Challenge Of Conducting Learning And Development Programs For Next Generation

-

What Is Learning and Development?

As mention by Henderson (2017) Learning and Development (L&D) is a set of planned activities on the part of an organisation to increase the job knowledge and skills, or to modify attitudes and social behaviour to achieve specific ends which are related to a particular job or role. Organisations which are looking to improve their productivity, efficiency and profitability on their day to day business will look to move beyond general training and look at more diverse learning & development activities which will enable the organisational employees to improve their potential and provide a valuable asset for the business. L&D can be a source of competitive advantage where employees gain appropriate new knowledge and skills (Towler and Dipboye, 2009)

Amazon a leading e-commerce company do one month learning and development program prior to hire an employee. Amazon prepays 95% of tuition for employees at fulfilment centers to take courses in in-demand fields. Why the company offers this perk: “We want our employees to be owners from day one,” says Teal Pennebaker, The corporate communications manager, “so we train them to take ownership over products and services that impact millions of customers. This helps them pioneer a career at Amazon”, this brief how world leading companies evaluate the need of L&D on today’s context.


Figure 01


Conducting Learning And Development For Next Generation – A Challenge

The learning and development theories proposed over the decades which are arranged under the traditional systems still have a great deal of applicability. However now they must be view from different perspective & angles, one that considers both the capabilities of the technology and the interests and abilities of technologically perceptive student of the 21st century.

Today’s organisations are comprised of employees who belong to multiple generations and each generation has different values and is motivated by different things. However, the younger employees who have fundamental differences between themselves, have a very different orientation than others who are in previous generations. Youngers are much more cynical about worker-corporate contracts and are more likely to view themselves as “free agents”. Other set known as Millennials, who are joining companies right now, are very technically fluent, have strong ties with virtual communities and appear to be putting a premium on work-life balance and finding true meaning in their work. Observing young people and the rich online world and life they are in the process of creating for themselves. comments that “…for almost every activity in their lives, these so-called “Digital Natives” are inventing new, online ways of making each activity happen, based on the new technologies available to them” (Prensky, 2004).

For above two categories Youngers & Millennials the delivery of the training material should be via a mix of modern generation media such as interactive computer based and advanced simulators which they can readily relate. This is especially applicable to the psychological motivation of new generation students who are as young adults, so they are beginning to develop their careers and actively participate in the learning & development process.

Unfortunately, today’s next generation tends to question why such a large amount of training is needed since much of the information may become obsolete in the near future. More specifically, they may question why all of the information needs to be presented at a specific time as a traditional course. In order to do this, the program designer must approach training from a different perspective. First, he can no longer view training as a list of tasks to be completed in a classroom or course. He must design training from the perspective of the new constructive philosophy, that is consider how the next generation student uses technology.

So it is a challenging exercise to conduct learning & development programs for next generation which need to conduct in a way they mostly closed with.

References:
Henderson, I (2017) Human Resource Management for MBA and Business Masters, CIPD - Kogan Page
Prensky, M. (2004). The emerging online life of the digital native: what they do differently because of technology, and how they do it
Towler, A J and Dipboye, R L (2009) Effects of Trainer Expressiveness, Organization and Training Orientation on Training Outcomes, Journal of Applied Psychology

Figure List:
Figure 01 - https://www.aim.com.au/blog/5-future-trends-learning-and-development accessed on 2018/06/14 at 3:23AM

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Talent Management Inclusive Vs Exclusive

-
Image
Why Talent Management An Issue? The talent management approach within a business seeks to develop, acquire, and retain talented and highly potential employees. The forward looking, improvement expecting organisations must develop an integrated approach to talent management to best harness talent.  Retaining talented employees is one of the critical issues facing organisations today and the biggest challenge faced by organisations in modern economy (Lathitha, 2012). Many surveys illustrate that HR leaders and business executive rate talent management as their top people issue, believing it has a very high impact on business performance (Reilly, 2012).  In today’s highly complex business environment organisations are focusing hard to survive and to gain competitive edge, talent management has the enormous potential of retaining and developing the most valuable assets of an organisation to gain key competitive advantage.  One good example of mismanage talent is th...
Read more

Workforce Diversity

-
Image
What is Diversity? Diversity is generally defined as acknowledging, understanding, accepting, valuing & celebrating differences among people with respect to age, class, and ethnicity, and gender, physical & mental ability. Over the past decade the work force in industrialized countries has become increasingly heterogeneous. These countries are spending huge amount for diversifying the workforce. Thus, diversity is increasingly recognized & utilized as an important organizational resource in regards to whether the goal is to be an employer of choice to provide an excellent customer service or to maintain a competitive edge. According to Dahm (2003), diversity within an organization can evoke an array of emotions. Many researchers view diversity as something to be dealt with rather than a tool to be used to improve the organizations. Researches on the effects of within teams & small groups indicate that diversity can have both positive and negative effects. Dom...
Read more

Impact on Employee Relation to the Business

-
Image
What is Employee Relation? ‘Employee relations’ is a term that has become widely used only in recent passed ,prior to this it is the term ‘industrial relations’ in common use.  There are debates for the meaning of two terms employee relation and industrial relations. Some people argue that there are identifiable differences between them while others are argue that the concepts and phenomena explained are to all intents and purposes interchangeable. Blyton and Turnbull (1994) discuss this in explaining why they have chosen to use the term ‘employee’ as opposed to ‘industrial’. They begin by arguing that they see no hard and fast distinction between the two, the difference being in the tendency of each to focus the subject inside different boundaries, but in reviewing various contributions to the debate they do state some of the more common views. Gennard and Judge (2002) mentioning Employee relations is a study of the rules, regulations and agreements by which employ...
Read more