivated to learn keenly followed his instructions and then used them in practice and were subsequently rewarded. Moreover, there were others who did not fare so well as they felt disconnected from the entire learning practice and wished to have a more ‘give and take’ relationship in the lecture room with the instructor. Most of the traditional learning models are founded on the precepts of cognitive and behaviourist concepts. In theories that are objectivist, the student is expected to simply acquire knowledge (Earley and Bubb 2004). The learning theories that hinge on objectivist precepts are derived from theorists such as Robert Gagne and B. F. Skinner. Skinner affirmed that the process of learning is mainly influenced by reinforcement (Prasad 2008). He taught that when students receive positive reinforcement, they tend to perform the desired activities more than if they were not getting any rewards for their efforts. In an educational setting, this would mean that learners would only acquire knowledge if they were rewarded for giving correct answers (Stephen, Bruce, and Terry 2004). Skinner stressed that the process of rewarding learners for correct answers should not be stopped until the necessary skills are successfully assimilated by the learners. Gagne veered from this view slightly by stressing that in general, students can only master skills if the skills are arranged in a hierarchical order, with the uppermost concept being the main skill, which might also be the most difficult to grasp (Blandford 2004). In this model, the learners are first taught the lesser complicated skills as a prerequisite to learning about the complicated ones. As the learners capacities develop and his confidence in his ability to get the right answers is developed, he then starts to consider the more complicated skills. All through this process of teaching, the instructor uses feedback to guide the learners while encouraging constant practice until the lessons are mastered. The constructivist learning method is different as the learner is expected to form his or her own conclusion after weighing the existing options (Bulpitt and Martin 2005). Personal constructivists are of the opinion that learners form their own accurate opinions while engaged in the mental processes of reviewing and assessing the knowledge that they have acquired. Social constructivists, on the other hand, stress that knowledge is only acquired when interactions are underway between different groups. In essence, both parts of the same theory seek to emphasize that knowledge can be acquired in a shared or individual setting. In both personal and social constructivism, the instructor or teacher plays a minor role, merely serving as a person who guides the student or learner. Constructivism is usually employed when there are problems to be solved or issues that may actually have more than one answer (Miner 2006). The instructor merely serves to help the student, in this case, by increasing the incentive to come up with solutions to problems through his or her own efforts. During my time as an intern, I would say that my group’s instructor first used objective methods to teach us our new responsibilities. He used the Gagne model in that all tasks were arranged in accordance with how ‘hard’ or ‘easy’ the learners perceived them to be. The ‘hardest’ tasks were tackled last while the easiest were the first to be dealt with. During this time, our instructor did not encourage questions as he did not believe that the learners knew enough about their new roles to ask relevant questions. Moreover, as we became more comfortable in our new positions, the instructor suddenly changed to using the constructivist method in disseminating information. The large class of interns was broken up into average sized groups that were responsible for their progress. The instructor was there to guide each of us, but expected each learner to come up with ideas as to how to solve problems. As a learner, I made use of both the social as well as personal models of constructivism. When I was assigned a task, I would reflect on my own about how to solve it. However, when I was unable to come up with any satisfactory answers, I deferred to my group and asked others for suggestions on how to deal with the problem- which was a rare exception. As I became more adept at solving problems, I began to see myself as a well equipped seeker of knowledge. I did not depend so much on the instructions of the instructor but developed more confidence in the ability of my reasoning skills to come up with solutions to problems. The instructor would merely pose questions to the group but not provide instructions on how different problems ought to be approached. In this learning-centred approach to training, I learnt that there are different stages that the trainees go through. Motivation actually is absent from the first stage as this is where training is not perceived by workers as a real solution to existing problems (Mullins 2005). In the first phase, the instructors’ main function is to inspire the workers to change their concepts about what training basically seeks to accomplish (Schuler, Jackson, and Luo 2003). Only when the personnel start to realise that training might actually function to aid them in dealing with their problems do they move into the second stage. In the second phase, the workers actually start to attend training because they wish to or are inspired to. In the third phase, “Norming”, the trainees come to realise that training is the only way to the existing problem-solving abilities, and so training is perceived as a “opportunity” for improvement instead of a type of chastisement. The final stage in the learning centred approach is the one in which workers take part in training exercises freely without fearing that they will experience failure. In this phase, dispositional barriers are finally subjugated. Workers start to sense that the training programme has been of great benefit to them and they even encourage other sceptical workers to consider it. In both the learning-centred and situated learning approaches, the instructor has a bigger role than merely extending support to the workers who wish to benefit from training. Cybernetic systems theory This theory holds that