Improving a Workplace as a Learning Environment - Report Example

IMPROVING A WORKPLACE AS A LEARNING ENVIRONMENT Name: Grade Course: Tutor’s Name: (20, May, 2010) Improving a Workplace as a Learning Environment The learning environment will be in the Finance department within a publicly owned company. In this company the Finance department employs a total of 70 employees, with the accounting office having fifteen employees among them a Finance Director, Chief Accountant and three senior accountants. The rest of the staff in the accounts office are junior accountants who act as the support staff. The learning need that was identified was a communication breakdown between the customer and the organization, after the contract with the organization had been signed. This study will address the learning strategy that the human resources department used with the aim of improving the communication by setting the strategies of turning the department into a learning environment. The department required training in communications and the training method that was selected was workplace learning. The learning was to start from the finance department but later would be applied to other departments. The overall objective was to develop the whole organization into a learning company, starting with the finance department and on to other departments. The human resources managers suggested that the best workplace strategies that would bring the best results would be, action learning, mentoring and self directed learning. The process would also introduce an orientation program to the employees. This process would be also conducted on every new employee who would join the organization. This study will address each of these methods. These strategies were to be used to achieve the main goals, good communication within departments and to customers, improved participation by all employees in policy making and tapping individual’s talents and promote training in these areas. The organization had targeted to promote and encourage college attendance of ten percent of employees who were to get study time to improve on their grades. Workplace learning is the process by which a learner, the employee in this workplace joins a workplace as an employee or and from this workplace learns all the necessary skills from the basic skills, to technical skills and practical applications to the management skills that are required in that particular role. The learner develops the skills and becomes a resource for the organization. In this way both the individual and the organization will benefit. The employees become self motivated. There is more training in practical skills. It is a continuous process and leads to a great sense of control, purpose and job satisfaction by the employees which in this case would improve the services to the customer (Public Health Foundation, 2010). The Human Resources development decided to create structures, not only in the sales and accounting departments but also in the whole organizations that would encourage formal and structural training as well as enhance informal training such as creating teams that would help in solving problems. This learning need within the accounting and sales department was seen as a way of identifying training opportunities within the organization. The using of teams in a learning organization has been recognized, as these teams are used as opportunities of learning for the less experienced. The importance of continuous improvement processes in an organization has been recognized and especially when it is focused on customer care services. The human resources managers selected the senior accountants who were to act as trainers to the identified number of employees. The senior accountants had to attend training which was done externally from a management consultant firm. The Communication Breakdown The staffs at the finance department are normally faced with a lot of pressures to perform and deliver results to the company. This pressure can have effects on the performance and especially in the long term. After a learning need analysis in the department, it was discovered that the department had a communication learning need that would require improving the communication between the accounting personnel and specifically the invoicing section. The communication breakdown occurred after the sales team had finalized a contract with a new customer, there were no follow ups with this customer except when an invoice was being sent to this customer and when the customer was late in paying. This was the case with all the customers regardless how much revenue they were contributing to the organization. The invoicing section believed the sales people had a responsibility to retain the customer while the sales people thought that their job had been done after the customer had signed the contract. The reception believed it was not her responsibility to be friendly to the customers, that her responsibility was only to direct them to the respective sections or departments they wanted to visit. As a result of this lack of coordination and miscommunication, the organization was loosing as many customers as it was gaining which meant there was no growth that was recorded in terms of revenue and profitability. After some analysis to identify the cause of the problem, it was discovered that there was training and learning need in coordination and there was a need to improve on communication in most of the departments within the organization (Farhan, 2010). The Human Resources department was consulted to address this need. The human resources department decided that the strategy most appropriate would be learning from and within the workplace. The training is to be conducted to all the departments as it was discovered that the customer was the responsibility of everyone in the organization. Without the customer there would be no business hence everyone, from the front office receptionist, to the Sales Manager, the Accountant and even the Managing Director had a responsibility to keep the customer satisfied. The training will also be aimed at changing the employees attitude, and give them a sense of unity, as people who work together towards