Reflections on the workplace as a learning environment

Dr Maggie Roe-ShawPresented at the Australian Evaluation Conference in Darwin, Northern Territory 2007

Overview of presentation

• What is workplace learning?• The role of workplace learning• What are learning organisations?• What place an evaluative management culture

in workplace learning?- Creating learning opportunities- Facilitating and promoting learning at work- Monitoring and evaluating learning effectiveness

Presentation outcomes

• Another view of workplace learning• Another view of learning organisations and

organisational learning• The value of knowledge organisations• The use of an evaluative management culture

to assess effectiveness and efficacy of workplace learning

• Creating learning opportunities at work• Approaches to enhance the timing and focus of

evaluation studies to inform effective workplace practices that facilitate workplace learning

What is workplace learning?

• “the formal acquisition of skills and knowledge in the workplace” (Tertiary Education Commission NZ, 2004)

• Creating sustainable new knowledge• Understanding workplace learning are

becoming more clearly linked to the development of knowledge workers and learning organisations

• Is the recognition that learning occurs through activities and experiences in the workplace

The role of workplace learning

• Shift in thinking of workplace learning as a cost to seeing it as an investment

• Changes in the organisational structure of tasks in the workplace to ensure:– Improvement in current job– Improve quality of goods or services– Respond to new technology– Develop a more flexible workforce– Improve employee safety in the workplace

(Smith, 2000)

What are learning organisations?

• Learning organisations are changing organisations because they:

Create useful knowledge for the organisation

Disseminate this knowledge effectively

Use this knowledge to improve organisational effectiveness

So learning organisations…

• Have a learning culture that enables them to:

Are better able to anticipate change

Respond and adapt to change more quickly

Perform better and survive longer than organisations that do not learn so well

Living learning organisations……

• “The essence of organisational learning is the organization’s ability to use the amazing mental capacity of all its members to create the kind of processes that will improve its own” (Dixon, 1994)

• “Organisations where people continually expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire, where new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, where collective aspiration is set free, and where people are continually learning to learn together” (Senge, 1994)

Professional socialisation: organisational learning

• Professional socialisation provides an individual with the knowledge, motivation and ability to play a defined role in their workplace

• Organisational socialisation provides a process for individual’s to learn the values, norms, and required organisational behaviours, to participate as an effective member of that organisation. It occurs throughout the individual’s career in the organisation

• Occupational socialisation provides a process to identify what others in their occupational group learn and how they learn it

Traditional work vs. knowledge organisations (adapted Despres & Hiltrop, 1995)

Skills and knowledge sets

Narrow, functional and prescribed

Specialised, flexible, diverse and with diffuse foci

Focus of work

Tasks, objectives and performance measures through formal policies, systems and practices

Client/customer focussed where informal practices, symbolic actions and evaluative beliefs, values and attitudes are important

Performance measures

Length of employment, loyalty to the ‘firm’

Professional development, continuing education

Career prospects

Rising through the organisation through seniority and miles on the clock

External to the organisation with best practice in organisational culture change

Evaluative management culture

• How do we monitor and evaluate the effectiveness and efficacy of workplace learning?

• Evaluative management culture in workplace learning is where the organisation has a culture whereby both policy and program managers in the development and implementation stages of workplace learning integrate evaluation into the organisational culture (Ryan, 2003)

Creating learning opportunities at work

Formal education as a learning opportunity

Can be in-house, university papers or courses, undertaking research, distance learning

Self-directed learning as a learning opportunity

Reading journal articles, updating knowledge via the internet or library

Opportunities within the job as a learning opportunity

Coaching mentoring, peer review of practice, job rotation, involvement with the wider organisation, project management work, supervision, reflection on day-to-day practice, informal discussion with colleagues, secondments

Opportunities outside the job as learning opportunity

Job rotation, visits to other centres/sites, conference presentations, secondment

Facilitating and promoting learning at work

PRACTICE

SITUATED EXPERIENCE

IDENTITY AND

CULTURE

SOCIAL STRUCTURE

SOCIAL THEORYOF LEARNING

Monitoring and evaluating learning effectiveness

• Top managerial buy-in and commitment to evaluative thinking about workplace learning including:– Organisational structure– Resourcing and planning– Ability to influence decision making– Organisational performance measurement strategies– Turning findings into action

• Communicate the importance of evaluation: the relentless pursuit of the truth about quality

Concluding thoughts

• Workplace learning seeks to create a learning system which incorporates the needs of the industry, the organisation, the division and the individuals within the organisational culture

• Work has to become learning and learning has to become work

• Work and learning are not synonymous: they are different concepts

• Learning organisations that have a workplace learning culture are more likely to have a workplace that improves performance (Smith et al, 2002)

Comments or questions?