We wanted to know where managers looked for learning when faced with a challenge in the workplace, how frequently they did it, and how effective they perceived the different methods to be. Most importantly, we wanted to take a learner-centric approach and ask managers, not HR or learning and development professionals, whose perceptions and needs may be different.

As such, we commissioned ComRes to conduct a survey, and the findings show that managers frequently use informal activities to help them learn, and that on the whole they find them to be very or fairly effective.

Download your free copy of ‘How managers learn (in their own words)’

View the full data tables from the survey.

GoodPractice is pleased to announce the launch of its new monthly Newsletter. Packed full of industry and GoodPractice news, client case studies, free articles and downloads – all delivered directly to your inbox. We hope you enjoy the read and as always, we welcome your feedback

How do managers learn?

GoodPractice recently published the latest white paper in the Learning and Performance Link series. Presenting the survey findings of over two hundred managers from mid-size to large organisations, ‘How managers learn (in their own words)’ is a compelling read, providing an insight in to the perceived effectiveness of current leadership and management development and training methods. The report has been well received and sparked a phenomenal response from the TrainingZone audience. If you have not done so already, read the full report.

Industry Spotlight

Top Posts and Hot Topics

Industry Spotlight Top Posts and Hot Topics If like us and Tony Karrer, you struggle to keep up with all the latest blogs and must read articles, then we hope you will find this of use. Tony recently posted a list list of blog posts and hot topics for the month, allowing us to keep up to date on leading thinking from some great writers. What’s more our very own Peter Casebow made the list at number 11 with his blog post on planning to implement informal learning.

Exploring the performance landscape

What’s your mental picture of the learning landscape and the tools you have available to you, as a learning professional, to do your job? One of the conclusions from our White Paper on How Managers learn (in their own words) was that Learning and Development professionals need to revaluate their perspective of the learning landscape and start to think about a performance landscape. Exploring the performance landscape sets out our thinking on this idea further, and you can read the full article.

Top 5 toolkit search terms

What over 1 million managers have been searching for this month

1. Time Management
2. Motivation
3. Feedback
4. Competencies
5. Values

Featured Client

The University of Liverpool

“The Professional Development Toolkit has become instrumental to the University’s approach to leadership and development”, explains Frances Hewison, Assistant Director of HR at the University of Liverpool. Read the full case study.

GoodPractice News

Have you met Alex yet?

This month sees the arrival of additional features on goodpractice.com, including a dedicated resource section, new product demonstrations and an animated video starring Alex. There’s never been a better time to visit!

You can sign up to recieve a regular copy of our monthly Newlsetter either below or directly from our home page.

• learning to handle information, knowledge and ideas
• learning for the purpose of work

In the past, there have been some areas of overlap between the two fields but until relatively recently, work has been mostly focused on the creation, buying and selling of goods and services whereas ‘knowledge work’ has been motivated by a desire to better understand the world around us. The way that those ideas have eventually made their way into the world of work doesn’t take away from the fact that the original intention was generally of a less practical nature. [1]

Given that more of the work carried out in developed countries is knowledge work, what lessons can be learned from history to help us support learning and development in the modern economy?

The changing face of work

Society has come a long way in terms of both intellectual development and the type of work people do. In the last few decades, there has been dramatic growth in what Peter Drucker termed knowledge based work. That is, work for which there is no tangible output but is instead defined in terms of information produced, analysis of information or the generation of new ideas. For most managers and nearly all senior leaders in an organisation, this is a significant part of their role.

This is a major shift from the work of previous generations, where most employment was of a more physical nature or did not require such a high degree of knowledge in order to perform. For example, to work as a technician in a hospital laboratory used to require achieving three O-Levels; now it’s difficult to get a place in a lab without a postgraduate qualification because of the complex nature of the work and deep level of expert understanding required to interpret the results. This isn’t just true of sophisticated scientific work, postgraduate qualifications are often required to work in human resources in many organisations, yet it wasn’t that long ago that school level qualifications would suffice.

A review of the history of learning at work (see appendix) reveals that it has evolved from simple observation and imitation to the plethora of different learning strategies employed today. However, the majority of the commonly used instructional techniques used in the modern workplace attempt to improve upon methods developed during the two World Wars. It was at this time that there was a need to train large numbers of people to perform technical, yet mostly physical, tasks and the tools that we had were limited to face-to-face instruction.

