Trend In Non-Productive Learning and Development as Part of Capacity Building in the Workplace

Trend In Non-Productive Learning and Development as Part of Capacity Building in the Workplace

TO: Professor

FROM: XXX
DATE: XXXX
RE:  Trend In Non-Productive Learning and Development as Part of Capacity Building in the Workplace

Identification of the Issue

Employee capacity building plays a fundamental role in the organization. It assists in furthering the organizational capacity in doing new things and the improvement of what they are presently doing.  Most clearly, capacity building helps in the development of the organization’s performance and improves the capacity to continue staying context with the environment that is rapidly changing. The issue, however, despite most organizations investing heavily in the employee’s learning and development as part of their capacity building, most of the employees are still presenting with low skills and capability. It appears that innovative and contextual learning is at the core of the modern capacity building. Any organization that is not innovative does not reap any benefits associated with capacity building despite the considerable investments in learning and development.

Summary of the articles

Article 1: Brix, J. (2019), “Innovation capacity building: An approach to maintaining balance between exploration and exploitation in organizational learning,” The Learning Organization, Vol. 26 No. 1, pp. 12-26. https://doi.org/10.1108/TLO-08-2018-0143

This article sought to make a proposition on the ways of creating an ambidextrous organization can be realized.  Brix (2019) integrates research on the concept of “contextual ambidexterity” and capacity building based on innovation and striking a balance between exploration and exploitation can be realized.  Therefore, using a conceptual framework, the study focuses on the establishment of the linkage between exploration and exploitation, along with the benefits of the proposed innovation-oriented capacity building. The study found that most organizations incline either focus on the investigation or exploitations, thus failing to meet their learning goals. He observes that organization management fails to understand their role in supporting the capacity building of its employees.  According to   Brix (2019), the role of management is helping the employees in gaining access to the pertinent capacity building initiatives that correlate with their job. .

Further, the management has a crucial role in supporting the employees and providing them with the relevant feedback in regards to the concepts of “learning by doing” when switching between tasks that connects to the exploration and exploitations. With the employee getting feedback and learning on the job, it results in the motivation empowerment in a sense the employees begin to feel control of the situations at work. They can execute his or her job more satisfactorily. Besides, the management can offer the individual employee more ability to make a decision and are therefore ready to take on their obligation, and this is precisely the new roles in the organization that is grounded on contextual ambidexterity.    Also, Brix (2019) found that the role of the employee changes as they incessantly empowered to take action in a contextual ambidextrous organization as opposed to the formalized organization. Therefore, the authors suggest ideas that can be used in promoting organizational learning. First, it means providing the employees with the competences as well as tools of switching from exploratory to exploitive capacities. Then, a proposition of how learning-oriented feedback, along with forwarding relationships, can be realized between the management and the employees in supporting capacity building. The author concludes that taking an innovative capacity building will help in performance improvement (Brix, 2019).

Article 2: Glaveski, S. (2019, November 6). Where Companies Go Wrong with Learning and Development. Retrieved from https://hbr.org/2019/10/where-companies-go-wrong-with-learning-and-development

This article examines why learning and development are no longer beneficial to the organization. According to Glaveski(2019), the organization spent $359 billion all over the work on matters relating to training and development.  Looking at whether this investment was worth it, Glaveski (2019) shows that it was not. One, 75 percent of the 1500 managers used in this survey were not satisfied with the functionality of the learning and development as part of their capacity building. Furthermore, 70 percent of the employees reported that they lack m mastery of the skills required in doing their jobs and only a mere 12 percent of the employees trained to apply the newly obtained skills in their jobs.   Also, it is only about 25 percent of the respondents are convinced that training helps in the improvement of the performance, and this shows that there is a massive problem in the organizations.

Glaveski (2019) states that not only is most of the training today not effective but has a poor connection with the purpose, time, and even what is taught to the employees. The author cites various things that may be a contribution to this ineffectiveness of learning and developing, stating that learning is done for “the wrong time” “wrong things” and easily forget what has been learned (Glaveski, 2019). As a result, he states that the modern-fast evolving landscape demands that organizations adapt to the changing environments by learning at the core, applying it to the real world, getting feedback and repetition of the cycle, and ultimately applying what has been learned. Other approaches include the use of personalized content, continuous support, and peer learning, and finally focusing on the outcomes.

Significance of the issue to HRD

Learning and development are key aspects of human resources management as part of the capacity building. Effective learning development does not just contribute to the development of a person as a whole but also the organization and, most importantly, in the achievement of the corporate goals. Learning and development were instituted as a strategy for building the capacity of the employees. However, it now poses a more significant challenge. With research demonstrating the capacity building through learning and development may not be yielding a lot, the human resource professional must find new ways of dealing with promoting the capacity of the employee.  The HRD professional is tasked with ensuring that the organizations invest in the capacity building and that in the long run, the organization will see the benefits accrued from this investment and therefore, it is  their role to ensure that  the approaches taken in learning and development of the employees are that which meet the needs of the employee

 Recommendations

Given the problem associated with today’s capacity building in the organizations, the following approaches are adopted as the recommendation:

The HRD professional should focus on employee-oriented learning by ensuring that the needs of each individual are addressed.  The most organization makes the mistakes of assuming that the employees have the same needs and subsequently use the same strategies in supporting their learning and development (Armstrong & Taylor, 2020). Therefore, it is critical to ensure that human resource management seeks to understand the needs of each employee and to use the approach, including the learning styles, in meeting those needs.

An organization should support peer learning as a tool for capacity building. Research suggests the inclination of the employees to learn through others as opposed to sitting down and listening to experts. Therefore, the HRD professions must focus on integrating peer learning as part of capacity building to eliminate the instances where they will investment made is not worth it (Aziz, 2020).

References

Brix, J. (2019), “Innovation capacity building: An approach to maintaining balance between exploration and exploitation in organizational learning,” The Learning Organization, Vol. 26 No. 1, pp. 12-26. https://doi.org/10.1108/TLO-08-2018-0143

Armstrong, M., & Taylor, S. (2020). Armstrong’s handbook of human resource management practice. Kogan Page Publishers.

Aziz, U. A. (2020). Human resource development: The education and training aspect. Malaysia’s vision, 327-359.

Glaveski, S. (2019, November 6). Where Companies Go Wrong with Learning and Development. Retrieved from https://hbr.org/2019/10/where-companies-go-wrong-with-learning-and-development