Creating and Sustaining an Organisational Learning Culture - Essay Example

Creating and Sustaining a Learning Culture at Look Ahead Housing and Care In today's turbulent environment, an organisation's survival may depend on two things: performance and learning culture. A learning culture in an organisation that is closely aligned and linked to performance is crucial for the organisation's competitive advantage. Companies with a learning culture are more flexible and adaptive to the environment yet more focused on the critical factors that matter in their business (Martin, Puig, Tena, & Llusar, 2008). These companies achieve success through highly competent and effective people. One such company is the centre of this paper. Look Ahead Housing and Care is a charitable housing association that offers specialist housing, care and support. It was first established in 1973 by Mary Jones and a group of concerned individuals. Jones was a retired senior civil servant from the Department of Health and Social Services. Jones and the group envisioned a company that would provide good quality and cheap accommodations for the needy and most vulnerable in the society. From a humble beginning of its first property acquisition in 1974, Look Ahead is now able to support 5000 people across more than 60 projects. The company owns a several properties that provide different types of accommodations. These include hostels for single homeless people, registered care homes, flats and studio-type accommodations for families with support needs. Customers receive support though guidance regarding benefits, budgeting, training, employment, education and general life skills to equip them live their lives fully and become independent contributors to the society. The annual income of the company is in excess of 29.5 million. Currently, Look Ahead employs around 600 staff providing service and care. In 2008, the company was recognised in the prestigious Sunday Times as part of the "100 Best Companies to Work For." It has made the company proud as an employer of choice. It is an achievement that acknowledges the passion and commitment of the company in delivering first-rate service to the society and to employees. Through the dedication, commitment and hard work of management and staff, Look Ahead Housing and Care has developed to become a leading housing and social care provider to vulnerable people in London and the South East. Strategic Objectives Look Ahead's mission is to enable those with particular needs to live ordinary lives within the community. They aim to become enablers of vulnerable people through positive transformation of their lives, and empowerment of individuals in order for them to become active participants in the community. In order to achieve the organisation's goals, Look Ahead has established several strategic objectives in the whole organisation. As a member of the charity-service sector, their first objective is to promote customer involvement, choice and citizenship. This can be achieved through supporting and enabling customers to participate in a wide range of involvement activities; using feedback mechanisms from customer survey to improve services; and implementation of a social inclusion strategy. As part of the community, their second objective is to build and maintain strong partnership. This can be attained by raising and strengthening the company's relationship with purchasers, funders and the local community. Mapping the stakeholders' relationships with the company across all services is made possible by means of local business plans, specialist forum and borough liaison meetings. As an organisation, their third objective is to achieve growth through excellence. The company aims to meet or exceed targets for new business growth and design innovative services. The company also prioritise seeking opportunities for service expansion while delivering efficiency gains. They also commit to deliver ongoing improvements in service quality and performance. As an employer, the fourth objective of Look Ahead is to enable staff to excel in their roles. The company can realise this through leading, supporting and developing staff to achieve their potential as well as enable staff involvement. Employee feedback will drive service improvement. Training needs assessment of individuals and teams will support continuous improvement plans. The company also prioritise development of corporate support systems to underpin improved service delivery. The last two strategic objective of the company is the focus of human resource management and development. This is also the centre of this paper. The HR strategies of Look Ahead Housing and Care that aims in creating and sustaining and organisational learning culture will be evaluated and assessed. It is the role of HR practitioners in the company to provide guidance through recommendations that have been developed by analysis and diagnosis to address strategic issues from human, organisational and environmental factors. HR practitioners also provide advice on issues concerning cultural change and approaches to the improvement of process capabilities. (Armstrong M. , 2006) Enabling Staff to Excel in their Roles As management become aware of the uncertainties in the environment and changes that are rapid and complex, organisations realise that people are among the organisation's most valuable strategic resources. They are re-evaluating and re-appraising the way their organisation manages their critical resource, human capital (Pfeffer, 1994). In view of these, the role of personnel management has widened and expanded to become what is known as Human Resource Management. (Handy, Barham, Panter, & Winhard, 1989). Human resource management (HRM) is a unique style of people management. It seeks to achieve competitive advantage through the strategic deployment of highly committed and capable workforce (Storey, 1995). It is a strategic and coherent approach to management of an organisation's most valued assets - the people who contribute to the achievement of the objectives of the business (Armstrong & Baron, 2002). The essence of HRM is that people are regarded as competitive assets, not variable costs, which need to be managed in ways that contribute to the attainment of the firm's strategic objectives. In other words, human resource policies, activities and strategies should be linked