5.2 Employee Learning and Motivation

Purpose

This Item examines the education, training, and on-the-job reinforcement of knowledge and skills of your organization’s workforce. It also examines your organization’s systems for motivation and employee career development with the aim of meeting ongoing needs of employees and a high-performance workplace.

 

Comments

- Depending on the nature of your organization’s work, employees’ responsibilities, and the stage of organizational and personal development, education and training needs might vary greatly. These needs might include gaining skills for knowledge sharing, communication, teamwork, and problem solving; interpreting and using data; meeting customer requirements; accomplishing process analysis and simplification; reducing waste and cycle time; and setting priorities based on strategic alignment or cost/benefit analysis. Education needs also might include advanced skills in new technologies or basic skills, such as reading, writing, language, arithmetic, and, increasingly, computer skills.

- Education and training delivery might occur inside or outside your organization and could involve on-the-job, classroom, computer-based, or distance learning, as well as other types of delivery. Training also might occur through developmental assignments within or outside your organization.

- When you evaluate education and training, you should seek effectiveness measures as a critical part of the evaluation. Such measures might address the impact on individual, unit, and organizational performance; the impact on customer-related performance; and a cost/benefit analysis of the training.

- Although this Item does not specifically ask you about training for customer contact employees, such training is important and common. It frequently includes learning critical knowledge and skills in the following areas: your products, services, and customers; how to listen to customers; how to recover from problems or failures; and how to effectively manage customer expectations.

- An organization’s knowledge management system should provide the mechanism for sharing the knowledge of employees and the organization to ensure that high-performance work is maintained through transitions. Each organization should determine what knowledge is critical for its operations and should then implement systematic processes for sharing this information. This is particularly important for implicit knowledge (i.e., knowledge personally retained by your employees).

- To help employees realize their full potential, many organizations use individual development plans prepared with each employee that address his or her career and learning objectives.

- Factors inhibiting motivation should be understood and addressed by your organization. Further understanding of these factors could be developed through employee surveys or exit interviews with departing employees.