employee development

Credibility and Micro-credentials

by
Inspiring/Shutterstock

The landscape for learning is shifting. In response to the need for filling an increasing skills gap, governments, post-secondary institutions, and employers are coming together to provide specific training and learning opportunities through online learning. The concept and practice of online learning is not new.

All post-secondary institutions provide online courses, which are typically linked to a designated program of study. These courses are credit-bearing, in order to meet the requirements for graduation from the program. What is new, is the recent announcement by the provincial government in Ontario to offer ‘micro-credentials’ through partnerships with post-secondary institutions and employers, which provide specific, short-term, skills-focused, credit-bearing courses in an online setting.

The announcement of this pilot project allows for the recognition of skills development through an online learning platform and treats credentials from online courses as assessable and valuable by both employers and employees. In order to upgrade specific skills, an employee does not have to go back to school for a set number of years. Instead, they can complete specific courses in a much shorter time frame that bear the credible authority of the post-secondary institution.

In the field of human resources, for example, a working HR practitioner may want to focus on developing a specific skill set in workplace negotiations. They could access a short-term, skills-targeted course that is recognized as a legitimate credential, instead of just a professional development refresher.

The competition for online learning is fierce. Anyone can access open-source learning sites, such as opensource.com or LinkedIn Learning, which offer free courses to all in an online setting. The challenge that comes with these sites is the lack of recognition in the form of an accredited credential. Employers continue to look for the formal ‘seal of approval’ that comes from paying for accreditation, and outdated standards set by industry and institutional requirements.

Discussion Questions:

  1. Based on your studies to date, do you see yourself continuing to learn through micro-skills development courses? Explain your rationale.
  2. Do you agree that skills development courses that provide a credential are beneficial in the current workforce? Explain your rationale.
  3. What types of industries would benefit from offering micro-credential programs to their employees for skills upgrading?

How to Get Employees to Stay

by

(Christian Chan/Shutterstock)

Employee retention keeps many HR professionals up at night. You can just hear the echoing murmurs throughout HR conference rooms across the country as turnover rates go up in this tight labour market. Many of them ponder these thoughts:

  • How do you keep employees from leaving?
  • What will make them stay?
  • Retention is the key, someone will always say

However, is retention really the key? Perhaps our language around employee turnover is wrong. Let us look at the definition of the word retention:

“The continued possession, use, or control of something.”

Now, let’s put that in the HR context and the perspective of building a relationship with the employee:

  • the continued possession of employees
  • the use of employees
  • the control of employees.

It makes one ponder how employees interpret the meaning of retention. Would you want to be retained by your employer, let alone be considered a controlled possession?

Is retention the key? Or perhaps it’s time to move our language forward.

MEC, an outdoor supply retailer, has always been an innovative company right from its foundational roots of being a cooperative.  MEC applies a forward thinking concept of employee retention. Here is a quote from Nahal Yousefian, chief people experience officer at MEC:

“The philosophy we’re taking here at MEC is that the approach to talent retention is already outdated.”

What does she mean talent retention is outdated?  What is MEC replacing it with? MEC is replacing the controlling concept of retention with the concept that the employees’ talent should be generated and that will create an environment where employees will want to stay.  This seems to make complete intuitive sense.

There are also surveys that support this concept transition; here are some current statistics about retention according to a Hays study:

  • 43% of employees are actively looking for other career opportunities and
  • 71% of employees are willing to take a pay cut for their ideal role

In addition, LinkedIn has discovered that 93% of employees would opt to stay in their role if their employer invested in their careers.

Think about these numbers for a minute: Almost 100% of employees will stay if the employer will develop them, and almost 75% are willing to take a pay cut to leave their current employment.

It may be time for HR professionals to put the controlling language of employee retention to bed and truly be a workplace where employees want to stay. All it may take is a true relationship-building commitment of employee development.

Discussion Questions

  • Research several organization that have low turnover rates.  Once that list is generated, identify what are the factors that may influence their success.
  • Identify what are the most beneficial training and development activities employers can implement to create an environment where employees want to stay employed

Investing in Learning

by

Sam72/Shutterstock

It seems that the Canadian landscape for workplace investment in training and development continues to be a ‘good news/bad news’ type of scenario.

According to information provided by the Conference Board of Canada (and as noted in our textbook), Canadian workplaces continue to lag behind our American counterparts in how much is invested for workplace training. That is the bad news. The good news, according to this report, is that Canadian companies are steadily increasing the amount of funds provided per employee to invest in individual workplace training and development plans.

Click here to read the report from the Conference Board of Canada.

As identified by the Conference Board of Canada, investment in learning promotes and creates positive workplace culture but the changing external environment impacts the level of investment from a budgetary perspective.  While challenging, Canadian workplaces cannot back away from the improvements in funding for workplace learning and skills development.