Work has changed in the last 50 years but the main instructional and learning support strategies used to support that work haven’t.

The original knowledge work

The development of new knowledge and the application of ideas has taken a rather different path from how people have traditionally learned to do their jobs. When looking at the development of philosophy, science, mathematics and the arts, patterns start to emerge in the types of activities that those engaged in these disciplines participated in:

• accessing the knowledge of experienced practitioners (whether in person or through some other media, such as books)
• informal networking between experts in the field
• collaboration with others
• problem-solving
• debate and constructive criticism
• experimenting with new ideas in practice

The higher order skills required to take advantage of these activities can’t be learned by following simple step-by-step instructions. However, when the hubs of knowledge development and creativity of the last several hundred years are examined, many of the common attributes listed above are demonstrated by the successful, creative and innovative organisations today. Whether it is Microsoft or Google, WL Gore or 3M, the learning culture in these organisations is not a top-down, push of information but a collaborative environment where access to new ideas is used to stimulate and inspire.

A struggling discipline

The huge range of new initiatives and fads over the last 30 years in the field of Learning and Development tells the story of a discipline that has lost its way slightly. The old tried and tested methods of the industrial age no longer work as well as they used to, and this is because the nature of work itself has changed.

Learning and Development departments need to change, learn lessons from the knowledge work of previous generations and apply the tools we have today to improve upon how they carried out work.

Indeed, this is already happening with the dissemination of expert knowledge through the web, the growth of online discussion groups, email exchanges between people working in similar professions (in different organisations), the sharing and debating of ideas through blogs and collaboration between people in different parts of the world through collaborative tools. Forward thinking organisations are tapping into these mechanisms to make it easier for their employees to connect, share and learn.

These aren’t new ways of doing things. The letter writers and coffee house dwellers of the 17th century, the public lecturers of the 18th century, the scientists at Princeton in the 1930s and 1940s, and the developers and entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley were learning in exactly the same ways; they just used different tools. It’s a very different type of learning than Learning and Development departments have been involved in supporting in the past.

The normal paradigm of scheduled events won’t work in the knowledge economy; in order to get a fresh perspective on how they operate, learning professionals could do worse than ask themselves the following questions:

• How do we provide people with access to expert ideas and knowledge without pushing it out through scheduled events and spoon-feeding methods?
• How do we help people connect and collaborate more easily?
• How will we create a culture where mistakes are tolerated and experimentation is encouraged?
• How do we ensure that new ideas are debated and criticised constructively?

More importantly, learning professionals need to work with senior executives to identify the learning and performance culture they want to create to support this type of learning, and the changes that need to occur to make this happen.

There are no one-size-fits-all answers to these questions, but asking them will help Learning and Development departments look at what they do in a different way and begin to find a way forward that really meets the learning and performance needs of the organisation.

[1] I’m painting a story with a very broad brush here, and quite happily admit that exceptions can be found for every statement that I can make. However, I’d argue that the general thrust of the argument is valid.

Appendix: A brief history of learning

A book could be written on the subject of work and knowledge based learning through history, so the notes in this appendix stick to the main trends and significant developments. There is is a European bias to the timeline to keep things simple, but this should not detract from the significant achievements of the Far Eastern and Arabic cultures over the same time period, especially through the Middle Ages, when European cultural development stagnated. Despite these limitations, the main points remain valid.

Pre-history (before 4100 BC)

In the early days of civilisation, before written records were made, knowledge and wisdom gathered by previous generations were passed down through oral recitation. Often this was in the form of stories and poems that were easier to remember.

The concept of work was not yet the same as it is today. People’s ‘work’ was survival, but skills needed to be shared and developed. This was done through observation and imitation in a very similar way that a new person joining an organisation today might spend some time shadowing and watching an experienced member of staff.

Predominant methods

Ancient civilisation (approx 4100 BC to 500 BC)

The development of civilisation enabled people to specialise in ways that were not possible before. The accumulation and passing on of knowledge became something that someone could do for a living.

