SUMMARY
This work is aimed at both managers and specialists in the activity. The reader will find a set of keys that define and condition the results that a company can obtain in the field of Training. In advance we say that we are going to try to deeply resize the subject, that we will propose new coordinates closer to the interests of the business. At all times we will think about the Training of our time, in what comes to define today the new ability to train and develop the workforce in a company.
Key words: Organizational Learning, Knowledge Management, Intellectual Capital, Competency Management, Training Culture, Effectiveness, Impact
FOREWORD
In these pages we will approach an approach whose call is towards the business that learns, that manages its intellectual capital and measures the effectiveness of its actions in an environment where doing so becomes increasingly relevant in terms of competitiveness. We call this point of view Total Training in order to highlight its scope and the rupture that it represents compared to the usual training models. If traditional training is a technical subject that is hardly interesting to anyone other than the trainer, Total Training, on the other hand, is a holistic topic, full of passion and that clearly defines the organization's competitiveness.
The topicality of the subject, the crucial need for a more agile economic advance and for a more effective application of the intellectual wealth we have; These and more reasons justify the certainly broad commitment of this work: to stimulate the implementation of an effective philosophy of human talent management within Cuban companies.
INTRODUCTION
We all want the company of brilliant colleagues and collaborators, or at least they are people who instill in us positive energy, optimism, the desire to move forward, people who know and know what to do. With such a team, business life is an enviable adventure, simply a delight.
But desires belong to the realm of dreams and reality, as a trend, is usually something quite different. However, with our dreams we can foster fresh and exciting visions, share them, turn them into purposes and finally steal some of our best wishes to bring them to a better reality thanks to our effort and our faith.
It is true that today we are witnessing a scenario that is frankly opposite to the previous one: our new millennium has been baptized with the name of Postmodernity and what it means is that the romanticism of ideals dies, the urgency and the utilitarian and disposable nature of all things, including people, individualism and violence prevail in the world, and appearance matters much more than the reality of things. Far from cultivating the exercise of judgment, the orientation is to memorize and live an easy and valueless pleasure.
Despite this, there are discourses and realities that flatly deny such a conception. In these pages we are going to deal with a specific alternative: the business sector. And it is that the company urges to survive, strengthen itself, vitalize its morale, develop, and for this it needs to be very active, aware of its position in the market, of the opportunities that emerge, the risks that are run. In this environment, man is not a mere consumer or a statistical figure, nor is it, to anybody's thought, just “labor”. He is the protagonist of the story, rightly called the institution's most precious asset.
The organizational environment is a privileged space that promotes reflection and the deepest criticism about the Human Being (theories X, Y, Z, for example) and where the imperative to appeal to man is clearly seen as an essential requirement for adaptation to an environment rightly called turbulent.
Although the Human Being does not appear in the accounting books, his motivation, loyalty and abilities have a very high, intangible value, which often makes the difference between success and failure.
Our companies, with so much social responsibility and commitment, urgently need to learn how to enhance their Human Capital, they need to change. Said with common and ordinary words, it is necessary to learn the art of promoting champions in our organizations, capable and involved people, who one day ask themselves in the midst of the task: will I be fully employed? Will I learn at the required speed? Do I know what my capacity is? Can I share the knowledge? and your answer is a convinced Yes in all cases.
We find, and it is one of the incentives of this work, that in today's world knowledge is no longer an option, in a powerful imperative. But not the treasured knowledge individually but the shared one, that which affects the way of acting of whole groups. That is what we will be dealing with here, how to learn and make it worthwhile, to expand and share throughout the company giving the best possible result. In this sense, we are going to address two fundamental and contemporary questions, two questions that interest those who want to ensure a solid position in the market:
How to achieve effective learning and how to multiply it in the company achieving higher levels of competitiveness?
PEOPLE MANAGEMENT: THOUGHT REVOLUTION
If we wanted to translate in a few words what HR Management consists of, we could affirm that it is about attracting people to the company, retaining them and developing them to maximize their contribution.
