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Informal Learning – Should I now listen and share with Nellie?

October 21, 2009 by mikepitcher

When I was first embarking on a business career – some while ago I am afraid, even pre PC’s – I heard several times that most of the training we would receive and indeed did was “sit with Nellie”. This is no attempt at discrimination and I never did meet anyone called Nellie. However, I did receive invaluable help and informal training from a host of colleagues both male and female. Formal training seemed to focus on new business processes and applications and new releases of old ones which created a kind of training lottery dependant on when you joined. My point is that most training long before we had the modern social technologies to deliver it was informal and very necessary for the wellbeing of the business unit.

My concerns about this have always much the same. It is evident you will pick up both good and bad habits but you are rarely sure which. It can become the means by which most management expect you to be trained with all the attendant benefits to them on budgets, resource and time but little account of how to ensure bad or incorrect training is eradicated or even ensuring you get training.

The point is it should be additional to and not instead of formal training and for only some topic areas. An informal approach will certainly deliver very pragmatic training and a great way to learn the wrinkles but should be monitored (for everyone’s benefit) to ensure the overall knowledge base is valid.

A colleague of mine when presented with a draft of this posting immediately sent me two links. As a practitioner he obviously had thought about this before. The first link below is certainly getting to some of the thoughts I had and says that much of the training in their sample of three manufacturing companies was not based on best practice or learning theory. They do go on to list companies that did exercise best practice in on-the-job training.

http://www.prnewswire.co.uk/cgi/news/release?id=43771

The 2nd link is to a blog post by Clive Sheppard which looks at one-to-one training and the intensity of the ‘personalised learning experience.’

http://clive-shepherd.blogspot.com/2007/10/nellie-wins-my-respect.html

So to the point of my posting, informal methods by modern social technologies create an interesting and engaging way to learn but is there a sacrifice of value to interest? Do we formulate to a degree where it sits within the training regime or trust it to luck? If we formulate do we devalue the process?  Where does this fit in a blended approach?

Posted in Blended training, Learning technologies | Leave a Comment »

The Modernisation of Corporate Training?

May 30, 2009 by tresrouge

On the Bersin & Associates blog, President and CEO Josh Bersin has published an interesting and thought-provoking article entitled Modernize Corporate Training: The Enterprise Learning Framework, which opens like this:

Over the last year or so we have talked with hundreds of companies about their desire to transform their corporate training programs to take advantage of social networking, knowledge management, communities of practice, and better models of blended learning. As we studied dozens of high performing training programs through our Learning Leaders® program, we realized that today’s corporate training world has fundamentally evolved.

The post goes on to describe an Enterprise Learning Framework®, which has been developed as ‘an excellent way to think through the modern world of corporate training’. The framework is multi-faceted and is further detailed in an in-depth whitepaper (you need to register with Bersin to get access). Briefly, the framework has six main areas: Learning Programs, Audiences and Problems, Learning Approaches, Learning Disciplines, Tools & Technology and Learning Culture. Framing these six key areas are the topics of Organization, Governance and Management and the organization’s Learning Architecture.

Bersin ends the post with the following observation:

I believe we are going through one of the most important transitions to corporate training in the last 10 years.  While e-learning certainly forced organizations to invest and learn in many ways, today’s corporate training world is changing even more.   A recession is once-again fueling the fire:  organizations are consolidating their training programs and trying to rationalize all the programs, vendors, and systems they have in place.

Now is the time to look at our framework and rethink how the “modern” corporate training organization works.

As is so often the case, one of the most interesting aspects of this post will be the comments that follow. Already, there has been an exchange between Dennis Hutchison and Josh Bersin. Dennis writes in in terms that many corporate L&D departments are likely to recognise:

Thank you for sharing your very interesting model. I continue to read and study with interest various models depicting the future of corporate learning. The common weaknesses I am finding in most structures (including this thoughtful attempt) are assumptions that the entire workforce is network enabled and the Learning & Development function is optimally staffed and funded. In fact, implementation of this and similar frameworks would quickly overwhelm the typical Learning & Development team struggling in a 500:1 learner to L&D professional ratio. Another real barrier I’m seeing many in my industry (energy production) grappling with is literacy–reading, writing, and computer.

Josh Bersin responds with some practical observations and suggestions, and it will be interesting to see if and how the conversation develops.

Posted in Corporate Training, General | Leave a Comment »

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