more closely to the business strategy (Gunnigle & Moore, 1994). The important defining characteristic of HRM is that it is strategic. It familiarise the HR practitioners to the development of HR strategies that would enable the employees to achieve the organisational goals by excelling in their roles. At Look Ahead Housing and Care, it is essential for the company not just to align their HR strategies but to include them in the overall business strategy of the organisation. Look Ahead is a human service organisation and people are their most valued asset. As a service and charity organisation, Look Ahead relies on the performance of their staff in order to provide service and to achieve their strategic objective - achieving growth through excellence. Their strength is the quality of the people serving the organisation. Enabling the staff to excel in their roles is making the people add value to the company. According to Porter's value chain, human resource management supports the primary and support activities. In other words, it is fundamental in the entire value chain of the organisation. Every value activity in the firm requires human resources such as labour and management (Porter, 1985). Excellence in employee performance is vital for an organisation like Look Ahead. It would help the company attain competitive advantage in the market since it would create high performing individuals and teams. The term high performing work systems refers to a human resource management approach that elicit commitment and involvement in the organisational strategic objectives. The staff's behaviour is self-regulated rather than controlled by sanctions and pressures (Wood & Albanese, 1995). Work-related commitment is defined as the force that binds an individual to a course of action of relevance to one or more targets. It is different from exchange-based transactional obligations. Commitment influences employee behaviour even in the absence of external motivation. (Meyer & Herscovitch, 2001) There is a need for an organisation to go beyond a generative learning approach that allows for growth where people are continually expanding their capabilities to shape their future (Senge, 1990). High performance work systems are the product of the learning organisation and self-managed team concepts. This approach highly contributes to growth of organisations and improving performance. A learning organisation is one where people continually expand their capacity to create results they truly desire, where new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, where collective aspiration is set free, and where people are continually learning how to learn together (Senge, 1990). Look Ahead is a learning organisation that learns from experience through their initiatives in developing continuous improvement programmes, using systematic problem-solving techniques, and transferring knowledge quickly and efficiently. At Look Ahead Housing and Care, the management are focused on sustaining their learning culture. In order to enable staff to excel in their roles, the HR management prioritise on facilitating staff involvement in the business planning process through development of localised business plans that are aligned to the organisational strategic objectives. They employ feedback mechanisms from staffs to drive service improvement. Sequentially, the management focus on leading, supporting and developing individual staffs to achieve their potential through training that supports continuous improvement. Managers develop learning abilities individually and learn as a team through their daily work. HR practitioners advocate the use of developmental activities such as job enlargement, job enrichment, monitoring, and team-based projects. Learning is dependent on staff's confidence, motivation and capability but it can be enhanced and developed through formal training, guidance and learning opportunities (Armstrong M. , 2006). Effective learning is augmented especially when the climate in the organisation as well as the disposition of management is supportive on learning, which is evident at Look Ahead Housing and Care. Management supports and sustains learning through coaching, mentoring, training programmes and team-building activities. Feedback and learning gives companies the capacity for strategic learning. Existing feedback mechanisms and review process in the company monitors the short-term results from customers, internal business process, learning and growth. Monitoring and reporting enables the company to modify local business strategies to reflect real-time learning. (Kaplan & Norton, 1996) Achieving Growth through Excellence HR professionals share responsibilities with management colleagues for the success of the enterprise and get involve with them in running the business. They integrate their activities closely with management and ensure that they serve a long-term strategic purpose. (Tyson, 1995) Look Ahead's strategy as a business firm is to achieve business growth through excellence. This is the company's long-term direction and scope that matches its resources to the changing environment, market, customers, and other stakeholders. (Johnson & Scholes, 1997) Growth strategy is defined as a plan of increases in size of an existing organisation resulting from its successful internal efforts and new economic activities. It may involve service development growth, market growth, growth in number of employees and local service areas, or growth in income and status. (Low & Macmillan, 1988) In order to achieve growth through excellence, the company aims to meet or exceed business performance targets for new business growth. Management focuses on designing new and innovative services to market to the partners and customers. They will look for opportunities to amend/expand existing services to meet new and emerging needs. The management will identify and deliver efficiency gains and develop local action plans to deliver sustainability. To top it all, the organisation aims to deliver ongoing improvements in service quality and performance. Diversity Diversity means having a mixture of different people. They can be different because of their age, sex, ethnic background or sexuality. Look Ahead Housing and Care has created an equality and diversity strategy that has provisions where the company accepts diversity by being open to people's