Performance Improvement and Learning Plan - Assignment Example

Performance Improvement and Learning Plan The need to improve performance Moseley & Dessinger (2009) believed that there is no stage in man’s life where perfection can be achieved. For this reason, he should continually look to improve himself and believe that he could do even better. There is always room for more improvement. If a person fails to recognize this fact then his growth and performance may hinder, and e may become stagnant. Benefits of improving performance at work The benefit of continually improving at work is that it helps to maintain the quality that is required to meet the standard of the company. It makes a person more efficient as he works on forming ways to learn new skills and apply them on his working entourage (Moseley & Dessinger, 2009). The goals that are expected from an employee are met well as a better endeavor is made into the work. Improving performance also leads to success in terms of monetary benefits and promotions. It not only pleases the boss but also motivates a person to outperform himself in the near future. Benefits of feedback Feedback is any positive or negative response given to an individual by his employee or fellow workers to let him know where he stands. There are many advantages of giving feedbacks. It points out the areas where a person is weak at so that he could improve himself. Feedback is given from people that monitor one’s progress and with whom the employee has spent a certain amount of time. So it is highly likely that it is going to improve a person’s performance in the future. Not only is it given to improving performance in the future but to also encourage employees to maintain the quality of their work. When an employee is performing as what is expected from him then it is always a good idea to appreciate his work (Moseley & Dessinger, 2009). Itwould keep him feel that his efforts are not going to waste and that the company is closely monitoring his progress. Benefits of learning and development Learning and development means adding more skills to one’s work. It allows a person to know more about his skills and how to use them in his working environment. Learning and development comes with experience and time. Organizations world always benefit from employees who are always prepared to learn more. Such employees are more versatile and contribute to more than just one function in the organization. They are also less prone to errors as a learning process teaches them to do a task efficiently (Moseley & Dessinger, 2009). Learning does two things. It firstly helps an employee specialize a task that he repeatedly does and secondly it makes him more versatile. A person could decide what he would like to be in future and in which department to work (Moseley & Dessinger, 2009). He could also look at opportunities elsewhere in bigger organizations. Progression routes Progression comes in the form of vertical and lateral routes. it means an employee can stick to the same business function and achieves promotion with time, or he could move to a different business function that might be of interest to him. An employee should always look for new opportunities that may be conducive to him. New opportunities might lie within or even outside the organization, and the employee should never turn a blind eye (Moseley & Dessinger, 2009). Possible development opportunities Improving one’s performance helps to explore more possibilities. The more skills a person has, the better chances he has to develop in his interested field of work. It is always a good idea to do an internship program in different business functions for example customer care, marketing and finance before deciding which function to embrace (Moseley & Dessinger, 2009). Reflecting upon feedback Reflecting upon feedback is very useful as it comes from employees who work with the individual. An employee should make maximum efforts to reflect on the areas where he made the highest number of mistakes. An effort should then be made to learn from the mistakes and not to repeat them again. It will help to improve performance over time (Moseley & Dessinger, 2009). Encourage feedback and improve performance by completing the tasks A dedicated employee who is eager to learn would always welcome criticism. It does not matter how negative the feedback is. An employee should honestly ask others to evaluate him and carefully listen to them. The important thing is that he should act on the feedback provided by others. Organizations are about a whole rather than individuals. Personal interest should be given up for the collective interest of the organization (Moseley & Dessinger, 2009). Learning plans and development needs While making a learning plan, a person should develop his development needs that will guide him towards his goals in the future. A person should have realistic goals and a realistic plan to achieve them (Moseley & Dessinger, 2009). A business student, for example, will only waste his time if he plans to become a doctor. For a business student, a plan should be to complete his internship in the interest of his field and then find a decent job. However, goals change with time as a person climbs the ladder of success. Further learning and improvement A learning plan provides a basic road map for a person to hunt and achieve success. It does not stop him from further learning and improving his map or learning plan. As stated earlier, learning is a never-ending process, and a person should carefully try to tackle all the problems that come to his way. Only then a person can learn various ways and techniques to handle a given problem and improve his overall performance at work (Moseley & Dessinger, 2009). Confirm learning plan changes Changes will always occur in the learning plan as the future is unpredictable. A person may suddenly realize that his skills lie somewhere else, and he may have to work out a new plan in order to achieve the newly discovered goal. A person could also get a good job offer from a different organization and in that case he would require a learning plan to handle work situation at hi new entourage. It is certain that changes will take place in some form or the other and a person must be prepared to make these changes. A plan is never complete if he changes are not updated and correctly followed (Moseley & Dessinger, 2009). Follow and review the learning plan Once changes have been made then the plan is good to follow. It is not possible to alter changes every day, and only the major and concerning changes should be changed or added and then followed. If efforts are made to make a plan then a proper effort should be made to follow it. A learning plan does not successively work in gaps (Moseley & Dessinger, 2009). There should be a continuous flow to it as learning is a continuous process. Not using the plan for letting say three years or so and then coming back to it would do no good. It should be followed with the same spirit it was developed. Finally, reviewing the plan is equally important as following it. Reviewing requires going through it to check how a person has done over a period. It is necessary to see what he had planned and what he achieved from all the planning. There would always be something that did not go according to the plan, and every such detail should be scrutinized. Efforts should be made to improve the plan and to keep more realistic goals for the future. A proper effort should also be made to stick to the plan and not to divert from it (Moseley & Dessinger, 2009). Reference List Moseley, J. L., & Dessinger, J. C. (2009). Handbook of Improving Performance in the Workplace, Measurement and Evaluation. San Francisco: John Wiley & Sons. Read More