The Changing World of the Trainer

Martyn Sloman

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2007
• Topic: Business
• eBook ISBN:
  9781136359293
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

The 'Changing World of the Trainer' considers how the human resource development professional should undertake his or her role in today's organization. It offers a new framework which reflects the business reality of the modern world. This practical work proceeds through a series of tools, checklists, questionnaires and instruments and presents an extensive series of illustrative case studies, drawn from organizations throughout the world. The book argues that the problems that trainers face are fundamentally the same. Their objective is to put a process in place to ensure that employees are able to acquire the knowledge and skill required by the organization. The acquisition of individual and collective knowledge and skills is not the primary purpose of the organization – skills are a means to the end of profitability and service delivery. Hence training is a derived or secondary activity. In the world economy a global model of human resource development is emerging. In one form or another, organizations are seeking to develop what are known as high performance working practices. What the customer requires drives business processes: staff must be recruited, retained and motivated. Effective learning, training and development is now essential. This does not mean the end of the traditional off-the-job training course. There are many occasions, and these are illustrated within the book, when a training course delivered by a subject-matter expert is an effective way of promoting the organization's objectives through individual learning. However, it is increasingly evident that the range of interventions undertaken by the trainer extends far beyond the design and delivery of the training course. There has been a huge increase in coaching and in ways of promoting group learning. Action learning is undergoing a resurgence. Generally there has been a growth of non-directive forms of intervention; a shift in emphasis from instruction to the facilitation of the learning process. Many practitioners are proceeding effectively to redefine their roles in a variety of different ways. However, it is now time to offer a formal expression of the new training and learning role. Martyn Sloman is highly respected intermationally within the field of learning and development, with experience as a practitioner in the public, private and voluntary sectors.

Introduction

DOI: 10.4324/9781315640983-1

1 The Central Premise

DOI: 10.4324/9780080475431-2

Fifteen years ago, we extended our family with the addition of a cat. My wife comes from rural Norfolk, in the East of England, and the cat was born in her home village of Little Snoring. The cat, then a tiny kitten, had lived in a barn; faced with a cat flap in a terraced house in London, she did not know what to do. She looked quizzically at me, my wife and my sons. After an interval my elder son said: ‘OK Dad, what are you going to do now? Are you going to bring back a flip chart from work and draw a diagram? Are you going to go through yourself to demonstrate? Or are you going to borrow the firm’s video camera, push the cat through the flap, play the recording and ask the cat what three things it could have done better?’

Nothing it seems to me better captured the trainer mind-set at the time. We could design and deliver effective training in classroom situations. We could deploy a range of alternatives. We were committed, positive, helpful and innovative, but we were often a bit peripheral. Our basic models were trainer-centred rather than learner-centred. We concentrated on what we could deliver rather than what the learner might need.

At that time, the dominant model for training, learning and development in organizations was known as Instructional Systems Design (ISD). This had its origins in work undertaken in the US military. Taught extensively in North American Universities and Colleges, it crossed the Atlantic to the UK in the late 1960s where it became known as the systematic training model. Given this pedigree, ISD, or systematic training, has influenced the thinking of trainers throughout the world – indeed, for many it defined their job.

Essentially, the ISD/systematic training model sees the actions necessary to improve individual and team skills (and by implication the skills available to the organization) as a series of sequential steps or interventions. These steps are: identify training needs, design training, deliver training and evaluate the training.

It would be surprising if any model that was developed in the last century could still command the same central position in the trainers’ thinking. The argument advanced throughout this book is that the context in which learning, training and development must be delivered has changed radically. We are operating in an economy that is service-led and knowledge-driven. Different business models apply and these require a different approach to the promotion and development of workforce skills.

In this book, we will consider the consequences of the new context in which we operate. The core argument will be that new competitive models demand a different approach to the acquisition of knowledge and skills to serve the organization. Importantly, and this will be considered in this introductory chapter, the emphasis has shifted from training to learning and the role of the trainer becomes learnerrather than trainer-centred. This necessitates a different set of relationships with managers across the organization – we will describe this as a partnership model. Although the interventions must depend on the nature of the business, the role of the trainer (or people developer, which will be our preferred term) has become one of supporting, accelerating and directing learning interventions that meet organizational needs and are appropriate to the learner and the context.

The book will proceed as follows. In Part one we will discuss in turn our central premise, the new context in which we are operating and the consequences for delivery practice. In this first chapter, we will present the case for becoming learner- rather than trainer-centred in our approach. The chapters which make up Part two (Chapters 2 through to 4) explain this further by considering why this change is necessary and what has brought it about. In Part three, Chapters 5 through to 10 consider aspects of the trainers’ job. Our traditional, well-established approaches must be considered in a new light and refined to take account of different circumstances – this does not mean that all previous practices should be abandoned. Indeed, the tone of the book is optimistic. Provided we are willing to embrace change and adapt, we can expect a considerable increase in our value to and influence in the organization.

The final part of the book takes us into some different territory. In Part four (Chapters 11 through to 15), we will ask whether the emergent approach to training and people development has become a global model. This is not only a fascinating and challenging question in itself, but is of critical importance for the future progress of the world economy.

