SAVE | EMAIL | PRINT | MOST POPULAR |  RSS | | REPRINT
|
Learning in the Fast Lane
July 03, 2008
You have great training programs in place, and your workers are slowly acquiring the competencies they need. The problem is it's taking too long. It may be time to put them on a fast track to learning the skills they need for continued success.
By Arupa Tesolin
While the world shrunk in pursuit of a globalized economy, both major and minor players unwittingly created the world's largest post-industrial society in North America. The indeterminate trend to outsource and offshore production and services created both winners and losers. In the balance, the social pact, that had allowed employees to share in the wealth they helped create, broke apart. Profit increases were no longer shared by employees and their local communities, but strictly with senior management, shareholders, and offshore companies.
Winners included workers in affordable economies who took on the work of displaced North American workers, distant local economies who benefited from the increased wealth of their neighbors and shareholders, and executives and owners of North American and offshore companies who reaped higher profits, increased share value, and higher salaries. Losers were those for whom the more sophisticated terms of "Talent Gap" and "Skills Gap" meant they were laid off and needed to find a new job—one that often paid less than their old one—or re-train full-time for a new job that would pay the same or less after their education and lifestyle costs were paid.
Social gaps among North American workers have stratified and condensed into several new groups: the working poor; the temporary worker; the working wounded; the classically disengaged; the overeducated and underemployed; the newly hot skilled trades sector; the technical and professional class; the project-to-project creative professionals; the self-employed; the corporate class including the bulk of soon-to-be retired Boomers who still have good jobs and pensions; and the under 30's and new immigrants still looking for their first decent full-time job so they can give up the low-paying and part-time jobs they've been juggling in the interim.
Experts cried over an impending talent war several years ago. What they meant is organizations would have to "fight" over a scarce supply of global talent. They didn't talk much about the possibility that both economics and technology might have an interesting way of leveling the playing field. Fortunately, the impasse creates continued employment for public policy analysts who now are trying to find solutions to think outside the mess and grow the economy.
Not all countries enjoy turfing-out workers to fatten shareholder's wallets as much as we do in North America. Some countries maintain a social and ethical value for creating work because they recognize that keeping people gainfully employed, when the alternative is unemployment, helps the whole economy. As the gravitas of the current situation becomes more visible every day, North America is beginning to see the impact of their failure to do the same.
Fast-track training approaches are the light at the end of the economic tunnel. They bring tractable solutions to things that are important to economic development and rebuilding a strong economy. Investment at all levels of talent, capital, and skill are needed to support the emerging next economy.
Twenty and thirty years ago, before organizations expected educational institutions to deliver fully trained employees with degrees, all companies trained their work and talent force themselves. The learning front has evolved considerably since then. What would take years to learn now can be effectively done in months and even weeks. While a lot has been said about the use of fast-track approaches to leverage learning, such as e-learning and other quick learning technologies, less has been said about accelerated learning approaches. A beacon light on the horizon to help create the next economy is through the use of Learning Paths to fast-track employee training and performance. The Learning Paths approach, introduced by Steve Rosenbaum of Learning Paths International and co-author of the book, "Learning Paths," provides the training field with a discipline to speed up time-to-proficiency and improve performance.
In a time when trainers are still trying to convince business managers of their value, this approach requires very little convincing. Both the learning path and the business track are the same. Results are always observable and measurable. Business returns include lower costs and time for training and increased sales or service from performance gains, which boosts profit.
Learning Paths represent a marriage of quality, re-engineering, and accelerated training methodologies. A Learning Path is defined as the sequence of both formal and informal training, practice, experience, coaching, and anything else that leads to proficiency. They can be used for everything from creating jobs and re-training workers to increasing proficiency of existing staff or maximizing productivity for in-sourcing, outsourcing, and integrating learning operations for mergers or acquisitions. Some, like Ed Robbins, a respected former GE Capital director of learning, say Learning Paths is one of the most exciting developments to happen in the training industry for a long time.
