LEADING THOUGHTS

C.K Prahalad gave us core competencies, the bottom of the pyramid, constrained innovation, and a few other mind-bending management theories. Until his dying days, he believed that individuals, not institutions, were central. Institutions are merely “different ways of combining skills and capabilities of the moment.” Go to article

Learning and development pros have been getting an easy ride when it comes to showing the business value of training. Lame surveys no longer cut it. Fortunately, the Boys & Girls Clubs of America can show how to tie training to key business performance metrics. Go to article (registration required)

Beefy bouncers at Manhattan nightclubs can tell us a thing or two about status cues and how rewards are doled out. I’ll let you connect the dots to organizational life. Go to article

A Conference Board of Canada study provides some welcome data on literacy and basic skills in the workplace.

Literacy in the workplace means the ability to understand instructions and read and apply printed information, among other basic skills. A workforce with a deficit in these skills will see lower productivity, higher health and safety costs, and more prevalent problems with product and service quality.

The Conference Board’s survey of employers, workers, union representatives, and providers of services to immigrants and Aboriginal groups shows that despite the importance placed on literacy skills in the workplace, training to build these skills is not often available through the workplace. Specifically,

• Forty-five percent of employer respondents and 55.6 percent of worker respondents said  training in the workplace to improve the ability to “listen to instructions” is never, or only seldom, available.
• Fifty-six percent of employer respondents and 58 percent of worker respondents indicated that training in the workplace to improve the ability to read printed information is never, or only seldom, offered.

According to the Conference Board survey, the biggest challenge resulting from workplace literacy training is the scheduling or reorganizing of work. Measuring success and determining the return on investment were other obstacles reported.

On the positive side, those organizations that offer workplace literacy programs see a boost in performance:

• More than 60 percent reported that productivity and the quality of products/services were improved.
• Fifty-eight percent of respondents said health and safety and workplace communications were improved.

The Conference Board survey also revealed a mismatch in perceptions between employers and workers. Employers in the survey, for example, reported a much higher level of confidence in workers’ understanding of health and safety policies than did any other responding group.

• Sixty-four percent of employer respondents said they felt that health and safety policies were understood fully or to a large extent, while 50 percent of responding labour representatives and 40 percent of workers agreed.

This mismatch has potentially significant consequences. “Because employers are already confident,” the report concluded, “they are unlikely to see the need to provide training to upgrade workers knowledge and understanding of the health and safety policies of the workplace.”

The Conference Board report includes the analysis of 10 Canadian workplace literacy and learning programs, particularly relating to their impacts on workplace health and safety.

What You Don’t Know Can Hurt You: Literacy’s Impact on Workplace Health and Safety, by Alison Campbell; The Conference Board of Canada (July 2010)

Change can be stressful, no doubt. But not all employees experience change in a similar way, say researchers Loretto (U Edinburgh), Platt (U Edinburgh), and Popham (U St. Andrews). Downsizing, for example, could have a positive effect on mental health, they write in the British Journal of Management, if they lead to clearer roles and responsibilities for employees and increasing worker participation.

FACTOID: Employers in the UK are under legal obligation to prevent and control factors leading to stress in their workforce.

To fill in the research gap, Loretto et al set out to devise a comprehensive measure of organizational change (based on self-report questionnaires) and then to use that tool to explore the effects of change on employee mental health (using the well-validated General Health Questionnaire). Their study focused on nearly 5,400 employees in the National Health Service in the UK.

The study did show that the prospect of changing employers and terms and conditions of employment are likely to have detrimental effects on staff health and well-being.

But the researchers’ findings also challenge the assumption that change necessarily has an adverse effect on health. “Our findings indicate areas, such as promotion and development, where a positive impact can be anticipated.” They speculate that training and promotion may reduce employees’ uncertainty by increasing their control over their future.

Loretto, W., Platt, S., & Popham, F. (2009). Workplace Change and Employee Mental Health: Results from a Longitudinal Study British Journal of Management DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-8551.2009.00658.x

If it takes a village to raise a child, then perhaps it takes co-workers to help trainees shine.

Management development experts have long known that organizations get the most out of their training dollars when employees are supported before, during, and after training. Few organizations, however, actually follow this advice.

Models of training effectiveness focus on program design, trainee characteristics, and workplace environment as the key factors that determine transfer of learning. By contrast, Harry J. Martin (Cleveland State University) wanted to study the context in which employees apply and transfer the knowledge and skills learned, specifically the role of workplace climate and peer support.