The need for investing in ongoing training for Canadian workers is highlighted in a recent online article provided by Canadian HR Reporter. The article notes that the need for ongoing training is critical for ensuring the continued health of the Canadian economy. More importantly the type of training needed to invest in the future is on the continual shaping of skills and competencies for Canadian workers.

Click here to read the article by Canadian HR Reporter.

As noted in the article, gone are the days where Canadian workers can expect ‘jobs for life’. Continual learning through formal and informal training strategies, are critical in order for both Canadian workers and workplaces to remain competitive. The article speaks to Canadian skills development as a changed approach for employee ‘re-skilling’ in certain sectors facing workplace challenges.

What has not changed is that the primary skills of individual adaptability and commitment to learning are ongoing requirements for Canadian workers in order to meet the future and its continuing demands. That is should be good news for us all.

Discussion Questions:

  1. As the manager for training and development, what types of re-skilling programs would you implement in order to retrain and retain a potentially aging workforce?
  2. According to the article, the concept of ‘jobs for life’ is disappearing:
    • How long do you see yourself working for a particular employer?
    • What will determine the length of your tenure with that employer?
  3. If the employer investment in your workplace training needs is $889, what types of training will you want to receive?
  4. How much individual training do you think $889 will buy?

Smart tips for HR professionals

by

Developing employees is a critical skill set for all HR professionals. But how do you know which system is the best to develop your employees?

There are many different performance management systems. Like any other complex organizational issue, there is never one right answer to an HR problem. Most of the time the right solution is dependent on many organizational factors. The best an HR professional can do is to learn and analyze many systems, and then make a judgement call on what is the best intervention for their organization at that moment in time.

You may want to start looking at what is happening in performance management trends. It seems that many HR professionals and organizations are rethinking their annual performance review systems.

Jason Averbrook in his new book called, the Ultimate Guide to a Digital Workforce Experience – Leap for a Purpose, shares this thought with us: “Employees don’t want feedback, they want attention.”

The once-a-year performance review does not give the employee enough attention. Averbrook goes on to say that 60 percent of companies are beginning to reshape their performance review systems.

Click here to read more about Jason Averbrook’s ideas. 

For decades, organizations have been using the traditional annual reviews that rate and rank employees. These annual rating and ranking systems seem to be of less value as time moves on and as organizational needs and employees’ values change.  Traditional performance review systems focus on the employee’s past behavior, and not their current behaviour. Today’s organizational deliverables are changing rapidly; looking back over the last year of an employee’s behaviour adds minimal productive value to the HR equation and therefore adds little to the employees’ or organization’s performance.

If the annual employee performance review systems are no longer viable, HR departments must begin to implement new modern day performance measurement systems that meet the needs of the employees and the needs of the rapidly changing business world.  Here is a list of the some of the recent trends in performance management:

  • Frequent real-time feedback instead of one-shot annual reviews
  • Decoupling performance reviews from administrative practices such as annual merit pay or bonuses
  • Dropping the ranking systems: think of what an employee can do, not what they have done

Employees want more frequent and focused attention to help them develop and perform. HR needs to investigate these new trends in performance management, and then begin to implement new methods to keep improving performance results.

Discussion Questions

Research and identify three large organizations that are moving away from the annual performance review system, then discuss what they are using to replace it.

How to Improve Employee Training and Development

by

dizain/Shutterstock

There are three things in life that are always in limited supply: time, energy and money. Whenever an organization runs a training program it is using up those three limited resources: time to train, time away from productive work, the energy required to design and participate in training, and the associated monetary costs allocated to the training. These factors must all be considered when implementing any training programs.

An article published in the Harvard Business Review (HBR) by Keith Ferrazzi, author of the book Who’s Got Your Back?, sheds light on how employee training can be improved. His broad research included training leaders in large organizations and from many different industries. He also consulted with academic leaders in several universities.

Ferrazzi’s research identifies 7 key challenges organizations must understand and address in order to improve their employee training and development.

Click here to read the HBR article, entitled the 7 Ways to Improve Employee Development.

Here is a summary of the themes identified by Ferrazzi. Remember there is a best-before date in training — everything moves so fast in today’s business world that most training has a short shelf life. So, when you think of training, think milk.

Two of the most critical factors in effective training have little to do with the content of the training and everything to do with an organization’s culture and climate. How much do employees trust an organization, and how passionate are managers about developing employees? These factors are critical.

The remaining training improvements focus on specific elements:

  • individual accountability
  • understanding the complex world of different learning styles,
  • and how to develop your virtual teams.

Dr. Edward Hess has asserted that organizations will either “learn or die”. If organizations reflect on Keith Ferrazzi’s ideas about to improve employee development, I believe they might just remain in rude health.

Discussion Questions:

  1. After reading the HBR Article reflect on the following:
  2. What is your opinion on the validity of Keith Ferrazzi’s ideas on how to improve employee development? Do you agree or disagree with the ideas? Support your position with evidence and your own ideas.
  3. From Ferrazzi’s 7 training improvement ideas pick the two that you feel are the most important and defend your position as to why.