the same goal, contributing in the growth of the organization. The training will emphasize on the importance of working as a team and applying the argument that learning is a social process. According to Rylatt (1994) the goals that workplace learning should aim at achieving includes improvements in performance, productivity and quality of goods and services. The Human Resources Department as a Facilitator of Change According to Marsick and Watkins (1992), the changes in the workplace have made it necessary for the human resources to shift their focus from training the individual to facilitating the learning for the individual, team and the organization. The human resource developers ought to involve themselves in facilitating and monitoring of all forms of learning in an organization, whether formal, informal or incidental learning. They have a responsibility to develop the organizations training and learning needs. To have an effective training and learning process it should be integrated with the involvement of the top decisions makers in the organization. The human resources managers should develop and conduct a research on the learning requirements within an organization and address a few issues and then come up with ways of how to put this information into practice. They will need to first analyze the factors and issues that are currently enhancing learning and the hindrances that exist and that prevent learning in the workplace. They should then systematically develop a long term learning system that should maximize individual’s career development, improves organizational learning and improves overall development of the individual and the organization. The Human Resource Developing the Organization As A Learning Organization The human resource department should make the learning in the organization as a continuous process, a process that is leads to an organization with not only adaptive capacity but generativity as well. Senge outlines five disciplines that will help in achieving this type of learning. The first is the systematic thinking which he says it is crucial and is what will hold the other disciplines together. The other disciplines are the personal mastery whereby the emphasis is on an individual’s personal vision; mental models and separate data from the assumptions; building shared visions within the organization and finally understanding the power of team learning. According to Coghlan, (2004) the organizations should have a response to jolts (for example an industrious action by the employees), which trigger a learning cycle in the organization and which are interpreted through a theory of actions which it combines strategy and ideology. Strategy relates to the approach the organization takes in regard to its environment while ideology is in regard to the beliefs, mission and the values that drive the action within the organization. The response to the jolt will depend on the structure and the slack in the organization. Structure deals with the relationship systems while slack deals with the existing organization resources, financial, human and technology resources. According to Meyer the jolt can lead to learning can either be incremental or transformational. Incremental learning means that the focus is on the refining the current strategy and the organization are allowed to easily adapt to changes and any possible jolts. Transformational type of learning focuses on the re-strategizing based on the new understanding of the organization. Organizations are learning when they increase the capacity to changing these four systems that influence learning, that is, structure, ideology, slack and strategy. The human resources development should create an environment where there is continuous learning, where employees are encouraged to learn from experience. The department should monitor and upgrade overall knowledge and skills within the whole organization, encourage participative democracy within the organization. In summary the human resource department should lead the organization into a learning organization as well as measure the progress made. The Methods of Learning to Be Used The orientation programme The orientation programme is meant to be a way of introducing new employees to the way things are done in an organization so as they can adapt to the culture of the organization. The orientation should address the processes within the organization, the values, the procedures in making things done and introduce general company policies, (Sims, 2001). The process to be applied was the modern method where the orientation includes a training and support system to the employees. In this case the orientation was not as much involving because it was being conducted to employees who had already worked within the organization. It was only to be conducted as a way of improving the already existing employees. The employees needed some renewed energy and the process was to be used as a way to motivate them. They were to attend the law and regulations compliance issues. The orientation program assists the employee in feeling comfortable and as a part of the organization which results to confidence and productivity. The orientation program was used because it helps in retaining employees (Quiram, 2003). Action Learning Action learning is the learning whereby the individual learns from experiences and by critically reflecting on those experiences, through group discussions, by trial and error, discovery and learning from each other in real life problems. It involves a set which is a group who are put in one place to work together for a period of time with the focus on the individual, whereby the group will focus on the issues of every individual and help this individual and give support on these reflections. The set will be working on a project which should be a real life situation and not an enacted process. The set members should be self motivated. The focus is on the individual learning but not the task the set is working on. With the development of the individual, the organization benefits through the accomplishment of the project that the set was working on. Other employees are bound to notice the change in the set group