Organizational Development Needs: Methods And Approaches

Organizational Learning Needs: Description and Justification of Methods

Describe about the Organizational Development Needs?

Learning is a process for achieving all the business objectives that are ideal and essential for accomplishing the desired organizational performance. Learning minimizes the gaps between the Organization’s current abilities and their ability to deliver from the business results. It is an advantageous process as well as even the individual will tend to benefit from it by and large where the knowledge will enhance their skills and will also add to their personal competencies to develop their full potential (Boydell T and Leary M, 2003).

We have chosen a Training Organization called E-Module with its core business into Training and developing Training Solutions for E-Learning. It has total capacity of 55 employees who have been divided into various departments of Sales, R & D, Training and Service. In this report context, the departments are referred to discuss the overall strength of the chosen organization. Moreover, in this dynamic world, the students feel tedious with long lectures and boring assignments (McGregor, 1960). Therefore, this particular organization deploys online learning and knowledge sharing strategy through interactive presentation or other attractive manners.

Most of the Organizations have made bigger investments in terms of establishing learning needs with the best possible returns on their investment. In this case, the best investments are made on the organization’s ultimate assets who are its employees and customers.

In E-Module organization, the learning needs are catered by organizing the trainings in a planned way. Learning practices are more different in E-Module organization to the others because of the types of involved business. In addition, the amount of time an Organization spends on training its employees is always termed to be its return on investment. The training and development that E-Module needs to achieve are based on their specific goals and objectives that it might have organized and prioritised effectively. Apart from this, E-Module should also realise the identification and development of skills, knowledge and abilities that are required in a robust and an effective way (CIPD, 2015).

In this article, the researcher would analyse some of the methods that are used in identifying the learning needs with critical implementation process. Some of these methods would be standard methods that might have been customised for meeting the specific needs of the Organizations.

Implementing a structural analysis for developing the learning and development process is a critical process as it helps identify the core critical processes that require the Management intervention in developing additional processes to enhance the skills of the employees to meet certain specific needs of the processes and to achieve the Organizational Objectives (McGregor, D 1960). All the learning needs and the need analysis should be a continual process for all the Organizations.

The target audience for Training would be employees of various companies of different business spectrums as there would be a requirement for all departments and functions to motivate their employees to develop their skills depending on the department they are in or the functional process they belong.

Requirements of developing learning and organizational effectiveness

 The present model of developing the E Modules for various Clients is dependent on the need basis of the Customers. E Modules should adapt and implement a new model of Training development and delivery based on the changing needs of the Global Market and emphasising on the requirement of the need to change (Tan, 2011). The examples of two learning needs are as follows. The learning need assessment tools can be (1) confidence and competence rating scales and (2) professional conversation.

The organizational effectiveness and development is dependent on these assessment tools for verifying learning needs. The needs’ assessment would clearly give a new model of development for all the trainings it would conduct in the Organization (Argyris, 1978). It is critical for the Company to address these issues as it is essential for the brands to change and incorporate any new models in the Training Industry in order to work towards achieving the Organizational objectives which in turn will also ensure the overall employee growth perspectives (Adair, 1983). The employees join an Organization with a specific skill set and with a certain level of understanding of the Organizational objectives. There is a strong competition in the business sectors at the global front making it more obvious for the Organizations to compete with each other. The comparison is to maintain their standards and to look out for opportunities where they can be engaged in additional awareness activities concerned to learning and business.

The new trends that are introduced in any of the Organizations as a part of Training or as a part of Employee Skill enhancement will incur certain costs and it will have the subsequent advantage in letting the employees perform in alignment with the Organizational objectives (Baltes, 1999). This will provide the Company its desired growth and it will allow the employees to engage in all the related activities to improvise on the diversity of the learning environment with respect to different areas. The learning need analysis at every stage should also include all the diverse learning and monitoring activities that can influence the present system of learning and training delivery in the respective organizations (CIPD, 2015). Ensuring that these activities are a part of the learning and development scope would help the activities streamline and would in turn help in letting the newer learning activities emerge in an effective way.

There are various effective learning theories with maximising the proposed learning interventions. The learning assessment tools are referred here are confidence and competence rating scales and professional conversation. Now the confidence and competencies rating process is crucial with respect to the some relevant theories. The theories may be effective learning principles, learning style, timing, motivation methods, adult learning and obstacles for learning. However, before these theories the researcher would place focus over some thinking points (CIPD, 2015). The thinking points will be current activities’ consideration for assessment of the learning needs, main reasons of learning module selection, the improvement aspects of teaching process.

Current activities of E-Module will need to help the students or learners to understand the module clearly and as well as ensuring profound learning experiences (Harrison, 2011). In case of adult learning, E-module has to change some of the modules’ content to balance their learning with their age and experience (Knowles, 1973). To overcome the age barrier and relevance for learning, E-module will have to insist the learners for effective time managed environment. The learners are provided with familiar persons for effective learning process (Beevers and Rea, 2013). For individual learning, the E-module will have to consider the key learning factors as the attitude, maturity, interest and styles. They have to analyze the learning variable as well as the learning interest from the learners’ side.  Therefore, these issues will be improved in terms of a ‘Community of Practice’. The ‘Community of Practice’ will analyze the issues and then will recommend the best practices fit for E-module and the Learning Need selection process.

