Workplace Learning and Organizational Performance - Assignment Example

Running Head: WORKPLACE LEARNING AND ORGANIZATIONAL PERFORMANCE Name Course Instructor Date Discuss how the concept of workplace learning can help improve your organization’s performance. O’Donnell (2009), work place learning is the process by which individuals in a working environment engage in development or educational courses, training programs or activities providing an opportunity for learning through experience with the aim of acquiring skills necessary in competently performing current and future job responsibilities. In the current work environment, employee development has been considered very essential for organizations that desire to secure a competitive advantage with employee learning and development being given a priority. The work place has been found to provide a conducive environment for this especially due to learning opportunities available such as task-related changes, job transitions, change of responsibilities and available support in case of obstacles. With increased competition and challenges being faced by organization, there is a necessity to take advantage of any opportunity to improve performance and secure a competitive edge (Coffman & Gonzalez-Molina, 2002). Since workplace learning provides this opportunity, more organizations are adopting it. In addition, organization has the opportunity to develop its own staff instead of employing more workers. This cuts on overheads by reducing learning and overall employment costs. Workplace learning provides the organization an opportunity to assist its employees in competence development. In this regard, only the relevant information in relation to a particular organization is provided. This makes sure that employees learn a lot within the shortest duration as irrelevant materials are not taught. Unlike any other form of learning, workplace learning provides the employees with a good opportunity to exercise what is learnt in theory (Bhattacharya & Wright, 2005). Whatever they learn, they put it in practice and work toward solving any challenges experienced. The primary support provided by the organization through workplace learning results to increased productivity in that employees acquire relevant skills to perform various tasks. This is also because the employees in an organization have an opportunity for continuous development while still earning. There are very few employees who are ready to take time off in order to develop their skills especially due to increased cost of living. Workplace learning enables employees perform their tasks better as well as have the capacity to perform future jobs in case there is a change in their responsibilities without necessarily losing an opportunity to earn at any time (Whicker & Andrews, 2004). According to Bhattacharya & Wright (2005), workplace learning reduces resistance to change. This ensures that the change process takes a shorter time than would have been the case if there was no learning taking place. In addition, workplace learning improves competitiveness and leverages human resources as leaders take advantage of various activities to help develop the employees. This happens without an interruption of the daily organizational activities. Work place learning also provides a better value for employees in their work place since it is action based and they only learn what is important for them. This in itself motivates employees as learning is based on operational and organizational realities. For instance, I learnt effective team management simply by being involved in a mentoring program in my organization (ARAMARK). Being an organization with a large number of employees, team management has been identified as a necessity. I have come to appreciate that workplace learning provides a better and faster means of learning relevant skills. Workplace learning leads to improved quality of products and services as employees become efficient in accomplishing their tasks in a professional manner. As a result, wastage of resources including time is reduced thereby decreasing the operational costs. For ARAMARK Company which deals with production of food stuff, workplace learning had helped the employees reduce on wastage of raw materials as well as time lost in repeating procedures. The learning objectives are well aligned with company goals and desired outcomes. Once effectively done, work place learning positively impacts on the quality of work done by employees not forgetting the amount of work done thereby, resulting to increased productivity, customer satisfaction, improved performance as well as increased profitability (CBD, 2008). With increased competition in the food industry from both local and international players, it has not only become important for ARAMARK to adopt learning as a lifestyle in the organization, but a necessity as well. Workplace learning improves the quality of skills possessed by employees (Coffman, & Gonzalez-Molina, 2002). For instance, employees are in a position to understand health and safety standards and work towards meeting them. This in turn improves customer satisfaction since employees become more competent in executing their tasks. In ARAMARK, this outcome of workplace learning is evident in that it has passed all military, state and FDA inspection since 2005. As a result, ARAMARK has recorded reduced standard sanitation relative hours by 50% though the application of a focused program management approach. Food safety issues have thus been reduced drastically. This is owed to the fact that workplace learning has transformed human capital making it more productive as effectiveness and efficiency in