The Training activity constitutes, within the framework of these three essential moments, one of the best anchored and defined activities. From the dawn of industrial development, employers have been concerned with setting standards and then training their employees to fill the gap (the other option was dismissal, and this only when the business was slowing down)
This is how the training function in the company has been subject to a clear development process and at present we are witnessing a notorious turning point, we simply cannot continue training as we do, current practice is no longer training in the strict sense of the word.
I propose to review the following approaches whose central idea is the "search for the human spring" as a hallmark of healthy and effective people management (Posted by ABC Nuevo Trabajo)
“From managing figures to managing wills, from preparing payrolls to preparing and developing people. No business group has seen its tasks evolve so radically ”
“… One cannot speak of evolution, but of revolution. An abyss cannot be jumped twice, or you jump or kill yourself. And that is what is happening now. We are in an abyss that forces us to change. We have to create new models ”
"Measure performance, stimulate creativity and discover the potential of workers, battlefield of the HR specialist"
“… You must provide tools and become an advisor to those who are in charge of you. You must provide tools but not execute. The key is to turn the managers of our companies into HR managers of their departments ”
"Create the right environment so that ordinary people can produce extraordinary results… you must become a business partner and agent of change"
“… Dedicate body and soul to facilitating tools for progress”
These approaches are truly revolutionary, they mark a genuine renewal of thought and we note where the emphasis is placed: Formation and Development of the Human Being. We can affirm full of confidence that the authentic management of people and human talent demands a privileged place in the world that we have to live.
If we have doubts regarding this need for change, J. Goldsmith and K. Cloke (2002) remind us of what has been (and is) a common experience for those of us who work in companies:
“We have all encountered employees who seem almost awake, who squander their working lives, who blind themselves to what is happening in and around them, who speak and act in an unauthentic way, who do not care what they do, how they do it, for whom or why. In reality, many of our posts seem inhabited by the living dead, zombies that wrap themselves in a hypnotic trance… "(p. 22)
We are concerned about a scenario such as the one described, a common scene that explains a significant number of the failures in the productivity or quality of our companies. A question, the most sincere one we could ask, is urgent: “Are we providing learning experiences that shape the cognitive, emotional, interpersonal, and leadership competencies required for success in the 'new economy'?” (W. Bennis Idem, p. 22) This is an essential question.
THREE FUNDAMENTAL CONCEPTS
The time has come to change the state of affairs that prevails around people management. How to do it? What notions to go to understand and guide our action?
A first approach could perfectly be three concepts that are reiterated in modern business thinking, I mean Organizational Learning, Knowledge Management and Intellectual Capital.
Organizational Learning
The topic Organizational Learning undoubtedly resizes the problem of training in the company, allows us to get much closer to the business and makes it clear to us that the last end of the training should be to promote organizational learning or the investments made in this regard would be pointless.
Tom Peters has a popular statement in this regard, paraphrasing it:…, the success in the market is in direct proportion with the knowledge that an organization can apply, with the speed with which it can apply that knowledge and with the speed with which it accumulates knowledge.
“Learning organizations detect, design and nurture learning practices and help create shared meanings. They empower people to analyze and transform their culture; to reveal what prevents their learning and to eliminate it In order to create learning organizations and relationships that support people to become self-directed, responsible, conscious, authentic, consistent and committed, these qualities must be part of the learning process and methodologies for through which these skills are mastered ”(Goldsmith and Cloke p. 182-183)
If we try to represent these qualities to ourselves in a specific company, we will come together in what B. Guns and K. Anundsen (p. 5-6) call the Rapid Learning Organization.