Outside of the upper echelons of society, the world of work was dominated by the making, buying and selling of goods. During this time, the skills needed to work a trade were usually passed down from father to son, mother to daughter. This concept of someone experienced passing on their knowledge and skills to a younger, inexperienced individual would eventually develop into the concept of an apprenticeship system that we still have in place today.

Predominant methods

Classical antiquity (500 BC to 500 AD)

The Classical period saw the explosion of wealth in certain parts of the world that enabled certain civilisations to develop ideas and the concept of critical thinking to previously unsought levels.

Two developments stand out as influencing how knowledge was passed on to this day. These were the the precursors to modern day universities such as Plato’s Academy, and the first great collections of knowledge such as the great Library of Alexandria .

Plato’s Academy and Aristotle’s Lyceum are examples of the formalising of an informal structure that had developed naturally. The Academy grew from informal meetings held at Plato’s home, where educated men would debate ideas and try to solve intellectual problems. New thinking was developed through Socratic questioning and the studying of problems which needed to be solved.

The Library of Alexandria was just one of several great libraries that were built at this time. These acted as centres of scholarship and research, and attracted scholars from around the known world.

Learning for the purpose of working at this time was still very much based on the passing of skills from one generation to another, observation and imitation. There were several fields, such as scribing, law and certain military roles, where this was not the case. The classroom, or training ground, was used to provide instruction in writing, the law and military strategy. However, these knowledge based jobs were a tiny percentage of the overall jobs market and tended to be the prerogative of the upper classes of society. In addition, the schooling that these professionals received was seen as a first step towards official status, and usually there was a period of apprenticeship to be observed first.

Predominant methods

Middle Ages (500 AD to 1600 AD)

The Middle Ages were when the concept of apprenticeship was formalised and run by official organisations. A master tradesman would employ a young apprentice as an inexpensive form of labour in return for food, board and formal training in his craft. These arrangements were often overseen by guilds or local government.

This period also saw the establishment of what we would today recognise as universities, including the Universities of Paris, Oxford and Cambridge. Initially, these awarded general degrees based on accomplishment in all the taught subjects, before going on to offer more specialised degrees. Teaching at the university was very similar to today, with students attending lectures, participating in small group tutorials and self-directed study before proving competence in an exam form of assessment.

However, the main focus of these medieval universities was the passing on of knowledge and the development of critical and analytical thinking skills. Towards the end of this period, universities started to change and focus more on encouraging productive thinking – the development of new ideas and ways of viewing the world – which is when active research became a core university activity.

Predominant methods

17th century

The 17th century saw an explosion in unofficial collaboration that led to new ideas and concepts being proposed and expounded upon at ever-increasing rates.

Intellectuals in the fields of science, maths and history were constantly corresponding with one another, sharing ideas and challenging current thinking over significant distances (Pierre de Fermat and Sir Isaac Newton being two famous examples).

The 17th century also saw some well known examples of the clustering of like-minded individuals who went on to change how we view and interact with the world. Coffee houses in London and Paris housed serious intellectual debate: Paris had the philosophers and artists, while the London coffee houses had a big part to play in the development of the Royal Society and Lloyds of London (a wager made in a London coffee house even led to the publication of Newton’s greatest work, Principia Mathematica).

From this point on, the way that those involved in the development and generation of ideas are prepared to do their work hasn’t changed all that much. The tools used to collaborate, debate and experiment may have changed over time, but the essential approach remained much the same.

Predominant methods

18th and 19th centuries

In the 18th century the Industrial Revolution changed the world of work. The explosion of factories and new ways of working meant that there was a requirement to train a large number of people in a short time on simple techniques, especially on how to operate machinery. This led to the birth of classroom ’sheep dip’ training, with employers taking a lead from schools on how to train a group of people at the same time.

The main influence in the 18th century on the development of new knowledge was the widening of the debate. Up until the 17th century, intellectual debate and collaboration was limited to a relatively small group. The coffee house culture saw an expansion of this, and the 18th century saw the introduction of public lectures and the first wide circulation of groundbreaking works in print. The publication of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species was of international interest, and the debate went back and forth across the public domain. Ideas had started to spread far more widely, and more quickly, than they had in previous centuries.

