How workplace learning is changing
Discuss about the Era Of Rapid Technological And Scientific Advancements.
The 21st century is an era of rapid technological and scientific advancements. This means that people have to be very active in accepting all the changes. They will have to accept the new changes and upgrade themselves. One such modern day application is workplace learning. This is very important as it helps the employees to bridge the gap in their skills. However, it is the duty of the organization as a whole and particularly the HR department to plan the budget accordingly so that they can use conduct the workplace learning in the most cost-effective way (Zahra et al. 2014).
The 21st century is the age of rapid changes and technological advancements. This is because the there are many changes in the standards of living of people. There is a change not only in the patterns of lifestyles of people but also in the style of their work. For attaining the new and the changes standard of living, people have to improve and upgrade themselves (Nederveld and Berge 2015).
This is an era of technological advancements and people have to maintain a pace with the rapidly developing technological era. It is evident that this era is the age of rapid competition and it is for this reason that all the companies are trying their level best to stand out unique by giving in a very tough competition to their competitors. One of the major concerns that the companies face in the modern era is the rapidly developing competition and one of the best solutions is to carry on a proper training and development session for the employees (Tahir et al. 2014). Workplace learning is one of the best suitable practices for this. It is a very useful method as it helps the employees to learn and work at the same time. However, there has been a shift or a transition in this method of workplace learning. Earlier it was only the employees sitting in arrow and taking the notes from an expert. This was very similar to the system of classroom learning. However, now it is really very different (Tracey et al. 2015). This is because the employees’ have realized that there is so much more than they can actually do with the help of the modern scientific tools and implements. The modern generation employees are the tech-savvy people who have a great inclination towards the internet and the other technologies, like the mobile applications and the cloud-based technologies as well. This practice is very good and is very useful for the employees (Davis et al. 2016).
Advantages of the continuous learning procedure in a workplace
The system in which the workplace learning mechanism works has changed rapidly. Now they do not really beehive in taking such long classes but they want to learn through self-studies and also peer to peer learning (Kerzner and Kerzner 2017). This is one of the most important processes in the modern workplace learning. There are several important factors that create the change in the corporate learning sphere. The rise of the millennial learners has brought a huge change (Glover et al. 2015). They want to learn with proper freedom and they do not want any strict corporate-based training. The improved technology that is available in the modern days often makes the HR managers and the companies rethink and redesign the employee training process (Larsen 2017). There has been the shift of priorities. In other words, most of the attention is now given to the emerging technologies that the different learning strategies (Marsick and Watkins 2015).
There are many advantages of the continuous learning procedure in a workplace. It helps in the following ways-
There can be many problems faced by the employees in the course of their work. A training process will help them to work over their problems and also develop their skills (Sung and Choi 2014).
A system of constant training makes the employees know that they are really valued within the organization and they are being supported by their organization to overcome the loopholes that they are facing. Overall it really helps in boosting up the performance of the employees. It helps to inculcate the right level of confidence among them (van der Leeuw et al. 2018).
It is very essential for the companies to make sure that they are seeing the improvement that has taken place in the performance of their employees, the overall sales, the product quality, customer satisfaction and other such activities. They must not measure the number of classes or activities that they have offered or the total number of employees that took part in the same.
This is perhaps one of the most important activities of the HR department. This is so because the budget is mainly prepared at a time when the companies do not really have a good amount of details with them. This is more like a guessing game that the company has to undertake. So, this budget planning has to be done keeping in mind all the activities that the company is likely to undertake in the coming year. There are many aspects that must be considered by the company. The different types of functions that fall under the budget are providing accommodation for the employees, providing them with timely salary, bonus, incentives and many other such things. Some of the budgetary considerations are discussed in the following paragraph.