meeting one’s responsibilities is achieved. The raised quality standards, confidence in executing tasks and achieved competency ensures that workers have the capacity to perform more than one task and yet maintain the standards. ARAMARK has over time been able to provide premium products and it is as a result of this that monthly shipment has increased by about 8% (ARAMARK 2011). The team leaders in ARAMARK are involved in development and training programs. They later share gained knowledge with employees working under them since the organization has adopted a learning culture. Apart from increasing the quality of skills, workplace learning also results to increased quantity of skilled workers. This ensures that absenteeism rates are drastically reduced. According to Coffman& Gonzalez-Molina, (2002), unskilled workers are likely to experience work related stress and burn out as they are consistently given warning for poor performance. In addition, new employees are easily integrated into the system as they get to learn upheld principles and are easily absorbed into a new working culture through learning. This happens because workplace learning provides settlement programs, culture learning, credential recognition and language learning for foreigners. An increased number of skilled workers also help address staff turnover and retention issues, issues resulting from an aging workforce as well as shortage of a skilled manpower. Apart from acquiring skills relevant to assigned responsibilities, employees also acquire communication skills through workplace learning. This makes it easier to solve conflict in the work as workers learn conflict management skills. They also gain skills on stress management which is a major cause of poor productivity. Gond & Herrbach (2006) maintains that, since workers have become more skilled, the company with which they work records reduced workplace accidents which would have resulted to lost man-hours as employees stay home to recover from such injuries. This significant drop in absenteeism has been recorded in ARAMARK and increased performance has been realized. Since workers are in the workplace on time and with minimal absenteeism, time taken to accomplish a task and meet organizational targets has reduced. Consequently, the need to pay for overtime has reduced thereby saving the company a lot of money which would have otherwise been used to cover for the time lost as employees spend time at home or in hospitals recovering from injuries. All these factors combined together have ensured that employees become more confidence in executing their task and hence satisfied in their positions. The ultimate outcome of this is high employee retention rate. According to O’Donnell (2009), a high employee retention rate saves the employer the cost of training and developing new employees. It also prevents the loss of new employees to competitors who seek to secure a competitive edge through learning the skills applied by their competitors. Workplace learning has also been found to improve leadership and management skills in an organization. This is because managers and leaders learn to delegate responsibilities and are in a position to attain relevant qualities to motivate the employees working under them. Additionally, the leaders are in a position to plan for their succession and address any issues that would result from this. For ARAMARK, leadership has improved a lot as leaders learn how to engage employees in the decision making process (Keller, 2006). This makes employees own organizational objectives, vision and mission and hence work towards achieving them. In recent years, employees in my organization have been involved in setting organizational goals. Since they are the ones that set the goals, they work hard to ensure that they meet set targets. Workplace learning has also ensured that leaders embrace teamwork and reap its full benefits. This improves communication among employees, the extent to which they network and the extent to which they can collaborate. Staff retention and recruitment issues are also addressed ensuring that the organization recruits the best candidates as transparency is embraced. This has been the case in my organization where one is absorbed on merit (Gond & Herrbach, 2006). ARAMARK has been able to introduce performance standards without much struggle due to workplace learning. According to Coffman& Gonzalez-Molina, (2002), employees have gained negotiation skills and are in a position to express themselves freely. This makes it easy to explain any issue to them without experiencing problems such as strikes. Another benefit of workplace learning that results to increased performance is its ability to improve operational performance. According to Hung et al (2002), a learning organization encourages research and knowledge sharing. This ensures that employees are aware of what is happening in the market locally and internationally. Since knowledge sharing is encouraged, a shared problem strategy is adopted where any idea is appreciated. Such an organization is therefore in a position to execute timely solutions and take timely risk management measures ahead of their competitors. As a result, huge losses that would have otherwise been incurred are avoided. It is through this that my organization (ARAMARK) has identified the need to adopt new technologies with the aim of improving productivity. In addition, it was among the first food industries to recognize the need to shift to producing more nutritional food products as the population becomes more sensitive on their diet at the global level. This has enabled the company to maintain a competitive edge over time. In this