LEARNING AND DEVELOPMENT

Understanding Learning and Development
Learning and development strategies and practices, described as essential part of any organization in developing employee’s knowledge, skills, and competencies to carry out their day-to-day work effectively and efficiently with the objective of employee’s career advancement and achieving organizational goals (Armstrong, 2014).

Strategic Human Resource Development is a process of introducing, eliminating, modifying, directing, and guiding employees with the determination whether employees are equipped with numerous skills, knowledge, and competencies to undertake any challenging tasks assigned to them (Damnjanovic, 2016).

At the 21st Century, organizations show more involvement to invest in Learning & Development programs by considering the shortage of acquiring right talented employees and keep them retained in the organization due to high competition (Dam van, 2017). The emergence of digital era, technology advancement, innovative creation, new business model, globalization, new legislation, and ageing workforce have high impact in developing employee capabilities using organizational resources effectively at the rapid speed (Dam van, 2017).  

The only factor that matters to increase the level of organization profitability is through effective human resource practice, and training and development program (Depoo, 2013). Therefore, every organization focuses on improving education and learning of each employee to develop their social value and behaviour at the workplace (Depoo, 2013). Employees who undergone effective learning and development program are highly interested in achieving organizational goals, cooperative, communicative, proactive, respectful, trustful, and always willing to learn new things (Depoo, 2013).  

70:20:10 Model in Learning and Development
70:20:10 is a learning and development theory that captures different ways of employees learning and development process.
Based on this theory, 70% of employees learn from experiences through completing daily tasks, resolving issues and continuous improvement. This learning method is self-directed and enables employees to learn via on-the-job work experience. This practice allows employees to explore and enhance their job-based skills such as, learning from mistakes, receiving open feedback on performance and decision-making skills to solve problems to complete assigned task (Jennings, 2011).

20% of employees considered as social learners. It is known providing employees an opportunity to interact and to maintain good relationship with co-workers and managers to complete certain task together by overcoming the challenges towards achieve a common goal. 20% learning model can be achieved through launching mentoring, leadership coaching session, involvement in cross-functional projects and regular feedback (Jennings, 2011).      

10% of employees are basic learners, they were trained through formal coursework training like videos, webinars, career development classes and panel discussions (Jennings, 2011). 

The below video-1 explains the effective approach of 70:20:10 rule in Learning and Development for an organization.

Video-1 : 70:20:10 rule approach in Learning and Development

                                            Source : (The 70:20:10 institute)

Creating a Learning culture

Creating a learning culture is one of the development process practiced by top management and line managers to engage employees continuously towards work (Armstrong, 2014). The main characteristics of learning culture are self-managed learning, empowerment, and long-term vision (Armstrong, 2014).

Employees will be more committed to range of positive attitude and behaviour when better learning culture created within workplace (Reynolds, 2004).  

Reynolds (2004) suggested following organizational practices to create a learning culture,

·   Develop a shared vision with a belief in emerging future factors which influence organization performance.

·      Empower employees by providing certain boundaries such as policies and unethical behaviour and encourage them to adopt the challenging situation by giving work responsibility and decision-making authority when needed.

·  Providing employees with supportive learning environment such as, supportive policies and regulations where learning capabilities can be discovered.

·   Using effective coaching techniques to identify talents and encourage employees to find varies options to solve problems on their own.

·       Guide employees throughout their challenging work, and provide them with enough resources, time, and effective feedback for performance.  

·     Creating SMART learning objective (Specific, Measurable, Assignable, Realistic, Time bound) will increase employee satisfaction and positive work environment. 

The Travel Agency company which I work for, provide hands on experience to employees by creating exceptional working environment, and continuous learning and development program to make sure whether employees are satisfied on their job role. Each employee from different department such as, Ticketing, and Tours has to undergo necessary training program and presentations to facilitate the day-to-day changing regulations and advancement software when issuing tickets and dealing with overseas travel agents.

List of references

Armstrong, M and Taylor, S. (2014). Armstrong’s handbook of human resource management practice. 13th ed. London: Kogan page Limited. (PP.284-286).

