HRD And Adult Workplace Learning Theories For Managers: Strategies To Remain Employable

The issue of youth unemployment and the need for effective strategies

Youth unemployment remains a major issue in the modern world regardless of the country’s financial or educational stability. It is true that no matter how much effort and money one puts in the education, people are running out of suitable jobs. This issue instigates the organization to seek for appropriate and effective strategies that would enable them to create high quality and quantity jobs for the young job seekers. Both the employee and the employer comes down to the labour market with particular skills, abilities and competencies (Deming, 2017). This essay focuses on certain Human Resource Development strategies that are useful for the managers or supervisors to stay employable in the current employment landscape. It concludes with the personal reflection of the knowledge gained through the entire research.

 In order to compete with the market giants, the managers or supervisors search for employees who are perfect learners. A sincere and enthusiastic learner reduces half the work for the HRM department. The HRD policies are implemented to brush up the skills, knowledge, adaptability and managing quality of the employees through proper training, seminars, learning sessions and many other techniques (Manuti, Pastore, Scardigno, Giancaspro & Morciano, 2015). Many human resource experts are of the opinion that ‘workplace learning ‘which is a relatively new term is nothing more than just the title change from Human Resource Development. However, there is also a category of experts who deny the fact and opine that both the terms are different in their own way (Andersson, Dasí, Mudambi & Pedersen, 2016). The human resource development and training process covers areas such as assessment, design, evaluation and implementation. First of all, the managers need to find the real talent with those adult learning factors, so that when the HRD strategies such as coaching and trainings are provided, it becomes easy for them to shun the already existing talent. The HRD management requires extraordinary power of adaptability (Claussen, Grohsjean, Luger & Probst, 2014). The faster one adapts the terms and conditions of the organization, the more one becomes successful. 

An organization, or more aptly said the HRD department is supposed to consider different learning capabilities of different employees, so that they could design their variety of strategies to work on and improve the employee capability. Employees are the foundation of an organization and if they are pushed from back and uplifted to higher levels, the entire organization becomes successful, more competitive and marketable. Therefore, it is the duty of the managers to know and find out the abilities and inabilities within an employee and support him/her accordingly. There is a range of learning theories propounded by scholars to assist organizations in making their training process more learning oriented concerning the varying capabilities of the employees (Brière, Proulx, Flores & Laporte, 2015).

Human Resource Development strategies and their implementation

Kolb’ learning theory is one of the most accepted theories by the organizations. This theory shows four learning stages of the learning cycle which includes Diverging, Assimilating, Converging and Accommodating. There is another significant learning style named as Honey and Mumford learning style which also identifies four stages. These are: Activist, Theorist, Pragmatist and Reflector. The behaviorist approach says that people learn from the sensors. Learning is nothing but the response to the stimulus. According to the cognitive learning approach people seek out for information to better understand the situation and adjust themselves in it. This theory says that human beings are intelligent seekers, and if they do not fit in somehow, they try hard to do something about the misfit (Rezvani et al., 2016). According to the social learning theory propounded by Albert Bandura argues that people can learn by watching or imitating other people.    This is also called observational learning. He also suggests that mental states are also a huge factor for fast learning. Mental peace, pride, satisfaction and accomplishment are the factors which impacts the learning process. This theory does not believe that learning changes the behavior unlike the behavioral theory (Wickramasinghe, 2015). Apart from these scholarly theories, there are some general theories which relate to the adult workplace learning process to a greater extent. Attention is the first quality one needs to be work –efficient. An employee cannot perform upto the mark without paying attention to what is being taught during the training / coaching. Secondly, the capability to retain the information in mind is another important part of the learning process. Thirdly comes the time to reproduce or apply in practical life whatever one has learnt. Motivation plays an important role in determining how the employee would perform (Uddin, Naher, Bulbul, Ahmad & Rahman, 2016). Learning becomes complete when motivating factors are added to it. These are some of the basic concepts of learning theories which can be related to almost every field especially workplace because the learning capability of the employees forecast the future development prospects of the organization and their sustainability in the current market. 

In order to become more employable than the competitors, choosing global talents is not the end story. The more challenging process is the retention of the talents, improve and maintain the work quality (Al Ariss, Cascio & Paauwe, 2014). An organization is supposed to reinvest in upgrading the workforce and it is the duty of the supervisors to observe and find the gap to work on. Employee motivation, their performance, productivity of the organization and future growth of the organizations and their competitive advantage, each and every component are interrelated. Various scholarly research suggests that effective managers are also required to modify employee engagement (Albrecht, Bakker, Gruman, Macey & Saks, 2015). Employee engagement is essential because the more an employee feels engaged towards the workplace, the more he/she learns fast and gives higher productivity. Companies depend and rely on effective and inspiring mangers because they are the higher representatives of the company (Helfat, C., & Peteraf, M. 2014). Lack of managerial skills within the managers or supervisors might affect the entire scenario. According to a latest study 1 out if 10 people have exceptional managerial skills. Most of them possess ordinary managerial skills such as building relationships, being assertive and motivating ad many other general capabilities. However, these extra skills can be learned and strengthened if the organization support and concentrate on the idea of developing managers (Rezvani et al., 2016). 

Different learning capabilities and theories for workplace learning

The skill developing of the managers can be done by following successful management role models and also by getting guided by experienced manger. They can enhance their efficiency by participating in management skill training courses. The company managers and supervisors hold the biggest responsibility within an organization starting with delegation, communication to planning and motivation (Cross, 2014). A better performing team signifies the presence of a good manager. Managers should form teams concerning their different cultural backgrounds and expertise so that the team members could easily relate with each other. Selecting the right person as team member is another big task which demands minute observation and judgement. A supervisor is supposed to be an expert determining this.

The recruiting skills can be developed by reading a lot of relevant books, by watching necessary videos, aptitude testing and in many other ways. Managers need to be great leaders who knows all possible ways of getting thee work done properly and within he deadline. In this regard the manager needs to enhance the power of observance to assign the right task to the right person. An ideal manager should be full of motivation, confidence and inspiration. It can be done by giving regular feedbacks to the employees increasing their willpower. Effective communication fields are supposed to be established by the managers where the workers can uncover their individual concerns regarding work and expect the issue to be worked on The flow of information on both the part of the manger and the employees should be crystal clear to avoid any misunderstanding. 

A stable management is required in every organization because it influences the sales, productivity, and competence of the workforce. The society has been constructed by efficient mangers guiding their organizations towards better future. A well- established management and leadership are the foundation of an economically stable country (Day, Fleenor, Atwater, Sturm & McKee, 2014). In a nutshell, all societies are in huge need of ideal mangers to rely on. The biggest market share holders such as Toyota, one of the largest automobile companies of the world concentrate on building strong management for their companies. The leadership of Toyota company is based on teamwork. The leaders of the company are assigned with huge responsibility but they are trained properly too for handling those responsibilities (José Sousa, Dias, Moço, Saldanha & Caracol, 2017).

Therefore, it can be concluded from the above essay that HRD and Adult workplace learnings are completely correlated with each other. The essay is useful for providing in-depth information and reviewing various relevant articles it throws light on the critical perspective of the issue. The essay has further highlighted certain Human Resource Development strategies that are useful for the managers or supervisors to stay employable in the current employment landscape.

The importance of employee engagement and motivation

The essay has been of great help for me as I went through the literature regarding the topic. I have received deeper knowledge of what is HRD, what are the important adult workplace learning theories, what are the relations among them, what are the managerial skills needed to stay marketable and also why they are important for an organization as well as the society. I will be able to bestow this knowledge in my career ahead in future. 

References

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