differences and recognising their individual talents and potentials. Look Ahead aims to be a leader in promoting equality and diversity by being socially inclusive, promoting community cohesion, meeting diverse needs and promoting awareness and ownership. Consecutively, the company employs over 600 staff, and work with nearly 3,250 customers in 21 different local authorities in London and the south east. This shows that staff, partners and customers are very diverse. To address these, local services develop community diversity and involvement plans every year. The diverse workforce in the company brings variety of skills and knowledge to Look Ahead. The HR management is open and creative in getting the opinions of staff. They implement a staff survey program every three months, asking for feedback on work. They also include the staff in developing and delivering services. The staff will also work with other people in the community to help reduce discrimination. Organisational Culture Organisational culture is a very powerful enabler of competitive advantage in a strategy. Culture is a means of achieving the mission of an organisation, most especially if the culture incorporated in the organisation is an appropriate one. Organisational culture is the shared assumptions, values and beliefs that are considered as the correct way of thinking and acting on problems and opportunities. (McShane, 2001) Look Ahead's culture revolves around the core values of the organisation such as quality, creativity, innovation, continuous improvement, integrity, transparency, openness, trust and respect. The company is committed to quality where they strive to exceed the expectations of the customers. The management encourages creativity, innovation and sharing of ideas. The company pursues continuous improvement in every aspect of the business. The management made a commitment to enabling the staff to reach their highest potential. The organisation adheres to the highest standards of business ethics through integrity and transparency. Most of all, the organisation aims to grow by developing and supporting relationships based on openness and trust with all staff, partners, and customers. The core values and culture of the Look Ahead are essential catalysts in achieving their mission and strategic objectives. The culture is also an enabler of sustaining and developing a learning organisation. The strong culture in the organisation increases the service performance of the company. Efficiency It has been discussed that distinctive human resource practices can shape the competitive advantage of a company. Such practices can make a significant impact on the organisation's performance. Human resource management and its strategies support plans and programmes for the improvement of organisational effectiveness. HR practitioners develop policies in several areas of the organisation in order to create a great place to work. Look Ahead Housing and Care has been recognised as one of the 100 best companies to work for. This achievement is the end result of the effectiveness of the organisation's HR strategies. In order to regularly evaluate the strategies, performance indicators were established at Look Ahead. These indicators are the company's means of measuring its efficiency and progress in meeting the strategic objectives. Look Ahead's performance monitoring framework measures business plan delivery against key business performance targets. In terms of staff's roles and responsibilities, the key performance indicators are customer satisfaction, voluntary staff turnover and absence rate. The critical performance target for customer satisfaction with repairs is 85%; for voluntary staff turnover, it is 15% turnover rate; short term absence rate is targeted at 3.5%. Individual performance appraisals of staff create agreed personal targets that reflect and align the local business plan targets. It is the aim of the performance appraisals to successfully implement the learning culture of Look Ahead. It aims to encourage staff behaviours that mirror Look Ahead's values and beliefs. Furthermore, it will monitor and report on actions to ensure continuous improvement and enabling the staff to reach their highest potential. References Armstrong, M. (2006). A Handbook of Human Resource Management Practices (10th ed.). London: Kogan Page Limited. Armstrong, M., & Baron, A. (2002). Strategic HRM: The key to improved business performance. London: CIPD. Gunnigle, P., & Moore, S. (1994). Linking Business Strategy and Human Resource Management: Issues and Implications. Personnel Review , 23 (1), 63-84. Handy, L., Barham, K., Panter, S., & Winhard, A. (1989). Beyond the Personnel Function: The Strategic Management of Human Resource. Journal of European Industrial Training , 13 (1), 13-18. Johnson, G., & Scholes, K. (1997). Exploring Corporate Strategy. Hempstead: Prentice Hall. Kaplan, R., & Norton, D. (1996, January-February). Using the Balance Scorecard as a Strategic Management System. Harvard Business Review , 1-13. Look Ahead Housing and Care. (2008). Annual Report 2008. London. Look Ahead Housing and Care. (2008). Business Plan 2008. London. Look Ahead Housing and Care. (2007). Equality and Diversity Strategy 2007 to 2010. London. Low, M., & Macmillan, I. (1988). Entrepreneurship: Past Research and Future Challenges. Journal of Management , 14, 139-161. Martin, I. B., Puig, V. R., Tena, A. E., & Llusar, J. C. (2008). Human Resource Flexibility as a Mediating Variable Between High Performance Work Systems and Performance. Journal of Management , 34 (5), 1009-1044. McShane, S. (2001). Organizational Behavior. New Jersey: McGraw-Hill. Meyer, J., & Herscovitch, L. (2001). Commitment in the Workplace: Toward a General Model. Human Resource Management Review , 11 (3), 299-326. Pfeffer, J. (1994). Competitive Advantage through People. Boston: Harvard Business School Press. Porter, M. (1985). Competitive Advantage. New York: The Free Press. Senge, P. (1990). The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization. New York: Doubleday. Storey, J. (1995). Human Resource Management: A Critical Text. London: Routledge. Tyson, S. (1995). The Practice of Human Resource Strategy. London: Pitman Publishers. Wood, S., & Albanese, M. T. (1995). Can we speak of high commitment management on the shop floor Journal of Management Studies , 32, 215-247. Read More