Damnjanovic, A. (2016). Learning and Development in modern organization: Economics and management based on new technologies,

Dam Van, N. H. M. (2017). 21st Century Corporate Learning & Development Practices, 1st editionbookboon.com,

Depoo, L. (2013). Employee Learning and Development in organizations: Journal on Efficiency and Responsibility in Education and Science. Vol.6(3).pp.179-189

Jennings, C. and Wargnier, J. (2011). Effective Learning with 70:20:10 : The new frontier for the extended enterprise.

Reynolds, J (2004) Helping People Learn: Chartered Institute of Personal Development, London.

The 70:20:10 Institute, (2017). The 70:20:10 Road map. [video] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fyAeyq8nfhM [Accessed on 13 May 2021]







Comments

  1. Duminda Perera15 May 2021 at 01:56

    Well Explained Sujeendran, Reynolds (2004) describes a learning culture as a ‘growth medium’ that will ‘encourage employees to commit to a range of positive discretionary behaviors, including learning’ and which has the following characteristics: empowerment not supervision, self-managed learning not instruction, long-term capacity building not short-term fixes.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. E.Sujeendran16 May 2021 at 06:22

      Agree Duminda, Learning is a long-term vision which helps employees to interpret their role, responsibilities, and relationship with a better training and learning. A true learning culture allow to take decision, solve problems, overcome challenges by empowering employees in way to ensure continuous improvement (Hussein, 2015).

      Delete
  2. Uddika Pathiranage15 May 2021 at 07:05

    Agree. Further, Garvin, Edmondson and Gino (2008) say, an organization having employees with the capability to create, acquire and transfer knowledge, would create an organizational culture, where fostering open discussions, tolerating ideas, thinking in holistic and systematic ways are norms, which would allow the organization to gain the adaptability to unpredictable situations, much quicker than the competitors.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. E.Sujeendran16 May 2021 at 06:44

      Yes uddika, learning culture acquires new knowledge and skills supported by organization environment, that encourage surfacing, noticing, gathering, sharing, and applying new knowledge. Learning culture of the organization created in a way how employees' communicate with each other, lead, and evaluate their performance at the workplace to achieve the objective (Garvin, 2008).

      Delete
  3. Oshadee Wanasinghe15 May 2021 at 09:38

    Absolutely Sujeendran. According to an article written by Speed (2018) for Training Journal, researches have found that two out of three UK workers have switched jobs due to lack of training and development. Therefore, organizations should possess a proper learning and development plan. The learning and development plan of an organization supports the employees’ career and personal development by acting as a road map. It also help organizations to identify important roles and to fill skills gaps by improving the talent levels of those key personnel.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Wasantha Basnayake16 May 2021 at 00:27

    Agree with you. Learning and development policies and programmes are essential components in the process of talent management ensuring that people acquire and enhance the skills and competencies they need. Policies should be formulated by reference to ‘employee success profiles’, which are described in terms of competencies and define the qualities that need to be developed. Employee success profiles can be incorporated in role profiles(Armstrong,M.2009).

    ReplyDelete
  5. Arjun Landers16 May 2021 at 09:21

    Yes Sujeendran, The 70:20:10 model is used to widely used to guide learning and development programs (Johnson et al., 2018). However, the 70:20:10 model also has criticisms of lack of empirical data about the survey that resulted the particular model as only feedback of 200 executives who were already successful was taken in to consideration in the survey and it is purely based on them without any scientific background (Masden and Kajewski, 2012).
    Therefore it is beneficial if more researches are conducted on this subject to back it up with more scientific evidence.

















    ReplyDelete
  6. Rajasingham Sathaharan16 May 2021 at 10:51

    Learning occurs in the internal environment and the external environment. The internal environment has to do with those variables that are within the control of organisational managers. They include structures, people, and processes. The external environments are those variables outside the control of organisation managers such as competitors, clients, political, economic and legal systems of the business operating environment (Odor, 2018).

    ReplyDelete
  7. gagana_amadoru17 May 2021 at 06:54

    Indeed, learning and development reflect organizational objectives, in addition The concept of training has gained more popularity in human resources due to its positive association with employee performance (Kiweewa & Asiimwe, 2014).

    ReplyDelete
  8. Vindya Ratnayake17 May 2021 at 23:59

    Agree with you. An empowered learning and development team improves employee retention. Learning and development is amazing. It helps companies gain and retain top talent, it improves productivity, and learning & development helps companies earn more profit (Vinikas, 2021).

    ReplyDelete

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