members and will want to join in this type of learning process (Malcolm, 1975). This may in the end involve most of the employees leading to the overall change in the organization as such the organization will slowly develop the features of a learning organization. There should be a time span for the project which can be reviewed until a time when all the individuals in a set will have totally developed. This is one of the learning methods that the human resource department introduced in my organization. A few employees were picked from both departments, and one of the receptionists. A set was created with the project being a 20 percent increase in the retention rate of the customers. The project was given a time span of three months to start with but with possible review after the three months. The learning process that was captured is the one that is described by Pedler et al (1986) who describes the process as a cycle. In this process the individual would pick on an experience and reflect on it and the consequences of a specific action. This reflection leads to a deeper understanding of the particular situation, from which the individual makes an action plan, with this new understanding. The last part of the cycle is the individual acts on the plan, and the cycle begins again as the individual again analysis the experience. This method was chosen because it is a voluntary process. The lack of coordination was caused by some lack of responsibility in the individuals who formed the accounting departments. The best way to solve this problem was to change the attitude of these individuals which can only be achieved voluntarily. The whole process does not only help improve individual skills and knowledge but improves the individual’s positive approach to life. In this process one remains and takes responsibility of his or her actions but gets help from the set on how to act differently. This helps to focus on the individual with the benefit of real personal growth (McGill, & Betty, 1995). The process also has the advantage of supporting each other and assisting in challenging each other. The individual is only supported but is challenged by the members of the set who will ask him/her analytical questions on an experience, the action taken and the alternative action that should have been taken. The challenge assists in the growth because it is supportive challenging but not aggressive. In the end all the individuals in the set are empowered in a relationship that creates trust and confidentiality. With employees in an organization trusting each other they develop each other which lead to them working towards the same goal, developing the organization. Mentoring Mentoring coaching is one of the most important and recognized methods to stimulates skills and personal development in a workplace. In mentoring self-learning and team management are encouraged. The process involves the protégé, the mentor, the line manager and the trainer who is supposed to monitor the process and the progress. The organization needs to approach the mentoring process in a flexible way and make sure the process is continuously assessed and any modifications that are necessary. The process should have an objective that should be achieved once the process is implemented. The objective in my organization was to create well rounded and responsible personnel, create growth opportunities for all employees with the aim of creating future managers in their line of duty. This was formed to act as an initiative to the employees who would realize that in participating in the mentoring process they would benefit in future as their career progressed. As such it would be easier to have the employees participating voluntarily. The human resource department had to make plans to ensure that the mentoring program would be successful in the organization. The program was introduced and explained to the company directors and the whole of the top management. This was to ensure that they were committed to the process as their corporation would be of importance if the program was to be successful. This was also important as it ensured that the programme would be adapted within the organizations development programme. With this put in place the next step was to ensure that the participants would do it voluntarily followed by ensuring that the support systems were put in place. The support systems included identifying potential mentors and having them trained on the requirements. It was essential that the time that the mentor and protégé would be involved was not going to have a bog impact on the organizations productivity and that the value of this time would be worthwhile in the long run. The next step was to match the protégé with the mentor taking into consideration their personality, the mentor’s experience, status and their qualification background. The programme was also to be confidential between the mentor and the protégé to assist in the mentor gaining on the protégé’s confidence. The programme started with three pairs with a possible expansion after assessing the progress. Self Directed Learning Self Directed Learning is “a process in which individuals take initiative with or without the help of others”, (Malcolm, 1975). In self directed learning there are assumptions; one that the individual has the need and a capacity to be self directing and this need should be nurtured and developed; tow that the learners experiences need to be exploited together with the professional experiences; three that there are internal incentives that motivate the learner in learning. These motivations can include self esteem, a desire to achieve, the pride and satisfaction felt after an achievement and simple curiosity. Recently this type of learning has been of interest. It is preferred by scholars as it has been said that when a learner learns out of his/her own initiative, the learning is better and is more that id it is teacher taught. In this type of learning the learning is deeper and more permanent. The lessons that are taught are deeply engraved in the mind and are not easily forgotten. Watkins & Marsick (1992) describes self directed learning as both a process and a personal characteristic. This