Every day an employee isn’t productive costs a company both money and customers, it also reduces morale and introduces unwanted turnover. By optimizing learning outcomes, employees become more knowledgeable and capable faster, have more enthusiasm for the impact they have on the organization, and are clearer about the business outcomes they need to achieve.
Learning Paths as a training discipline evolved when Steve, a trainer and consultant for companies such as Disney, Dupont, and Carlson Wagonlit, was introduced by Ed Robbins to Jim Williams, then a training leader at General Electric. They began to develop and apply a quality-improvement method to training projects. Together, with their clearly impressed clients and Learning Path participants, they began seeing remarkable success with their method, which was clearly superior to the typical curriculum-based approach used by most training departments and management.
Each Learning Path Project is done for a single function of employees, ranging from sales staff to health-care workers, in every sector, from financial to service to manufacturing, and saves a bottom-line average of 30 to 50 percent in time-to-proficiency. Although 30 percent usually is the minimum, Steve says the average based on projects done for over 30,000 employees in 400 functions across 7 countries is closer to 50 percent.
What Learning Paths do best is apply the discipline and measures of the quality movement to training. The result creates high impact, not only by shortening the learning curve, but also maximizing performance. Here’s how they work. The upfront measure is to establish what proficiency looks like for a well performing employee, and how long it typically takes employees to get there. Sometimes they never get there.
Usually real learning begins once the classroom or training program ends. How learning happens tends to be more informal and highly subjective depending on who the supervisor is or how helpful, knowledgeable, or close-by colleagues are. A Learning Paths approach removes the variation in learning and ensures the right things are taught the right way and in the shortest time. The focus is on achieving that independent proficiency level using the best combination of formal and informal training while the job is getting done. The biggest time and performance gains tend to happen during the so-called "Mystery Period" between when training ends and proficiency is achieved.
The best people to start Learning Path initiatives include operations management, training leaders and their executives, quality program leaders, sales and marketing leaders, and finance executives and comptrollers. Learning Paths Certification is available for internal training leaders from Learning Paths International.
Learning Paths can be used to:
• Train new employees faster
• Create high performers
• Increase proficiency of existing employees
• Turn average performers into high performers
• Fast-track professional training programs
• Increase sales or improve service performance
• Reduce job turnover
• Create jobs or re-train workers to address skill shortages
• Launch new products or services
• Outsource or in-source operations
• Revise or upgrade existing training
• Close learning gaps before workforce retirements occur
• Integrate learning in mergers & acquisitions
Industry Results:
Rail Industry: Job Creation and Re-Training
A state college established a seven-week Rail Conductor School to train staff, who were productive from Day 1, and addressed a severe industry shortage of qualified staff.
Banking/Insurance: Increase Sales
New sales people selling insurance for a major bank quickly began outperforming existing sales people after a Learning Path was implemented.
Pharmaceutical Sales and Service: Improve Services
A leading mail order pharmacy reduced time-to-proficiency by 40 percent and implemented over 40 service improvements to call center operations and fulfillment functions.
Health Care Services: Reduce High Turnover
Axis Minnesota partnered with Century College and the State Department of Economic Opportunity to increase proficiency while reducing turnover from 50 percent to virtually zero.
Equipment Leasing: Create High Performers
GE Capital moved an existing sales force from proficient to high performance.
Manufacturing: New Plant Start Up
A major international manufacturer of building materials accelerated development of new hires to ease a plant start up, and improved employee performance in other plants.
Arupa Tesolin is a speaker, innovation trainer, and author of two recent books: "Ting! A Surprising Way to Listen to Intuition & Do Business Better" and the innovation book, "Spark." She is the Canadian Partner for Learning Paths International. To learn more, visit www.intuita.com and www.learningpathsinternational.com. You can contact Tesolin at arupa@intuita.com or 905-271-7272.
|
SAVE | EMAIL | PRINT | MOST POPULAR | RSS |
|
|
| Back to Marketing Index |
|
|