- The company operates in an open environment: reciprocal and honest feedback, incessant desire to improve, absence of defensive reactions by others unnecessary It focuses on overcoming: the worker recognizes that there is no learning without application He directs teams as if they were business. These teams are business teams, they manage themselves as micro businesses that produce a basic line
These kinds of companies focus on getting the job done better. They consider learning as the ideal way to improve performance in the long term. Fast Learning Organizations, in Lifelong Learning, Metanóicas, does not matter so much the name as the essence. The effective training of our collaborators, colleagues and leaders, when accompanied by an atmosphere of mutual trust, a culture where sharing knowledge is a central value, this training penetrates the culture of the organization, takes root in its identity, contributes to define its distinctive features, and gives it the flexibility and ability to quickly adapt it needs to fulfill its social mission with competitiveness.
The ideal is that any worker, at any level, formulates the most natural questions in the world as the following questions: Are we focusing on the essentials that we must learn? Are we learning in the proper way?
An emotional summary of all this are the words of a manager when defining learning in his company:
"… They inspire staff to learn because the excitement and energy they get from learning is enormous and this energizes the organization (…) A learning environment must be given to work teams, where the sky is the limit (…) we will have to fight day after day against the bureaucracy that restricts learning (…) we will have to eliminate the attitude in the staff of "I know nine things and I teach you eight"; and turn it into "I will teach you nine things today and tomorrow morning I will teach you the tenth" "(J. Welch, exCEO of General Electric. Cit. by Mertens, p. 32)
In other words, from Organizational Learning, interest is being expressed in breaking the old paradigm of individual training to move towards learning throughout the organization as a guarantee of effectiveness. And most importantly, “training” does not end then in any way in the classroom, it is followed by exchange with leaders, colleagues, cross-training between team members, multiplication, honest feedback, a whole corollary consequences that seem as challenging as they are desirable and, it is true, will renew the working atmosphere within any organization until it becomes something different and special.
Knowledge Management
Now, it is not difficult for us to link Organizational Learning and Knowledge Management within the context of the training activity. This is another concept that we need to forcefully activate. In the words of JM Caracho, let's see what a remarkable definition, Knowledge Management is an organizational management process whose objective is to identify the knowledge produced by high-performance workers to convert it into information that can be reused by the rest of company employees. Simply "the company is beginning to realize the importance of« knowing what it knows »and of making the best use of this knowledge (Macitosh, 1997. Cit. By Zorrilla)
Organizational Learning is process, culture; Knowledge Management, the technology necessary to reach it. These are two complementary and essential concepts to understand what we are talking about.
Managing knowledge, in this information age where any knowledge runs the risk of aging before maturing, is not an easy task and here we are not going to detail everything that could be done in this field, but yes, once the path is marked, share a set of essential principles to keep in mind when we want good management.
Principles of Knowledge Management (according to TH Davenport, 1997. Cit. By Zorrilla)
1. It is costly: Capture knowledge in procedures or transfer it to systems, develop infrastructures for its distribution, all this is costly and we must take it into account
2. It is political: It is necessary to cultivate the opinion of certain leaders to achieve the valuation and use of knowledge
- We must not underestimate the influence that certain business environments and cultures have on the application of knowledge. Prejudices, diverse and sometimes conflicting interests act on it. In this sense it is correct to say that "learning has a technical dimension and a political-cultural dimension" (Jakupec; Garrick, 2000. Cit. By Mertens2, p. 16)
3. It is not natural: "If my knowledge is a valuable resource, why should I share it?"
- This has to be a motivated action through rewards, compensation, performance evaluation, etc. Lotus Development, for example, has defined that 25% of the total evaluation of the performance of its workers is given by sharing knowledge. Buckman Laboratories, meanwhile, mentions its one hundred largest knowledge "sharers" at a special annual meeting.
4. It means improving processes: If it is recognized that real improvements must be made in knowledge management, improvements must also be made in processes. Simple, once we perfect our knowledge we can and are obliged to improve our way of working.
5. Access to knowledge is only the beginning: If access to knowledge were sufficient there would be long lines at the entrances of the libraries. The attention and commitment of the worker is also required.
- In order for them, as consumers of knowledge, to pay attention and commit to knowledge, they must become more than passive recipients. A closer and more effective contact with knowledge is sought when we have to summarize it and report it to the rest of our colleagues and to the superior. Why do not do it?