Predominant methods

Mid 20th century

Two events dominated the first half of the 20th century, and these in turn affected every aspect of those societies involved, including work. During the two world wars, countries that used conscription to swell the ranks of their military needed to find a way of training large numbers of people to perform complex technical tasks. In addition, the civilian workforce needed to transform the output of the country’s factories to supply the war effort. This experience, coupled with the work of management researchers such as B.F. Skinner, led to the development of instructional design – a process informed by tested learning theories.

These instructional models all had a similar make up: steps to identify the requirements of the learner and the stated objective of the learning activity; steps to design and deliver an appropriate intervention; and steps to evaluate the success of the intervention designed.

Similar to the classroom approach of the Industrial Revolution, instructional design was developed with the achievement of competence at a physical task in mind (such as building an aircraft, stripping a machine gun or carrying out military manoeuvres).

Until the the 1950s, managers usually carried out training. However, the success of structured training led to the creation of training departments and training experts. Adam Smith’s timeless economic imperative of the division of labour made this change inevitable.

The 20th century also saw the speeding up of intellectual development. Where new ideas were needed, the environment and the methods were largely unchanged from previous generations. The Manhattan Project involved teams of people collaborating together to solve difficult problems, often at universities. The scientists heading that project corresponded at first, and then were brought together to work near each other and engage with each other socially. Through the process of sharing ideas, challenging each other and debating ideas, the scientists cracked problems in months that it was thought would take years to solve.

Predominant methods

1980s to 2010

The last 30 years have seen the increasingly wide-ranging search for ways to improve upon classroom training and instructional design. These include formal coaching and mentoring, accelerated learning, neuro-linguistic programming, brain friendly learning, games based learning, computer based training, elearning, learning management systems, learning content management systems, talent management, and action learning to name but a few.

The predominant methods of learning for the purpose of doing a job, however, have remained classroom training and instructional design, while apprenticeships have fallen in and out of favour with successive governments.

Training for the professions remains largely unchanged, as the route from university to a junior, apprentice-like role that is served for a time before moving up the career ladder has remained the same for doctors, lawyers and accountants for several hundred years.

Predominant methods

Other useful resources

A Developmental History of Training in the United States and Europe (a more academic take on the development of training from a researcher at Michigan State University)

A Time Capsule of Training and Learning (a collection of historical developments on Donald Clark’s Big Dog & Little Dog site)

Training: a short history (the CIPD’s take on the history of training)

What’s your mental picture of the learning landscape and the tools you have available to you, as a learning professional, to do your job?¹

One of the conclusions from our White Paper on ‘How Managers learn (in their own words)’ was that Learning and Development professionals need to revaluate their perspective of the learning landscape and start to think about a performance landscape.² This paper sets out our thinking on the idea further.

The White Paper was based on a survey of 206 managers and established the frequency and effectiveness of a number of informal learning activities.³

Before going any further, it is worth stressing that this paper is not about informal learning as such, nor are we saying that informal learning is good and formal learning is bad! There is an unquestionable place for all formal learning methods, but as they only amount to 30% of effective learning in organisations is it right that our focus and starting point is with these methods?

History of learning

A good starting point is to consider the history of learning and how it has evolved over the years. My colleague, Owen Ferguson has written an excellent article, ‘The Convergence of Knowledge and Work’ tracing the development of training and learning through the industrial revolution to today’s knowledge environment. In summary, most of our thinking about learning and training is stuck in the industrial age of the classroom, instructional design and control of learning.

The issue, as Owen points out, is that we live and work in a knowledge economy with a culture that is more questioning and curious than ever before. At the same time, technology has transformed access to knowledge and creates a range of opportunities that a learner will instinctively grasp when they need help to meet a challenge.

Indeed, one of the things that most of us fail to realise when undertaking informal learning is that we are learning! Chatting to a colleague about a problem is not seen as learning. Learners are as pre-conditioned as learning professionals to think of learning as being something that is controlled and delivered to them, whether in the classroom or through an e-learning module.

Purpose of learning – performance

Not only has the mental model of learning not evolved, but in many cases it seems to lack a clarity of purpose.