employees can conduct their duties faster by using technology, and thereby further develop their abilities (Neil and Morgan 2003). According to this model, the ability of an organisation’s workers to handle their business rivals is dependent on the human resource department’s capacity to make sure that the employees have the most recent technological inventions at their disposal. The cybernetics theory basically seeks to make sure that there are essential adjustments made internally in order to ensure that there is a substantial impact to employees’ operations; which then result in causing the organisation to be more competitive in the market. Agency /transaction cost theory This theory is mainly concerned with evaluating financial aspects in order to establish the competence of an organisation’s workers. This theory is more concerned with the diversification of the workers in strategic management, as well as the reformation and internalisation of the workers' skills in order to determine how their performances can be improved. Continuous Professional Development In my first placement, I also observed that a type of Continuous Professional Development model that was often used is that of coaching. Coaching allowed our group leaders to be able to mentor each team closely while also encouraging the abilities of team members, and setting achievable objectives. The significance of coaching skills is vital for the continued support of change processes that are being encountered by workers, and the subsequent development of workers’ emotional intelligence which results in increased morale among workers. In my first placement, the group coaches were mainly interested in establishing the distinctive skills of every team member and acquiring their support in creating programmes that would chart the gradual advancement of each worker. The meetings also served to encourage workers and interns to schedule future meetings and programmes that would bring them together in mutually helpful endeavours. In essence, the workers were being recruited to function in some capacity as ambassadors of continuous professional development for other members of the same group. As various groups began to become more appreciative of training, they began to discuss the merits of distributive leadership, where all people had the chance to contribute to the decision-making process. This came as a surprise at first because my group leader had not engaged in participatory leadership when he first started instructing us on our new duties. A few employees were doubtful of their abilities to adequately perform their assigned tasks. Moreover, instead of these being allowed to hold back the team the responsibility for their performance was passed on to their more confident team members and more important matters were brought up for discussion. By using distributive leadership, team leaders were essentially allowing other members to be responsible for their own professional development. At first, when my colleagues and I expressed our misgivings at being granted such authority, our team leader stated that it was his expectation that we would “act our way into the development of new thinking patterns”. The team leaders were also quick to emphasise the difference between delegation and distributive leadership, as it became evident that workers who were not confident in their own abilities were more likely to hand down responsibilities that at first seemed overwhelming. Group members were evidently expected to start and see through the change processes within the different teams and then report back about progress made and challenges experienced to the team leader. This entire process benefitted me in more ways than one. It helped me to take on my own professional development. It was this Continuous Professional Development process that contributed towards making changes in my personal life that would allow me to dedicate more time to improving my work skills. I became excited about the entire learning process and also started reflecting about various things in my life before making decisions. While CPD can be a somewhat lonely experience because it causes a person to assume full responsibility of future progress, it also opens many doors in terms of collaborative exercises. I have been able to take charge of my professional career as a result of the practices that I have been put through at work. For instance, I have created my own professional development portfolio, and regularly make records of what I consider to be good practices or steps that will contribute towards my own professional advancement. I also intend to include sustainable CPD operations within my teams at work as I am now a team leader. As a result of the CPD measures, I have been able to swiftly develop into being a recognised leader, which was something I never suspected was a strength of mine. When I first started doing better than my colleagues in various exercises, I was frightened at the thought of added responsibility. I was also reluctant to lose the camaraderie that I had so recently acquired with my fellow interns. However, with the encouragement of my team leader, I was able to embrace my increasingly exceptional skills of leadership and soon began to feel more empowered than frightened. I accepted more responsibilities from the group leader and readily expressed my inability to cope with problems when I was overwhelmed. I also learned to accept correction more easily because I did not feel that failures were proof of shortcomings on my part, but rather, misunderstandings. It is my belief that I have earned not only the respect of my supervisors, but also my fellow workers through my participatory type of leadership when engaged in decision making exercises with group members. I also believe that my openness and readiness to embrace different suggestions is a trait that will contribute towards a much needed change in the organisational culture. I look forward to contributing towards the formation of a learning-centred organisation that will stimulate the further development of all its personnel. References Armstrong, A. & Baron, A. (2005) Managing performance: performance management in action, CIPD, London. Beardwell, I. 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