6. It is endless: There is never a time when it can be said that knowledge is fully managed, the criteria of "necessary and sufficient knowledge" are always changing.
Intellectual capital
Knowledge Management implies, in addition to the development of Organizational Learning processes, another very important result, which is itself a new concept of vital work to think economically about the issue of training in the company, we are referring to Intellectual Capital.
Intellectual Capital… Perhaps some use the expression without a deep apprehension of the meaning of the concept, but there are Nobel laureates for working on the new vision of Intellectual Capital, a vision that is called to transform accounting science in depth.
We do not have a single criterion that defines Intellectual Capital universally, but we can stick to the definition of Edwinson and Malone. They in their book "The Intellectual Capital", after an extensive tour of various criteria, affirm: "Intellectual capital is the possession of knowledge, applied experience, organizational technology, professional skills, which give the company a competitive advantage in the market" (quoted by JG Altuve)
If it is true, and it is, that Intellectual Capital is an asset of such value, and that it passes through the know-how of the company, its ability to learn and manage knowledge, topics that we have already seen, it is understandable that we do not neglect this point as a critical variable, sensor of management effectiveness and ultimate significance of the work carried out by the trainer.
In summary, the human being is committed to making a performance leap and this only within organizations that learn, manage their knowledge and capitalize on it. The future does not seem likely to be conceived in other hands than in those who discovered how to work together and take advantage of the experience.
CULTURE OF TRAINING IN THE COMPANY
A little over half a century ago, a company could go without handling the concept of Organizational Culture, without taking into account what was happening with the feelings, perceptions and values of its people. For many social and economic reasons this was not important.
Since then the world as we know was changing, so too the exercise of leadership and one day E. Shein spoke of this construct. Organizational Culture is that set of values, beliefs, emotions that exist in a company, are the result of its history and everyone has learned that precisely those ways of thinking, acting and feeling are the best and they work. This is Organizational Culture, and when it does not agree with the administration's vision, strategy and values, it ends up affecting the Income Statement (demonstrated)
In the XXI century we will not only talk about Organizational Culture, but about a particular expression of it and that interests us in the framework of the reflection that we have been doing. In a company we can talk about the existence or not of a Training Culture.
I share the criterion that while our training actions, experiences of multiplication of knowledge, development of vital skills for the company, while all this, no matter how well thought it is, do not take root as a core element in the culture of the organization, we will have achieved nothing significant and it is very possible that we are still spending more than investing with the training activity.
Talking about a training culture implies an important change since all organizations learn, but not all are based on learning; Nowadays most are focused on performance and therein lies a profound difference that we should seriously note and consider.
“Perhaps the most exciting idea regarding training in recent years has been the so-called 'learning organization'. A company that offers a lot of training is not the same! Obviously, training is a key characteristic, but it is a subtopic of the general objective of creating a culture of continuous learning in which all employees participate “(Cowling, Chap. 5)
A competent trainer should start his work conceiving the training as a key element in the culture of the organization and he will need to transmit this idea to all the interested parties (and interested, sell the idea to the management staff)
Training as an element of the company culture implies:
- Philosophy of workSupport for real needsCommitment of all with trainingResult from the activity of leaders as the main promotersAction and option for allPermanent, continuous managementImprodable differential competitive
The organization where an authentic culture of training predominates will give the following answers to the question: What is training? (see graph)
These are the components of a training culture according to Marrero (p. 8) and I invite you to build a questionnaire on this point without delay. I believe that the reader is in a position to do so and the result will be a tool and a valuable diagnosis of the training culture in the company, opportune if we are planning to “break the ice” and really invest in training.