(Workplace climate includes factors such as adequate resources, cues that remind trainees of what they have learned, opportunities to apply skills, barriers and constraints to transfer, and consequences for using training on the job.)

FACTOID: It is estimated that only 10 to 40 percent of learning transfers to the job.

Martin focused on 237 managers of a manufacturing company in the midwest U.S. who completed a comprehensive training program. He devised a global measure of workplace climate for each of the 12 divisions in which the employees worked and used performance ratings of the participants to measure the level of training transfer.

Martin found that trainees in a division with a more favorable climate and those enjoying greater peer support showed greater improvement. Even better, in terms of transferring learnings, peer support overcame or lessened the effects of a negative office environment.

“The results of this study suggest that follow-up programs should be designed to address both the immediate and general organizational environments,” Martin reports in Human Resource Development Quarterly. “Care must be taken to help ensure that peers and immediate supervisors help trainees put the skills to work. Co-workers could provide general encouragement or be involved in more structured activities such as the peer meetings employed in this study.”

“Workplace Climate and Peer Support as Determinants of Training Transfer,” by Harry J. Martin; Human Resource Development Quarterly (Vol. 21 No. 1 Spring 2010; pp. 87-104)

photo credit: gritphilm

Organizational development and change management more than ever before are being linked to learning and talent development, according to a report recently published by the UK-based CIPD.

“It is clear that organizational development and design will become increasingly important as organizations seek to change, innovate and to link learning to organizational goals,” according to CIPD’s 2010 Learning and Talent Development survey report. But the report also noted that “practitioners are less involved in discussing the design, delivery and impact of learning with other managers. This alignment issue is a key one as L&TD seeks to build its reputation and impact.”

The survey found that for 46 percent of respondents, the major organizational change affecting learning and talent development in the next five years will be a greater integration between coaching, organizational development, and performance management to drive change. For 37 percent, it will be greater responsibility devolved to line managers.

Other findings from the CIPD survey:

• As a result of the economic downturn, learning and talent development is becoming more focused on value and impact; in other words, doing more with less. “It will be particularly important for professionals to ensure that their L&TD activities are even more closely aligned with business strategy and to be able to assess the return on investment generated.”
• Almost 60 percent of organizations undertake talent management activities. Among these, half rate such activities as “effective” and only 3 percent consider them “very effective.” The three most effective activities to manage talent are coaching (39 percent), in-house development programmes (32 percent), and high-potential development schemes (31 percent).
• The three most common ways to evaluate talent management activities: feedback from line managers (42 percent); rretention of those identified as high-potential (35 percent); and  anecdotal observation of change (35 percent).
• In terms of leadership skills, the main gaps identified by employers were performance management (setting standards for performance and dealing with under-performance) and leading and managing change.
• Internships are growing in popularity, partly because employers want to provide a lifeline for talented young people. The results are encouraging. “The fact that a third of firms report higher productivity as a result of their internships is particularly encouraging, given that many interns are new to the workplace and are still in the process of learning new skills.”

About 86 percent of responding organizations (623) had headquarters in the UK and the remainder (101) were based outside the UK.

photo credit: Limmud

You can see it in the streets and smell it in the air: signs of economic recovery are beginning to emerge in Canada. But according to the latest estimates from the Conference Board of Canada, it will take up to five years for the economy to return to full capacity. For workforce planners with an agenda for change, now is the time to strike.

According to the Conference Board’s Industrial Relations Outlook 2010, “Employers now have a window of opportunity to develop effective workforce strategies before the recovery pushes us back to full employment and the challenges of a tight labour market.”

The report suggests that employers use this time to train and re-skill the workforce and more effectively integrate immigrant and Aboriginal communities.

As for the near term, the Conference Board predicts that the public sector will dominate collective bargaining in 2010, with negotiations involving 750,000 public sector workers. Faced with national deficits, federal workers will feel the need to concede gains. Municipal workers, however, may push for contract improvements.

Factoid: Union density rate in Canada is 29 percent — 71.3 percent in the public sector and 16.1 percent in the private sector

In the private sector, the Conference Board says, employers will continue to focus on controlling costs. The strength of the Canadian dollar relative to the U.S. dollar means dampened exports of manufactured goods.

According to the Conference Board, there are two big issues that employers face: one, a continued structural labour deficit; and two, a private pension fund system that requires fundamental change, particularly regarding employer finding.

For their part, unions will continue to be focused on protecting their existing rights and benefits and protecting jobs of existing members.

Given the uncertainty in the private sector and the fiscal deficits in the public sector, the Conference Board says, “universal labour peace is unlikely in the coming year.”