The conclusion that will be presented in this final part is that the underlying model is the same throughout the world. Those involved in learning, training and development are intervening to develop the knowledge and skills of the workforce to allow the organization to deliver high value products and more efficient services. That is what we are about, wherever we are. However, we are operating in some very different circumstances and therefore need to intervene in different ways. In particular, the prior receptiveness of the learner, what we will call labour legacy, must be a major factor in the nature of the interventions that are likely to be effective in promoting learning.

Throughout the book, we will present case studies drawn from a whole range of organizations. They are intended both to highlight aspects of the challenges facing those responsible for training and learning and the approaches that they are adopting to meet those challenges. They highlight good practice but are not intended to define best practice. As will be seen, the form of activity or intervention adopted is often very specific to the context of the organization.

The arguments developed in this book draw much of their inspiration from this case material. They have also been influenced by the insights assembled during a series of international seminar sessions involving those involved in people development in a variety of different countries. No claim is made that large numbers of people who contributed to the case studies or at meetings are in any way representative of the whole community of trainers. Those who agreed to be interviewed, attended meetings or contributed to polls and discussion sites were a self-selected group who were interested in the challenges facing their profession. They are likely to be better at their job than the profession as a whole.

Any current investigation of the international pattern of learning and training must rely heavily on the case study technique. In educational research this has been developed into something known as ‘narrative enquiry’. This involves undertaking transcribed conversations with informed or relevant parties, going ‘where the story leads’, undertaking analysis and drawing conclusions. At this stage, there is little alternative to this approach – it would be quite impossible, for example, to have undertaken a robust international survey of global learning and development practice. It would be nice to have a sound body of well-researched, academically-sound, information in many of the areas we discuss, but neither the information base nor the shared vocabulary of understanding is available at present. Academic researchers are asked to excuse this deficiency and take comfort in the fact that there is a huge task awaiting their attention.

However, and this will be argued more powerfully in the last sections of this book, it is important to begin a debate and share information among practitioners on the problems that we face. In this way we can hope to advance together. We cannot wait for precise information before beginning the discussion.

Some Propositions

The arguments advanced in the first three parts of the book will be developed around nine propositions. These are presented in Table 1.1 and set out the context in which knowledge and skill acquisition takes place in the modern organization.

These propositions were developed in the second half of 2005 by an expert panel of practitioners assembled by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD). A larger number of propositions were presented to the panel and those that did not gain support were eliminated and those that were deemed ambiguous were redrafted. In November 2005, the nine propositions were placed on the CIPD

Table 1.1 Summary propositions and scores

1. A shift is taking place from training, an instructor-led content-based intervention, to learning, which is a self-directed work-based process, leading to increased adaptive capacity.	7.28
2. Effective individual learning is critical if employees are to acquire the knowledge and skills needed to support the organization’s business objectives and delivery targets.	8.98
3. A review of training and development interventions must ensure that the learning achieved is aligned with business activity.	8.84
4. Many different HR roles are involved in the people development effort and the boundaries between organizational development, management development and training are becoming increasingly blurred.	7.41
5. Those in senior management need to be aware of the implications of the shift from training to learning and give their full support to the new processes and practices that must be implemented in the organization.	8.91
6. The delivery of effective people development practices requires a considerable increase in commitment and enhanced skills from all managers, particularly first-line managers.	8.85
7. While off-the-job classroom-based training still has a place, it no longer occupies the central role in training provision as other forms of intervention are becoming more important.	6.74
8. Technology is becoming an important enabler in people development, but there are many conceptual and practical issues to be resolved surrounding its implementation.	7.88
9. It is important to demonstrate the value to be derived from people development activities, but traditional hierarchical training evaluation may not be the most appropriate method.	7.68
The right-hand column gives the average score recorded by over 1000 participants. They were asked to rate their agreement on a scale of 0–10, where 0 was ‘strongly disagree’ and 10 was ‘strongly agree’.

website and members involved in training and development (and interested nonmembers) were invited to indicate the extent to which they agreed or disagreed with the statements.

Just over 1000 people completed this poll from November 2005 to May 2006. As is evident from the Table, all the propositions secured a significant measure of agreement. Looking at the results in a little more detail, however, offers some useful advance insights on the issues that will be considered in the chapters that follow. It is helpful to divide the propositions into three groups.

The propositions that command the highest support are numbers 2, 3, 5 and 6. These can all be said be to related to the role of training in the business. The message here is positive – learning, training and development are now important drivers of organizational success, but we need to involve all parties to leverage our activities. Two propositions form the middle section in terms of agreement and both concern current problems or ‘work-in-progress’ for the profession. These are propositions 8, on technology and 9, on evaluation. These cover important technical questions and indicate areas where we need to improve our practice.

The three propositions that received the lowest scores – though, even here, a high measure of agreement was recorded – were numbers 1, 4 and 7. All three relate to the trainer’s role and the shift from the traditional classroom model. One interpretation is that many respondents see a move to a more varied...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half-Title Page
• Delication
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Series Preface
• Preface and Acknowledgements
• Part 1: Introduction
• Part 2: The Context
• Part 3: Current Practice
• Part 4: The Broader Picture
• Index