KNOWLEDGE SOCIETY AND NEW ECONOMY
Everything we have analyzed is inserted into a social reality that legitimizes it amply. CE Marrero (2001) summarizes what he calls the keys to the new society, namely (p. 8)
- From the industrial society to that of knowledge Knowledge as a great economic resource over capital, land and machines Development of companies whose fundamental raw material will be Knowledge Decrease in employment in industry Growth in services Disappearance of administrative labor Progressive disappearance of bureaucracy Revolution From the manager: unstable, creative
The change is truly dramatic, and although it will not be felt the same in the First and Third World, its imprint is clear and defining. In the context of this reality “No one can expect that the initial stock of knowledge constituted in youth will be sufficient for life, since the rapid evolution of the world requires a permanent updating of knowledge” (UNESCO Report. Ch. 5, International Commission on Education for the 21st Century, cit. INCOMEX Training Workshop, p. 23)
This “new society” requires a consecrated support in terms of training. The Sintra Declaration, VIII Ibero-American Conference on Education, in its fourth We consider affirms (Cit. INCOMEX Training Workshop, p. 19) “That information and knowledge take on a new meaning in this context, both in production processes and in the social and cultural, becoming strategic elements "(the highlight is ours)
Let us reason, let us not neglect the speed with which we march towards the Knowledge Society, this New Economy that demands a tremendous ability to create, use and multiply a kind of special knowledge, a knowledge that produces results.
COMPETENCE BASED TRAINING - FBC
"How?…" We no longer want to talk about the what, or who or when, we need to know how to make training an engine of change, competitiveness and real wealth for our organization. It is useful in this sense that we return to the idea that not all knowledge produces results, there are also sterile results, pure hollow information from any application. Lots of "culture" unable to translate into practical action and progress. This knowledge, needless to say, is not true intellectual capital.
Based on the above, we need to understand that Competency Management is the starting point of all truly effective training. "It should be - says Zúñiga - the leitmotiv of current training programs" (Zúñiga, 2000)
Levy-Leboyer says: "… the notion of competencies is a newcomer to the vocabulary of work psychologists and, more generally, of human resource managers" (Levy-Leboyer, p. 35) But as novel it cannot be incomprehensible or conceptually poorly treated.
Management by Competences is our fourth vital reference in this advance towards a truly effective Training and Development (F + D) activity. Competition is what allows us to succeed, which is causally linked to success and that we need to train. Competences is not an abstract concept, it is behavior, we must be able to feel them, measure them; We must know that they are anchored in observable behaviors and contribute to the suitability of the worker.
Competency Management, as a philosophy and policy of managing people in an organization, models the learning we really need (our capital) and thus also defines how we will learn, how we will make that new knowledge or skill that makes the success of the company. Competency Management, said in a less technical and more entrepreneurial language, is what we do to ensure we have the right person in the right place at the right time.
When we train, we only promote this: to train, root and develop competencies. For a better understanding of the competences we are going to separate them into three classes:
- Qualification: what the expert personnel know Talent: their abilities, skills, abilities of a generic or specific nature Talent: the will, the desires, the motives, the tastes and values that make the person do what is planned.
It is impressive how the training begins to expand its range of action, it travels from knowing to knowing how, until reaching the desire to do. A good training action must mobilize us at these three levels if we expect from it any return or benefit for the company. This is very important to keep in mind. It is common sense and precisely that is what Competency Based Training (FBC) is all about
Let's review some of the precepts of this work model, as a guide and for a better understanding of training when supported by competencies (Adaptation of Mertens, p. 93 based on Harris, et. Al. 1991)
- The competences that the worker will have to fulfill are carefully identified Instruction is directed to the development of each competence and to an individual evaluation of them The evaluation takes into account the knowledge, attitudes and performance of the competence as the main source of evidence Instruction is individualized to the maximum possible Learning experiences are guided by frequent feedback Emphasis is placed on achieving concrete results The rate of progress of the instruction is individual and not by time The instruction is made with didactic material that reflects real situations and experiences Teaching is less directed to expose topics and more to the process of construction of knowledge by individuals
LEARNING LEVELS
So far we are "unraveling" the problem of training in the business field and essential concepts such as Competency-Based Training appear, but which competencies would it be valid to ask ourselves: Where is the demand of the moment for the human factor? What do we need from people? Self-leadership, initiative, creativity, loyalty, motivation… all this gives us a forced foot to introduce another important and almost obvious aspect when we talk about Training: there are Levels of Learning.