InfoBox: Current Negotiation Issues (Canada)

Management Issues:

1. Wages
2. Productivity
3. Health, pension, and benefits
4. Organizational change
5. Business competetiveness

Union Issues:

1. Wages
2. Employment security
3. Health, pensions, and benefits
4. Employment/pay equity
5. Outsourcing/contracting out

(Source: The Conference Board of Canada union-management survey)

Industrial Relations Outlook 2010: A recovery offering little relief, by David K. Shepherdson; Conference Board of Canada

photo credit: Aaron Magner

Dirk Lindebaum of Manchester Business School argues that organizations should forget about trying to develop the emotional intelligence (EI) of their employees. Lindebaum doesn’t have an issue with EI itself; he just feels it is best developed as a result of individual initiative.

In the Academy of Management Learning and Education, Lindebaum identifies three barriers to workplace EI initiatives.

Industry barriers: Some industries, such as construction, are notorious for encouraging aggressive management styles and fierce competition. In such environments, EI may not be an advantage. “Owing to the dominance of males in some industries, and their influence on power relations, an inauspicious framework for introducing EI indiscriminately across various industries emerges.”

Intra-organizational barriers: EI workplace initiatives can ignore the varying personal motivations to commit to organizational objectives. Many employees, for example, may not be receptive to developing their emotional intelligence, and shouldn’t be forced to. Lindebaum: “Some individuals may be perfectly content to pursue with little organizational involvement their ‘nine-to-five jobs’ while others are keen to climb the organizational ladder.”

Intra-personal barriers: One, it is believed that EI is partly an innate ability that cannot be developed. Two, Lindebaum says that as workers become more emotionally astute, they could end up reevaluating whether they fit in their existing jobs (what’s wrong with that, I say), which isn’t necessarily in the organization’s interests. “Does the individual benefit from high EI or is it the organization? I argue that the individual is the primary beneficiary and organizations come second.” And three, more emotionally intelligent workers could be so preoccupied orchestrating favourable impressions that honest social interactions are few and far between.

Linebaum advocates individual initiative to foster EI, focusing on learning rather than performance. “Since emotions are an individual’s engagements with the world,” he writes, “the fostering of EI is a profoundly personal and private affair.”

“Rhetoric or Remedy? A Critique on Developing Emotional Intelligence”, by Dirk Lindebaum; Academy of Management Learning and Education (2009, Vol. 8, No. 2, 225–237)

photo credit: xiaming

“Diversity management” (DM) has become one of the more successful management ideas of the past 25 years. It entered the lexicon in the late 1980s in the U.S. as a response to growing frustration with legislation-based affirmative action and equal employment opportunity initiatives. DM was taken up in Europe a decade later, beginning in the UK and Netherlands.

DM aims to encourage employees to be comfortable with diversity in the workplace and appreciate differences in race, gender, or sexual orientation. It focuses on demographic groups, organizational self-interest, and workplace training. “Diversity” has become an industry in itself, fed by management consultants, conferences, and publications.

Writing in the Scandinavian Journal of Management, Evangelina Holvino (Simmons School of Management, Boston) and Annette Kamp (Roskilde University, Denmark) take a hard-boiled look at diversity management in practice in the U.S. and Europe. They identify a number of DM “dilemmas”:

:: Does DM refer to individual or group-based differences? For some, diversity refers to all the similarities and differences among organizational members. For others, diversity refers to identities based on membership in social groups and their power relations in organizations.

:: Is DM all about reproducing the status quo or “catalysing change in inequalities and power relations”?

:: Should DM be based on a business case or on social justice? In North America in particular, DM is sold as an effective HR and marketing strategy, encouraging team effectiveness, increasing employee retention, and improving financial performance. But as the authors point out, assessing DM outcomes is a tricky affair. Few organizations seem interested in measuring the success of their diversity efforts, and independent findings have been inconclusive or contradictory.

“DM, like other ideas, has become blurred and blunted, distorted through inappropriate quantification, and taken over by academic researchers making it increasingly unsuited for practical purposes,” Holvino and Kamp write. “In the U.S.A., DM has provided an opportunity to discuss differences, identity, power, and equity in organizations like no other management idea has done before, but its ‘success’ as a managerial discourse has hindered its power as an idea that can make more of a positive difference in the world.”

“Diversity management: Are we moving in the right direction? Reflections from both sides of the North Atlantic,” by Evangelina Holvino and Annette Kamp; Scandinavian Journal of Management (2009, 25, 395—403)

If you cannot find this journal is your local library, email me for a copy of the article at Alan [at] AlanMorantz.com

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