1

FORCES INFLUENCING
WORKING AND LEARNING
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Forces Influencing Working and Learning

Increases value
placed on
Economic Cycles Globalisation
intangible assets
and human capital

Customer service
Focus on link to Talent
and quality
business strategy Management
emphasis

High performance
New Technology
work systems
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Forces Influencing Working and Learning

Economic cycles
• Provide an opportunity for companies to take a closer
look at training and development to identify those
activities that are critical for supporting the business
strategy as well as those mandated by law.
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Forces Influencing Working and Learning

Globalization

• Provide training and development opportunities for

global employees.
• Provide cross-cultural training to prepare employees
and their families to understand the culture and
norms of the country to which they are being
relocated and assists in their return to their home
country after the assignment.
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Examples of Intangible Assets

Human Capital Customer Capital

• Tacit knowledge • Customer relationships
• Education • Brands
• Work related knowhow • Customer loyalty
• Work related • Distribution channels
competence

Social Capital Intellectual Capital

• Corporate Culture • Patents
• Management • Copyrights
philosophy • Trade secrets
• Management Practices • Intellectual property
• Informal networking
systems
• Coaching / mentoring
relationships
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Forces Influencing Working and Learning

• Focus on knowledge worker - employees who

contribute to the company not through manual
labor but through what they know, perhaps about
The value of customers or a specialized body of knowledge.
• Employee engagement - the degree to which
intangible employees are fully involved in their work and the
assets and strength of their commitment to their job and the
company. Companies measure employees'
human capital engagement levels with attitude or opinion
has the surveys.
• Change - the adoption of a new idea or behavior
following by a company.
implication: • Learning organization - embraces a culture of
lifelong learning, enabling all employees to
continually acquire and share knowledge.
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Forces Influencing Working and Learning

Talent management - attracting, retaining, developing,
and motivating highly skilled employees and managers.

It is becoming increasingly more important because of:

• occupational and job changes
• retirement of baby boomers
• skill requirements
• the need to develop leadership skills
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Forces Influencing Working and Learning

Customer • Total Quality Management (TQM) -

a companywide effort to
service and continuously improve the ways
quality people, machines, and systems
accomplish work.
emphasis
• Methods and processes are designed to meet
the needs of internal and external customers.
• Every employee in the company receives
training in quality, which is designed into a
product or service to prevent errors from
Core values occurring rather than being detected and
corrected.
of TQM • The company promotes cooperation with
vendors, suppliers, and customers to improve
quality and hold down costs.
• Managers measure progress with feedback
based on data.
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Forces Influencing Working and Learning

Customer service
and quality emphasis

The ISO 9000 is a family of

The Malcolm Baldrige National standards that include
Quality Award , created by public requirements for dealing with how
law, is the highest level of national to establish quality standards and
recognition for quality that a U.S. how to document work processes
company can receive. to help companies understand
quality system requirements.
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Forces Influencing Working and Learning

• Six Sigma process - a process of measuring,

analyzing, improving, and then controlling processes
once they have been brought within the narrow six
sigma quality tolerances or standards.
Customer • Training can help companies meet the quality

service and challenge by teaching employees statistical process

control and engaging in “lean” processes.
quality • Lean thinking - involves doing more with less effort,
equipment, space, and time, but providing
emphasis customers with what they need and want.
• ISO 10015 - a quality management tool designed to
ensure that training is linked to company needs and
performance.
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Forces Influencing Working and Learning

• Is changing the delivery of training and makes

training more realistic.
• Allows training to occur at any time and any place.
• Reduces travel costs.
• Provides greater accessibility to training and
New consistent delivery.
• Provides the ability to access experts and share

Technology learning with others.

• Provides the possibility of creating a learning
environment with many positive features such as
feedback, self-pacing, and practice exercises.
• Allows companies greater use of alternative work
arrangements
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Forces Influencing Working and Learning

High performance models of work systems
• Work teams - involve employees with various skills who
interact to assemble a product or provide a service.
• Cross training - training employees in a wide range of skills
so they can fill any of the roles needed to be performed on the
team.
• Virtual teams - teams that are separated by time, geographic
distance, culture, and/or organizational boundaries and that
rely almost exclusively on technology to interact and complete
their projects.
Use of new technology and work designs are supported by human
resource management practices
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Snapshot of Training Practices

As companies
grow an
recognize the
Training and
important role
In most development
of training for
companies can be the To be a
business
training and responsibility successful
success, they
development of training
form an entire
activities are professionals professional
training
provided by They can also in human requires
function, which
trainers, be outsourced. resources, staying up-to-
may include
managers, in- human date on current
instructional
house resource research and
designers,
consultants, development, training
instructors,
and employee or practices.
technical
experts. organizational
training, and
development.
experts in
instructional
technology.
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Importance of Training

• Maintains qualified products / services

• Achieves high service standards
• Provides information for new comers
• Refreshes memory of old employees
• Achieves learning about new things; technology,
products / service delivery
• Reduces mistakes - minimizing costs
• Opportunity for staff to feedback / suggest
improvements
• Improves communication & relationships - better
teamwork