Learning the procedure to reconcile Accounts Receivable is not the same as acting in front of the debtor Client, skillfully managing the relationship so as not to lose it, and this is still far from being what it means to “feel” the performance of the company as its own thing. They are levels that affect us in different ways and that must be carefully planned.
K. Anbender (Ref. By Goldsmith and Cloke, p. 183) points out that moving from conferences and trainings to actions where dialogue and self-examination are fostered changes the emphasis of the training results: from knowing and knowing how, we will be able to understand and most importantly, mobilize our way of being. The figure below is inspired by Anbender's distinction.
Remembering the words of a dear teacher, our professionalism is real when, in a way of being in a situation, it simply becomes a way of being and is something intrinsic to us.
That is the final message of the previous figure. Each level represents competencies with valuable functions but the Self-examination and dialogue, the exercise and experience of leadership, assuming effective regulatory values of our conduct, all this produces maximum integrity and more committed leadership in a period of longer duration than any of the rest of the previous practices. These are also the primary learning processes of learning organizations.
TRAINING OPTIONS FOR A NEW ERA
I reiterate the idea that companies cannot continue training as they do today, that is no longer training in the sense of providing capacity or ability. The current demand is greater and the offer of information, which is what “going to a course” usually means, does not prepare us to be up to the moment. There are (rare) exceptions and also areas of knowledge where it is easier to get to practice but the common denominator is that the training does not explore the most necessary Levels of Learning, those that promote changes throughout the Company and provide it with the ability to be better Organization.
We are going to discover two very peculiar training options that are not normally used by us. These break the traditional scheme, are novel, are executed without the intervention of third parties and are closely related to the most modern approaches in pedagogy: personalized treatment, educate rather than instruct, form values.
In our Training Policy and objectives, we should consider a position where, intelligently, we make use of these alternatives. I propose to consider the Young Talents, Reserves of Tables, Young Executives, Key Positions, as the first beneficiaries of what is exposed here.
Transformational Training
The point of view of transformational training is not simply to help people become more skillful and successful, but to encourage them to believe in themselves, who they are and who they can be.
The trainer discovers and communicates each person's special abilities and talents, empowering them to contribute in unique ways to the greater effort. For this reason it necessarily extends beyond improving performance to changing the lives of those they train.
“Trainers listen for passion, values, and commitments, watch their translation in action, and talk in the way of closing the gaps between them… It may even seem that the coach is more passionate and committed than the 'player', but the coach is only calling and giving attention to the performer's first principles at key decision moments ”(Goldsmith and Cloke, p. 77)
Transformational training needs to look below the surface, wake people up, and challenge them to change, not in a way that avoids getting into their core issues, but in ways that alter their lives and allow them to leave behind their old patterns and discover ways of being deeper and more authentic. Balance positive reinforcement with critical perception. Provides feedback for change of direction.
Strategic Tutoring
"We all need tutors to help us be more strategic, in other words, to show us how to link our intentions with the results we want… Organizational tutors draw on their vast experience, seniority, contacts and understanding of the details, subtleties and complexities of policy and organizational culture in order to reveal hidden communication mechanisms, create bonds that are beyond our reach, guide us through the mazes of power, and teach us the strategy for intentional success ”(Goldsmith and Cloke, p. 90)
Simply put, strategic tutors awaken us and work as artisans in a carefully planned approach to purposeful self-development, increasing our ability to learn.
Unlike the trainer, they focus their attention on the context that surrounds us more than on our being.