method was chosen but only after some training with some guidance. It was to be applied to the employees who had already gone through the mentoring process as some self motivation was already instilled in them. It was also to be implemented after some time to the individuals within the set in the action learning process. The human resource thought it wise to combine this learning process with the other two. Impediments in Implementing the Chosen Strategies While implementing the chosen programs the Human resources department encountered a few problems. In the Action learning the problem encountered was that the in the middle of the learning, the individuals realized that there was no payoff for them. In the mentoring program, there were initial problem of mismatching the protégé and the mentor caused by personality crushes. Another problem was that since most of the mentors were experienced in their professions, they had too high expectations on the protégé. The mentors were also senior manager who felt that they had too many tasks to handle and therefore they had not allocated enough and quality time to their protégés. In implementing the self directed training, the human resources department realized that these learners were isolated from the other employees and the learning as a team was not difficult (Zubber-Skerrit, 1993). These learners were also developing some education arrogance which acted as a hindrance to expand their knowledge. There was also the problem with those who cannot direct their own learning and gave up after being frustrated with the little progress they were making. Evaluation After the learning process the human resources managers had to evaluate the progress to ensure the effectiveness of the learning process. However there were periodical reviews which were being conducted on a quarterly basis to ensure that the process was on truck. A consultant was to be hired to do the final evaluation. They evaluated this by analyzing if the organization was turning into a learning organization. They did this through analyzing who was involved in setting the policies within the organization. In a learning organization, everyone within the organization can participate in the policy making. They also analyzed the structure of the business, if there were any structured plans and how they are developed. A learning organization has well organized business structures which are well formulated and are frequently revised. The managers also analyzed the improvement in the use of information technology within the organization which forms one of the characteristics of a learning organization. There were some improvement in area where weaknesses had been recorded, to name them, lack of transparency in providing accounting information and lack of flexibility in decisions regarding employees pay. The largest improvement was noticed in the reward decisions which were being done as a way of paying for good and quality work done by each employee. The salary evaluation was done individually and also as a way to retain quality staff. There was an improvement in the transparency of the senior management salaries with the exception of the directors. Therefore an improvement was still required. The company had more trained employees in their respective professions as they had been supported to attend external courses and colleges. Conclusion A few months after the training was implemented, there were changes that were noticed. Each department was given clear guidelines on its responsibility to the customer, which led to an overall treatment of the customer. The sales department was given the responsibility of follow up calls to ensure that the customer was satisfied and which included the responsibility to offer customer incentives to assure retention. The finance department had the responsibility to ensure the correct amounts were invoiced and on record time. The two departments however worked as a team towards the same goal, improvement of services offered to the customer. This was a result of the training that was formed from which the individuals changed their attitude and took responsible and a sense that they had a greater control in the happenings within the organization (Bawden, & Zuber-Skerritt, 2002). In the end the human resources department was also in a learning process, as it assessed and monitored the different methods with the achievements. There was improved use of information and technology which was availed to most of the employees. Communication was improved both with the customers and within the departments. The organization in general was learning towards a learning organization. References Bawden, R. and Zuber-Skerritt, O. (2002). The Concept of Process Management, The Learning Organization, 9(4); 132-138. Coghlan, D. (2004). Managers Learning In Action: Management Learning, Research and Education. New York: Routledge Sims, D. (2001). Creative new employee orientation programs: best practices, creative ideas and activities for energizing your orientation program. Retrieved on May 28, 2010 from http://www.booksmcgraw-hill.com Farhan, M. (2010). Strategic Human Resource Development: Mentoring. Retrieved on May 20, 2010 from http://www.scribd.com/doc/3838619/Mentoring Malcolm, K. (1975). Self-Directed Learning. Retrieved on May 20, 2010 from http://strategiesforabetterway.com/documents/augustbookreview.pdf McGill, I. & Betty, L. (1995). Action Learning: A guide for professional, management and Educational Development. New York: Routledge Public Health Foundation. (2010). Training, Consultation, and Coaching Services for Quality Improvement in Public Health. Retrieved on May 20, 2010 from http://www.phf.org/pmqi/PHF_QI_Learning_Series_082008.pdf Watkins, E. & Marsick, J. (1992). Building the Learning Organization; a new role for Human Resources Development. New York: McGraw-Hill. Quiram, A. (2003). A good Employee Orientation Pr http://www.comevo.com/files/2003OrientationArticle.pdfogramme is a good employee retention program. Retrieved on May 28, 2010 from Zubber-Skerrit, O. (1993). Improving Learning and Teaching through Action Learning and Action Research. Higher Education Research and Development. 12(1): 45-58 Read More