employee development
- the process which employees upgrade their existing skills and knowledge
- development is important in organisations to make sure employees have the right skills to meet the challenges of the job
reasons development is important
- changing nature of jobs - jobs are becoming more complex (tech and AI), employees need to be able to adapt to tech advances
- employee attraction and retention - employees want opportunities to build their skills, development also incorporates continued learning to grow them in their career
- employees’ responsibilities change - common issues is orgs are not good at providing training for new responsibilities
- the best engineer with the skills might not make the best engineer manager
- promoted employees are given the correct training before starting a new position
informal vs formal leading
- employee development occurs through learning rather than training
formal learning = structured/ goal directed/ typically led by an instructor
informal learning = unplanned/ no goals / self directed
- occur through convos with others, new experiences
- informal learning may occur as a result of activities including group problem solving
learnability
- big demand for employees who can demonstrate high levels of learnability
- being able to quickly grow and adapt to skills
- with the use of the internet information has become a commodity, almost anyone can find the answer to anything
- knowledge and expertise have become slightly devalued
- what you know is less relevant than what you can learn
- orgs with a learning culture have shown results of work engagement, reduced turnover and commitment to the company
serendipity in OD
- serendipity = an unplanned fortunate discovery (for example Penicillin)
- Erdelez found that certain people are more likely to make serendipitous discoveries as they are more open to the world around them so will follow ideas in new directions (personal characteristic)
- others argue orgs can encourage or discourage serendipity
- way of trying to encourage serendipitous behaviour and have the freedom to play around with ideas (Google)
employee training
- orgs develop staff through formal training (increasing particular skills or abilities)
Training Process:
1. identifying the learning needs (where is training needed)
- determine the skills needed - skill sets staff need to have to do their job properly
- evaluate the skills of staff - evaluate current levels in relation to the skill you want them to know
- highlight the skills gap - use training to help close the gap of what they know and what they need to know
- design the training = orgs design their own training, this is difficult but effective (use e learning)
- deliver the training = online or in person
- evaluate the training = important step! want to know how well the training was. (forms, questionnaires to get feedback) feedback can be used to improve in the future
evidence for training effectiveness
- evidence for positive effects of training
- example = Lacerenza et al (2017) meta analysis of leadership training had strong positive effects, leading to improvements in perceptions of satisfaction and learning
- issues with studies exploring work place training:
1. lack of randomisation = employees not being assigned randomly means differences between groups might be due to difference in participants not intervention
- reliance on subjective outcomes and short term assessments = many studies focus on subjective outcomes they are open to bias which can skew results / many studies measure effects of training immediately after intervention so don’t know long term effects of training
- orgs need to be more aware of the importance of randomised trials to really understand trends
behaviouralism
- understanding how we learn is important to design and deliver crucial training
- behaviourism = all behaviours are learned through interaction with the environment through conditioning
- behaviour is a response to environmental stimuli (Pavlov’s Dogs)
operant conditioning = learning through reward and punishment
- associations are made between behaviour and consequence
CRITICISM:
- overly simplistic and deterministic = focuses on observable behaviours not looking at internal processes behind them
POSITIVE:
- dopamine in reward and punishment = when reward is exposed the brain responds by increasing dopamine affecting mood and behaviour - make employees work hard towards their goal
Cognitive psychology
- other side to behaviourism
- cognitive psychology = focuses on the internal mental processes that explain behaviour
- we are not computers that have input - process - output
- we process info in a biased way - this is how we learn skills and remember info
- employees can develop with neuroplasticity - when people repeatedly practice smth their neurone fire and shape themselves (LONDON CAB DRIVERS)
- if you don’t practice the neural pathways prune
How to learn effectively
- practice repeatedly (neuroplasticity)
- enriched environments - focus attention
- limited attention - need to be focus and free from distraction in order to transfer to long term memory
- schemata - to aid memory we need to make connections
- emotions - having emotions attached to new info enhances retrieval