Budgetary considerations in human resources, such as accommodating the need for employee training
This can be one of the most crucial grounds where the company has to be very concerned about the budget. They have to keep in mind that the employees may face many problems at different points of time and might need some special kinds of training. So, the company has to keep aside some amount of money for conducting the seminars, workshops, employee training program and other such aspects. One very good help that they might try to get in this field is taking a look on the data of the previous year in order to see the amount of money that was needed on the training and the development of the employees. (Sessa and London 2015) Making this training budget is very helpful as it will help the company to channelize their money in a very effective manner. They will be able to manage their finance properly (Gul and Umar 2017). The first thing that they must consider is what the size of their operation is. In other words, they have to know whether they are a small scale, a medium scale or a large scale company. This will help them to get the rough and the initial idea about the number of employees that they will be recruiting. However, they have to keep in mind that the training budget is not any surplus of their financial resource that they will use for training their employees. This is a separate amount of money that they have to keep in store for the purpose of training their employees whenever there will be the need. Moreover, in order to follow the modern method of continuous learning, there is even a greater need for the training budget to be made and maintained properly. The first thing is getting the budget approved. After the approval, the HR department has to consider the fact that there will be many urgent and unforeseen expenses like the staff training and development. There will be also being the cases of employee attrition, employees taking a temporary leave and other such expenses. There can be chances that the employees are taking some unscheduled leaves or some maternity leaves, sick leaves. Being cost effective is also one of the most important steps that have to be taken (Embo et al. 2015). A company has to realize what are the most important and the most crucial activities that they will be taking up. They will also have to carry on an extensive research and development to make sure that they what will be the most cost-effective way for them to carry on the process of the employee training system. They have to formulate some very good strategies that will help them in using their budget in the most cost-effective way. Prioritizing the training needs of the employees is one of the most important steps that they might consider. If it is seen that the employees need some basic training then there is no need for hiring any professional external trainer. The company must try to find out some train from within their internal employee strength itself. In other words, they can get some senior, old and experienced employee for training the fresher (Manuti et al. 2015). This will be very cost effective as the company will no longer have to bear a huge expense for getting an employee from outside. There can be the cross training of the employees as well. This is also a very cost-effective employee training method. This will help in training the employees at affordable resources. The employees must be made to sit with some professionals who can teach them something new or a provide them kind of on job training. This will help them in getting a good training and also the HR department can plan their budget in a very cost-effective way. Another way of planning this budget effectively is to make sure that they are conducting many weekly events. These events need not be very showy or expensive. These events are mainly conducted for the joint participation of all the employees so that they can learn and can also voice their opinions.
I am working in one of the multinational companies where workplace learning is considered to be one of the most important aspects. The employees are not disrespected if they feel that there is some training that they need. After joining the office I often had several problems in understanding the work. I was really in need of some special, kinds of training. However, my company did not really ignore the skill gaps that I was suffering through. So, they conducted a meeting in order to know the problems that were being faced by the employees. They soon conducted several training and campaigns that would be beneficial for me and for the rest of the employees who were having such problems. I attended all these seminars and it really proved to be very helpful. However, these seminars were conducted by some externals that had to be paid heavily. This created some problems in the financial budget of the company. Apart from this, this training lasted for only a period of one week (Hammond and Churchill 2018). So, with due course of time, I had forgotten several things again and I feel that the method of constant learning would have been very good in this aspect. So, I would suggest some changes like, the company must start building communities and collaborate people together. This will help in making the employees come in close association with one another and there will be the process of continuous exchange of knowledge.
The HR department must hire the trainers from within the existing strength of the company. This will help in saving the money and the training will also be conducted a very nice manner. Hiring trainers from outside usually affect the budget of the company and in turn, affects the timely salary and the incentives of the employees. So, some senior and experienced employees can take up the roles of trainers.
Induction usually is short lived and does not often solve all the skill gaps of the employees. So, the method of constant learning must be started so that the process of learning is carried out properly and there are also no unnecessary expenses. The employees’ must be allowed to learn by using the different innovative and the modern methods.
Conclusion
This it can be concluded that the system of workplace learning is of immense importance and this must be started at each and every workplace. This will help the employees to learn along with gaining experience in the field of their work. Employees must be made to learn by using all the modern technologies available to them.
References
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Sessa, V.I. and London, M., 2015. Continuous learning in organizations: Individual, group, and organizational perspectives. Psychology Press.
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Tracey, J.B., Hinkin, T.R., Tran, T.L.B., Emigh, T., Kingra, M., Taylor, J. and Thorek, D., 2015. A field study of new employee training programs: industry practices and strategic insights. Cornell Hospitality Quarterly, 56(4), pp.345-354.
van der Leeuw, R.M., Teunissen, P.W. and van der Vleuten, C.P., 2018. Broadening the scope of feedback to promote its relevance to workplace learning. Academic Medicine, 93(4), pp.556-559.
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