Let's look at the results of a mentoring program reported by Gallup (ref. By Goldsmith and Cloke, p. 93)
- 81.9% of the tutored receive evaluations of the performance on average or excellent. Baseline of this program: 40.9% Self-confidence in relation to promotion increased from 63.6% before to 90.9% The capacity for decision-making improved from 81.9% to 95.5% after introducing the program 95.5% considered continuing in the organization after of the tutoring opposed to the initial 72.7%
Furthermore, the mentoring process can be used to help not only individuals, but entire work teams and departments, allowing them to sharpen their collective skills, improve their capacity for self-direction, detect problems in their relationships and processes and position to the team or department strategically within the organization. Each team thus becomes an engine of strategic advantage for the benefit of the organization as a whole.
TRAINING PLAN
If there is a document that summarizes and gives substance to what we have exposed so far, that is the Training Plan. I dare to say that it is one of the least recognized and monitored business plans, sometimes only the trainer has seen it even though it should have been an important part of the agreement between the Administration and the Union.
The Training Plan certainly lacks rigor and above all a sense of plan. Carrying out a training action, or many training actions, is different from developing a training plan. Many companies fall into this error and are content listing the actions of the year.
"… doing many training courses does not lead to an increase in productivity in the company, or an increase in motivation and esteem of the employee… Furthermore, poorly planned training or carried out simply at random, has side effects of demotivation and lack of confidence… ”(INCOMEX, 2nd Training Workshop, p. 11)
Every Training Plan is a means and not an end in itself. For this reason, perfectly defined objectives must be pursued at all times before undertaking training actions. Avoid taking unrelated or random actions.
Defining clear training objectives, which above all add value to the management of the company, which add to the "central direction of the coup" (as a friend would say) is as important in this activity as in any other. "… setting challenging but realistic goals helps protect against complacency, deviations, internal confusion about what you want to achieve, a results-oriented climate emerges and every part of the organization struggles to achieve them" (Thompson and Strickland III, p. 5)
And about this it is good to capture a relevant idea: the training objectives are not the HR objectives, they are also the objectives of your area and mine, where we are going to learn and exploit knowledge.
To be effective in principle, this plan must be highly sensitive to all the training needs that give rise to it. These are of different types, normally we can group them into three categories:
Needs of the individual
It consists of the expectations of each individual in the face of their greater professionalization: this plan would be highly motivating but not very operational due to excess demand.
Job Needs
Anything that a holder lacks in order to master his job is called necessity. So it is the difference or gap that exists between the required level and the level that the person exhibits. The participation of the supervisor is essential in this diagnosis and often fails because of this. It is the most traditional conception. Its advantage is operability, it has against the possible imposition of training actions
Organization Needs
The possible danger of the previous plan would be that it only faces current problems leaving aside future problems. The needs of the organization consider this aspect. As is clear, these needs are defined almost exclusively by the management of the company.
In short, the worker's expectations regarding training and their needs in the position allow the creation of effective work teams. The organization's project will structure the work teams and coordinate them efficiently.
Considering the three sources of training needs, the trainer will focus on designing an Integrated Training Plan. This should collect the needs located in the shaded area of the following figure.
Fig.: Integrated Training Plan
The expectations and interests of the worker, the requirements of the position and the projects of the company will often be able to come into contact and these are the training needs that are worth investing in. It is the way we have to give our planning the attributes of Effective, Operational and Motivating. This is how the worker will be interested in knowledge, will use it in the position, and their contribution will be important for the organization's goals. We are talking about effective training.
EFFECTIVENESS ASSESSMENT
Interest in this aspect arose a few years ago, a brief account makes this clear.
Currently, however, evaluating the effectiveness of training has become almost an obsession for specialists in the field. Important conditioning factor: the ISO 9001: 2000 Standard, as it raises this requirement in point 6.2.2 "Competence, Awareness and Training".
In our environment, research groups have proliferated to undertake the task of building models for evaluating effectiveness, but it does not seem that this is a question that we can leave exclusively to the university. It is the business of the businessman to take care of his resources and to make the capital and training work, we know, it is a powerful investment or an irrational expense. We are required to learn how to assess whether it is effective or not.