regard, workplace learning ensures that an organization is in a position to address shifting market preferences on a timely basis (Gond & Herrbach, 2006). Lastly, improved operational performance cautions the organization on increased operational cost and helps identify opportunities to cut down on such costs. Cost controls ultimately give the organization a chance to build its capacity and improve its competitiveness as saved resources are directed elsewhere. Gond & Herrbach (2006) maintains that, workplace learning is essential within any given environment since it assists in the development of a more holistic coordinated effort that ensures that several organizational building blocks and key elements are in place. It is quite evident that when organizational building blocks and key elements are in place within this current challenging business environment, it assists in promoting alignment within workplaces. To achieve this, ARAMARK need to widely define a fit of purpose whereby it should focus on educating its employees on understanding what is expected of them as well as what they should be accountable for (Gond & Herrbach, 2006). Further, learning within workplace can assist in promoting organizational alignment by creating a positive working environment within ARAMARK. For ARAMARK, creating a positive working environment or culture through organizational learning increases the level of employees engagement which in turn influences customer experience thus increase overall performance in terms of profitability and productivity. Workplace learning engages employees in integration of ARAMARK building blocks and key elements resulting to the production of both powerful and mutually reinforcing results. Evidently, most organizations are expected to relate widely with their environments so as to gain information and resources needed to function. The gaining of both resources and information can only be achieved by way of adapting effective workplace learning (Johnson, 2002). Clearly, this relationship influences ARAMARK strategies in dealing with their organizational environment. From an ARAMARK strategic change point of view, workplace learning is a very important organizational development intervention that positively transforms the company’s performance. This workplace learning perspective has facilitated great alignment of ARAMARK culture, strategies and competitive environment thus improving on its performance (Johnson, 2002). Here, improvement of ARAMARK performance involves great organizational transformation which is usually associated with various significant alterations of the company business strategy which may require modification of corporate culture, internal structures and new ideas that will promote positive performance. For instance, it is observable that the highest stage of workplace learning that result when tied to strategic objectives of ARAMARK is usually targeted at improvement of performance. According to Hung et al (2002), workplace learning is very essential in today’s knowledge of economy since it widely involves different ways of thinking, perceiving and behaving within an organization. Here, organizational performance is improved since employees are able to collect, transform and absorb information into organizational knowledge and memory. For ARAMARK, organizational knowledge is an adaptive process that is highly considered as a performance driven adaptive system. A performance driven system is one that targets on deep understanding of effectiveness as opposed to narrow process and performance improvement. ARAMARK understand that the concept of organizational knowledge and memory means that effective learning workplace should not only be involved in influencing current members rather, it should also engage future members widely focusing on their beliefs, experiences and norms that have been accumulated along the way(Hung et al, 2002). By so doing, ARAMARK is able to develop a work culture which values creativity as well as encourage innovation which is considered to be imperative to a company that desires to learn and come up with new ideas that will improve on organizational performance. The above argument has proved that workplace learning can help improve organizational performance. However, learning objectives must be aligned with organizational objectives and strategies if this is to be achieved. Improved performance is achieved as a result of increased quality and quantity of skills possessed by employees, effective management skills learnt and improved operational performance. In addition to increasing the labor output, increased quantity of skills ensures that an organization is in a position to cut on overheads as employees are in a position to execute more than one tasks. For instance, many organizations have been able to do away with the position of secretaries as receptionists perform both the role of a secretary and that of a receptionist. References ARAMARK, (2011). ARAMARK Business and industry facility service: partnership profile. Philadelphia, PA. www.aramarkfacilities.com Bhattacharya, M., & Wright, P.M. (2005). Managing human assets in an uncertain world: applying real options theory to HRM. International Journal of Human Resource Management, 16(6), 929-948. Coffman, C, & Gonzalez-Molina, G. (2002). Follow This Path: How the World's Greatest Organizations Drive Growth by Unleashing Human Potential. New York: Warner Gond, J. & Herrbach, O. (2006). Social reporting as an organizational learning tool? A theoretical framework. Journal of Business Ethics, 65, 359–371 Grojean, W, Resick, C, Dickson, M, & Smith, D. (2004). 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