Training a real profession in a global workplace.

Good afternoon tribe members, I hope you are all well out there. It seems like it is that time of the year again for training and skills development professionals planning the new workplace skills plan or annual training plan, plus put the annual training report together for the SETA that you are registered with for feedback and grant claim purposes. For larger corporate organisations it can be quite daunting and let me give you a little hint here. Put the Workplace Skills Plan (WSP) together, use it as an opportunity to get your peer's in other departments inputs, leverage the process to get staff onboard.

Times might be tough, but by bringing the grants back in you demonstrate your value directly into the organisation and its leadership. This is a key area for all of us to focus on in the direct future. Providing quantifiable metrics and return on training investment is a key component that training professionals need to incorporate in their day-to-day operations. How can I bring more value into the organisation and how can the training department support the attainment of key organisational objectives? Ask yourself that. That question is really key to you moving from a process-reactive trainer mode to a proactive-objective trainer mode. A far better place to be in and to be leading from. Training or as the american society for training and development calls it workplace learning and performance (WLP) has come into its own. Have a look at this short YouTube clip below regarding the global view of training and development.



Now after that little bit of motivation and hopefully inspiration you will recognise how critical it is to be deeply involved in the key core business processes and not just conduct the usual training needs analysis at very micro or individual level. Just remember training 101, you have to include key organisational strategic needs and drivers in your needs analysis. Unfortunately the SETA's do not account for this in their workplace skills plan templates which most of use for our annual training planning activities. It is very process and evidence oriented and tends to target very oeprational needs. Now do not get me wrong, that is a key aspect of our roles, but not the only role that we must fulfil.

The use of social media is exploding across the world and with the advent of the new Seacom cable landing on our shores at Mtunzini this year we should see some significant decreases in broad-band and internet costs.

Already internet service providers like MWeb and Neotel and others are offering substantial discounted bundles and packages for individuals and organisations. So why am I telling you this? Consider using social media in your organisation to assist you with needs analysis and staff engagement and training programme identification. I bet your marketers or customer services staff are either considering it or are already using social media in their marketing and service mix. You might be using some social media applications yourself like Facebook or Skype, maybe LinkedIn.

Consider how you could deploy these in your organisational and create a social-media enabled integrated training strategy.

On that note please complete this short poll on social media. I would like to get an idea about how many organisations are using social media in their integrated social-media training strategy. Chat to you all soon.

The challenge of creating a learning organisation.

In my previous posting I alluded to Peter Senge and his seminal work on the concept of a learning organisation. This is often one of the most challenging tasks facing a training manager or human resources professional. To somehow enculcate a culture of learning within their organisations. As demonstrated by the annual American Society for Training and Development (ASTD) research conducted globally the learning and performance culture is a growing issue, one now seen as critical to organisational adaptability and growth. A culture of safety to learn needs to be developed in your organisation. Empowering staff to feel that they can speak up regarding issues without the fear of being marginalised or punished in some fashion is an absolute necessity.

Lets be be clear, a learning culture requires a tolerant culture, supporting processes and tools, action-oriented review and feedback processes (after-action-satisfaction) and how do we apply what we have learned. As you can see it is not just training as usual and sounds like quite a challenge. In some cases yes, but it is up to us as training managers to demonstrate the value that we add from the local action level right through to the board room in the traditional strategic value analysis domain. Lets be honest tradition states that the executive determines which activities and departments are adding or creating organisational value and we all know that this is generally viewed from a cost/benefit and revenue/profit approach. Do not worry this can be tackled and you can make it work for you. Even in difficult economic times.

Here is a little task for you. Do online search for executive level positions in South Africa and one for the United States. The results will speak for themselves. Please get back to me I would be interested in your inputs and what you have to say. The challenges of training in an organisational environment that is inherently hostile or training-neutral is often the biggest stumbling block to ensuring meaningful and robust needs analysis and later return-on-investment (ROI) for training spend. I suspect that part of the answer to the solution lies in a lack of training representation at an executive or decision-making level combined with a reactive mode of operation by the training or HR department and the 'disconnect' between the executive and training management.

So how does a training manager demonstrate the value of the training? By ensuring that training impact is measured in the workplace and that the training does not end in the classroom, but is evaluated on the floor in action at work. By saying action I really mean your ability to report effectively back to the executive and your partner managers, peers and colleagues. Metrics are key here. To add to this we have to learn faster and at least be more-learning oriented than our competitors and ensure more organisational value is created. I will be elaborating on these components in more detail in future blogs.

Here is a great YouTube video on the concept of a learning organisation. Have a look at it.

Do the needs analysis first!

I could not start my blog about training in Southern Africa without tackling the one area that is so lacking. The needs analysis. Too many training departments and organisations invest in misdirected training programmes and 'courses' for their employees. Often assuming that training is going to fix everything. Its just not true and if anything can impact on performance to a far greater degree. As it is training managers and human resource professionals are fighting to hold on to their budgets in these uncertain times, when organisations are protecting their cash-flow and literally tighten down on expenditure in what many still consider a 'soft' operational focus or department.

We only have ourselves to blame here. By doing a thorough needs analysis of the performance requirements of the workforce a training or human resource management department are in a better position to really understand the fundamental dynamics of the ever-changing needs to deliver human performance. Well take a step back for a moment and also consider that the staff performance is dependent on allot more than pure applied skill and individual expertise. Strong 'leading-from-the-front' managers are just as critical and as Peter Senge aptly puts it. If you are not a learning organisation, you are already as good as dead. Fairly radical? No, actually with the rate of change globally, the internet (Web 2.0) as a catalyst for development and factoring in economic instability plus growing climate change concerns has created a veritable cauldron of dangerous elements. Not all of them necessarily compatible with each other. Yet for a training professional we are at the crucible, the molten core, trying to figure out where we can make a difference by understanding the needs of our workforce and the world they and your organisation is operating in.

Its no longer enough to understand just the individual, his or her team, or the department. Its more, its the whole business and the environment it operates in and the community and customers it serves. Key to this is a true understanding of of what competition really means to your business. You might be wondering what that has got to do with you as a training professional. Its actually key for you to know as much as you can about who and what the competitive environment is like for the staff that you develop, procure and train courses on. It will assist you to really understand the performance requirements of the employees from a different perspective and will support your training needs analysis and its design.

A decent training needs analysis thus cuts across the strategic external environment as well as its internal dynamics. To defend your budget and in fact grow your influence beyond budgeting you have to take a more proactive stance in the determination of organisational strategy, the competitor analysis and other key strategic planning processes that your organisations might undertake. Rather than being delegated to fulfilling strategic training needs by others, get yourself into those strategic conversations.

Do it with credibility though. Do you homework, build your internal network with other key managers in a cross-functional sense. Whether its marketing, sales, production, operations, etc it really does not matter. At times like this passivity is the death knell of many a training department and team.

Have a look at at Michael Porters YouTube video below explaining the concept of competiveness and forces that influence organisations.


Knowledge Resources well-known events and publishing organisation in South Africa are conducting a HR practices survey. It can give you some idea of the issues that various organisations have identified as being key. Although more HR-centric than training oriented, you as Tribe members might find it a useful exercise. Click here to complete the survey.