The strongest reference that we have to guide this work in the company is DL Kirkpatrick, as it is one of those that best systematizes the current results on the subject. According to this author, any training action can be valued at four levels:
- REACTION (Did you like the action?) LEARNING (Did you learn?) TRANSFER (Did you use what you learned?) IMPACT (Did the company benefit?)
Without answering these questions we cannot speak of Evaluation of Effectiveness. Without answering these questions it would be absurd to train because we would be playing with the budget.
Each of these levels has its own requirements whenever they touch different aspects, be they emotional, cognitive, behavioral, economic, commercial or organizational aspects. Let us establish some requirements that, in each one of them, ensure the effectiveness of the action:
I. REACTION
- Voluntary assistance Much participation Rewards
II. LEARNING
- Highly focused content A lot of practice of what is intended to be taught Starting from an understanding of the real work being done
III. TRANSFER
- Focus on high demand skills in the job Train intact groups (work teams as a whole) Provide practice and support in the job
IV. IMPACT
- Focus only on critical capabilities for the mission of the job or company Train intact groups Provide practice and support in the job Clearly define what successful performance would look like (Performance Criteria) Convert benefits to a measurement system of interest to the company
With these requirements, the trainer already has an orientation, a standard by which to measure how close or far from the conditions set out to effectively manage the training actions.
The level proposal also makes it clear to us that the ultimate goal of training is to generate Impact, it is of no use that we like it, that we learn, that we even use knowledge, if this does not yield real benefit for the company.
Impact
We want to dedicate a special section to this level of evaluation due to the importance and complexity it contains. How to assess impact?
The economic perspective would be the most classic. In this case we would try to calculate ROI: Return on Investment. Relating the Benefits against Investment we obtain an objective index that tells us how much we earn with respect to the investment.
Applying ROI to assess Impact is possible when the benefit of training can be translated into an economic benefit, in cash, when it is tangible.
If with the training we achieve an improvement in the productive levels, better managed warehouses, more sales, less expenses, more charges, less rejections, etc., all this can be interpreted financially and in turn we could assess whether what we pay to train the man To obtain these results it was profitable.
The pitfall is that not all the benefits of training are tangible. They do not always translate into a concrete commercial result, in money.
If we remember, we will remember that training meets multiple needs, more personal, more of the organization. We can train to develop motivation and a sense of belonging. We can provide a lot of training to promote corporate culture and corporate identity, "feel one". Sometimes we will go in search of diverse skills, which imply greater productivity, but in administrative tasks, indirect to production and therefore with little chance of linking them to an economic result.
In these cases ROI is not feasible to assess the impact of training and although for some, more attached to quantitative thinking, only the numbers measure, the truth is that we can go to another scheme that is also feasible: ROE, Profitability of Expectations.
"Measure whether your training program produced the desired results based on what your Client will accept as evidence of improvement" (IDI Symposium Evaluation of Training Impact, 2001)
This is the essence of ROE, evaluating whether or not we meet the expectations of those who expect some benefit from training. This is why it is so vitally important to have a clear picture of what successful performance will look like after action is received.
Return on Investment or Return on Expectations, both constitute models of thought and essential tools that, in the hands of the trainer, can mean valuable information to Senior Management regarding the Impact of training, the tangible benefits that the company receives with this activity.
CONCLUSION
This work has been a journey, a journey through a set of possible areas when we talk about training in the company. It was the attempt to redefine an undervalued and instead key activity of competitiveness today. Although we did not set out to delve into all the areas of the problem, each one vast enough, provides coordinates, principles, alerts and to some extent practical and technical criteria to organize the task or supervise it as appropriate.
If the manager and the trainer can, with this reading, approach and dialogue; if the trainer for her part manages to add something significant to the management of the company in which she is immersed, or if the organization as a whole discovers the pleasure and effectiveness of operating within a Training Culture; then this work will have fulfilled its mission and it only remains for us to overcome it.
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