Review of Theory and Good Practice

In order to develop the organizational learning and development needs the learning needs itself can be classified into three categories like:

Classifying the Organizational needs based on the results of the requirements of the technological development needs and major restructuring

Group analysis which is conducted based on the change requirements or any new specifications which are given (CIPD, 2015)

The individual needs of the employees are also considered because of the in – effective performance of the individuals as such requirements are essential for the promotions, job – transfers, skill – enhancements and for acquiring any new skills through additional learning.

In the initial stages, the learning and development starts at each of the individual processes. The processes may be the legislation needs; the organizational needs, job or the functional needs and the team or individual needs are all collected and pooled into the diverse data. From the collected diverse data the analysis of data is done, the requirement for any further needs is identified, and the gaps to be fulfilled are identified (Boydell T and Leary M 2003).

From the requirements which are collected the classification of the learning needs and the non – learning needs is also done. Based on the classification the prioritisation of the needs is done which is done based on the business goals and finally based on these inputs the learning and development plan is prepared (Berger and Fitzgerald, 2002).

In cases of non – learning needs the recommendations for the development of the business improvements is done. For further clarity and simplicity on all these terms, a detailed learning analysis is done for a large no. of roles and jobs (CIPD, 2015). Even while preparing this there are three major elements for learning need and analysis like:

The abilities which are required to conduct an analysis

Needs of the stakeholder groups

Scale and scope of the analysis

Methods (examples)	Advantages/ disadvantages	Most useful in	Suitability for target audience	Evaluation of the suitability (or not)
Skills matrices	The proper assessment of student’s skills but the relevant competencies may be overlooked	Training and class activities	Huge numbers of students and their capability and knowledge can be assessed	This method is suitable in smaller group of learners rather than larger groups
Observation	The observation process is slow yet expertises will have to handle this process carefully	Classes and one-to-one session	Small number of students’ learning ability can be improved.	This method is slow and for huge batch of learners, the process is not effective.
Performance data	Performance data is effective for assessing the learning outcomes	Examination results	The students can view their progress or learning issues in this method	This method is useful for evaluate the students’ ultimate progress or deficit in learning
Interviews	It is effective for identifying student’s strength and weakness as well as their issues related with learning	One-to-one interview session	Each student will need to be interviewed individually	The evaluation process is suitable for assessing each person individually

Possible Learning Interventions	Methods and techniques are used for these learning interventions	Suitability for your target audience	Evaluation of acceptance or rejection
Coaching	Small group instruction, demonstration and discussion, feedback, questioning	Fewer people with more number of groups, with their experience and compatibility value	The coaching process is more systematic for huge number of learners however; individual assessment is not possible here.
Classroom based	Presentation, question and answer, exercises, role play activities	Huge or smaller number of people can be maintained in this learning intervention.	The classroom based learning is best for making individual assessment.
E-learning	Interactive process with understanding and application, sessions for induced cognitive learning	Huge number of people without any age restriction	E-learning process is effective and compatible with advanced and yet beginner learning scheme.
Action learning	The action learning process is managed with question answer session with online or offline.	Huge number of people can be assessed along with individual.	Target audience and their separate assessment are possible.

Evaluation model	Most useful model for	Suitability with proposed learning interventions
Kirkpatrick	Training purposes and behaviour tracking process	The online learning process is not effective with this model
RAM	This learning process is in reasoning and attentive measures	This model is suitable with reasoning and attention gathering of the students
CIRO	This learning model is useful for classroom and coaching learning	This model is suitable with coaching and classrooms, however, online assessment is not possible.

Conclusion

After all these discussion and analysis, the researchers have come to an opinion that the online learning process is useful. The learning intervention is easy with RAM learning model, however; the model is dependent over online sessions and the learning urge from the users’ side. The users will require being motivated from the online learning organization side. The users will then attend the interactive session for their age level, may be beginner, intermediate, advanced or experienced. The users can view the course content for better follow-up of subject along with their individual responses.

References

Beevers, K., and Rea, A. (2013). Learning and Development Practice. Chartered institute of personnel & development.

Knowles, M. (1973). The adult learner: a neglected species.

Harrison, R. (2011). Learning and development. Development and Learning in Organizations: An International Journal, 26(1).

Boydell T and Leary M, (2003), Identifying Training Needs, London : CIPD

CIPD, (2015). “Helping People Learn –  Case Studies”, [online] Available at: www.cipd.uk/helping peoplelearn/casestudies.htm [Accessed on Oct 28^th 2015]

CIPD, (2015). “A Learning Strategy for the Inland Revenue”, [online] Available at: www.cipd.uk/helpingpeoplelearn/_Is.htm#lsir [Accessed on Oct 28^th 2015]

CIPD, (2015). “Using Technology Enablers to Develop Individual Responsibility for Learning : The Scottish Fire and Rescue Services”, [online] Available at: www.cipd.uk/helpingpeoplelearn/_cc.htm#sfr [Accessed on Oct 28^th 2015]

McGregor, D.,(1960). The Human side of enterprise. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Tan, L., (2011), Self Directed Learning with ICT: Theory, Practice and Assessment

Adair, J., (1983), Effective Leadership, London: Pan Books

Argyris, C., (1978), Organizational learning. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley

Baltes, P. B., (1999). Lifespan psychology: Theory and application to intellectual functioning.Annual Review of Psychology,50, 471−507

Berger, J. G., and Fitzgerald, C. (2002), Leadership and complexity of mind: The role of executive coaching, Executive coaching: Practices and perspectives(pp. 27−58). Palo Alto, CA: Davies-Black