HRD Survival Skills

Jessica Levant

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2009
• eBook ISBN: 9781136397721
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

At your fingertips is this valuable source of ideas, concepts, and step-by-step activities. Now you can effectively promote the HR training function within your organization. This unique guide shows you how to: * assess and tune up your department's image * promote HRD's added value to the business * appeal to diverse company groups * keep awareness high by staying visible * enhance relationships inside your organization * make sure administration doesn't tarnish your image * capitalize on work with external consultants * determine if the department should sell to a wider market In addition, you will find: * insightful case studies * easy-to-organize activities * a training image assessment survey * an inventory of training styles * a customer-focus checklist Overflowing with ideas, 'HRD Survival Skills' supplies your training and development teams with actual examples taken from diverse industries, sectors, and countries. Here's your blueprint to ensure that the services you provide are the right services for your in-house 'customers'.

CHAPTER 1

Shifting the Focus

This book does not start from the beginning. It assumes that the reader does not have to be convinced that training and development programs play a very important role in an organization’s current performance and future prosperity. It also assumes that the reader agrees that high-quality training and development efforts are important in attracting, developing, and retaining high-quality people. In short, it is not a book about how to “do” training and development; rather it is about how the customer connection must underline all training and development efforts throughout the organization for it to stay viable.

THE SYSTEMATIC APPROACH

Because developing client-focused training must be built into basic training and development skills, we will start with a brief review of the systematic approach for creating performance improvement initiatives. The systematic approach is usually presented as the backbone of any competently planned training and development course. This review will allow us to clarify the concepts and techniques referred to throughout this book, and ensure we start from a common understanding. Though the actual words may vary from one organization to the next, the systematic approach generally looks something like Figure 1-1.

One of the problems with this model, as it is presented to most training and development students, is that it is necessary but not sufficient. While it may be the foundation upon which training and development skills are built, and a practical and logical model for provision of performance improvement solutions, it is an internal model—it encompasses the tasks that must be performed within the organization to get the “product” right, but does not incorporate how to engage various customers in those tasks. When performance improvement efforts are looked at from this perspective, they are like any other product or service—a microwave oven, a personal pension plan, a telephone charge card, even two-surface window cleaners. It could be the greatest idea since sliced bread, only people don’t know what it will do, how good it is, how it will actually benefit them, and possibly that it even exists until a vital connection is made between the provider and the intended recipient. It is through the marketing process that the customer learns enough to want to know more about the product, thereby creating a “market.”

Figure 1-1. The systematic approach.

In training and development, the marketing process should be a transparent overlay on the systematic approach previously described. There are activities which should be attended to every step of the way.

OVERLAYING THE MARKETING PROCESS

Every marketing process starts with identifying potential customers and then learning what the customer population wants—the market research phase. This is not the same as a one-time survey of training needs. It involves personal attention, diagnostic listening, face-to-face contact, and repeated reaching out to learn what customers need from their point of view. It also means really understanding both the business as a whole and the particular customer’s context in order to devise an appropriate solution and to alert them to the possibility of something being developed to meet their need(s). Achieving situations that give this level of personal attention often rests on how the training and development function portrays its image to the rest of the organization.

Marketing efforts of an internal service depend a great deal on image for their continued success. Part of the necessary ongoing market research is to assess the image the rest of the organization has of the training and development function and to determine the “right” image to promote. Visibility only helps if it is positive! (You can use the Training Image Survey on pages 76-77 and 131-132 to assess how your organization perceives the training and development function.)

During the design phase of any training and development solution, there is a need to maintain and strengthen client relationships in order to assess changes in needs and wants and to attend to other influencing factors, for example changes in organizational direction, new managers, etc. This purposeful contact enables the design to stay on target, works to keep customer awareness alive, and maintains “visibility.” This personal attention phase allows the introduction of appropriate promotional activity so that when it is time to launch the planned program, customers are eager to participate. This kind of effort is needed on a regular basis to constantly review products and markets.

The next phase is just as crucial: openness to feedback, demonstration of concern to get it right and to continue getting it right, flexibility, and the ability to adapt in a timely manner all come together to ensure that what is provided continues to meet the needs of the customers. This is the phase in which image is tested. What you are and what you are seen to be come together to determine your ongoing viability as a training function.

Later chapters will cover in detail the different marketing processes. For now, it will be useful to look more closely at how the systematic approach is normally followed.

Figure 1-2. The marketing process cycle.

Performance Analysis

Let’s start with analyzing performance needs. We know that performance should

Be driven by the business needs (start with the corporate mission)

Have the support of the top executive

Look at current and future gaps in performance throughout the organization

Take into account individual needs and preference wherever practicable

Be focused on improving current organization’s performance

However, the reality is sometimes a bit different.

A needs analysis is often a paper-intensive process, whether through questionnaires or as a result of performance appraisal systems. Occasionally an external consultant is brought in to do a “complete analysis”—often after none has been done for some time, or as a requirement for some outside funding of training. In that case, there tends to be a comprehensive document delineating what training or other performance improvement solution every segment of the organization needs.

Sometimes the analysis involves the entire staff; more often a particular group (e.g., customer service staff, managers, or department heads). Performance improvement needs are either expressed in current terms or predicted for future identified competencies. They are frequently presented in broad terms (e.g., supervisory skills, communication or presentation skills, etc.). When time, authority, and normal practice permit, the dedicated HRD professional will have face-to-face conversations with at least some of the population to gain a more specific picture of needs. (For a full exploration of the Needs Analysis process, see Further Reading.)

There is nothing inherently wrong with any of these techniques. Depending on the thoroughness of the investigation, a more or less comprehensive set of performance improvement needs will be collected which will be...

Table of contents

• Frontcover
• Halftitle
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Preface
• CHAPTER 1
• CHAPTER 2
• CHAPTER 3
• CHAPTER 4
• CHAPTER 5
• CHAPTER 6
• CHAPTER 7
• CHAPTER 8
• CHAPTER 9:
• CHAPTER 10:
• Appendix A: A Customer Focus Checklist
• Appendix B: The Training Image Survey
• Appendix C: Trainer Styles
• Appendix D: Developing Your Network
• Further Reading
• Index