Why does Learning and Development exist and what value does it add? To my mind this is simple: Learning and Development exists to serve the organisation, by improving performance. It is not responsible for performance; that role needs to lie with line management, but it should be measured on its impact on the performance of the organisation. It is responsible for bringing specialist knowledge of how people learn in order to perform and to maximise the opportunities that exist within the organisation.

The expertise of Learning and Development professionals should enable them to:

1. help executives and managers identify performance gaps (a performance gap is where the potential of the organisation is not being achieved).

2. act as trusted guides as to the best method of achieving the desired improvement.

3. articulate a clear set of responsibilities around what needs to be delivered and the various interdependencies.

4. deliver their part of the plan to close the performance gap.

The language they should speak is not about learning outcomes, but performance outcomes. What really matters is what learners actually do when in the performance arena.

This may well mean learning professionals acquiring a new set of skills in order to thrive in this new environment.

If we accept that learning is about performance and that the paradigm we have of learning needs to evolve, what models and tools exist to help us build a new performance-based view of learning?

New ways of thinking about learning

Charles Jennings sets outs a learner focused model called the ‘find/access model’⁴ , in a blog about the future of learning.⁵ The model is very useful in terms of thinking about what people need to learn in order to be able to perform. Charles calls it ‘content-right learning & content-light learning’ and argues that the amount of content learning departments should deliver needs to be dramatically reduced from the existing traditional model.

He also provides a useful framework around what learners need to know, and the idea of core concepts, together with the stages of Memorisation, Familiarisation and On-Demand, set out well the split between training and performance support.

To be effective, we need to start with a clear view of the performance required and the performance gap, and then take a learner-centric perspective based on what is effective in the performance situation. This means moving away from seeing formal learning as the starting point and learning outcomes as the focus.

The performance landscape

The model (although simplified) benefits from placing performance as the sole focus and bringing the effective and frequently used informal learning tools to the fore.

This is a radically different starting point and perspective from most mainstream current thinking, and reflects our suggestion that the starting point and main area of focus for learning departments should be on supporting informal learning, rather than seeing it as a ‘nice-to-have’ bolt-on.

Charles Jennings suggests that this means that learning departments need to therefore focus ‘on basic conceptual tools such as creative thinking, critical thinking and analytics skills, logic, search skills, data validation skills, research methodologies skills, networking and communication skills.’ These are the core workplace skills which underpin better informal learning and therefore facilitate improved performance. (This is also supported by Tony Karrer ⁶ and his view of workplace literacy.⁷ )

A focus on performance also moves the measurement process from inputs and outputs to performance outcomes and the methods of achieving them, and makes for a much more meaningful conversation with line executives about their concerns and requirements.

So the learning department of today may want to think about changing its name to ‘Performance Support’ and shift the focus to, as Jay Cross says, ‘helping people perform better, faster, cheaper’. In this world your paradigm needs to be based on a performance landscape.⁸

To conclude as I started: what’s your mental picture of the performance landscape and the tools you have available to you to improve the performance of your organisation?⁹

¹ We define a learning landscape as a range of learning opportunities that exist within an organisation to provide learning outcomes.

² Available at goodpractice.com.

³ Informal learning definition by Jay Cross: ‘anything that is not easily recognisable as formal training and performance support.’

⁴ http://www.duntroon.com/index.html

⁵ http://charles-jennings.blogspot.com/2009/12/getting-to-core-of-learning-content-in.html

⁶ http://elearningtech.blogspot.com/2009/03/workplace-productivity.html

⁷ http://www.workliteracy.com/

⁸ http://togetherlearn.wordpress.com/2009/02/20/the-training-department-of-the-future/

⁹ The performance landscape is the range of learning opportunities that exist within an organisation to improve performance. These are hugely influenced by the performance culture of the organisation.

Canterbury Christ Church University is the largest centre of higher education in Kent for the public services – notably teacher training, nursing, policing, health and social care – and a significant provider of programmes in a wide range of academic and professional areas. In total, the University offers over one thousand academic and professional study programmes at undergraduate and postgraduate level and is renowned for academic excellence.

Business opportunity

In 2007, Canterbury Christ Church University decided to revisit its appraisal system, following the introduction of the national framework agreement with new pay and grading structures. To ensure the revised process was effective, and was able to add real value, the University was looking for a solution to support all staff across the University’s five campuses.

What’s more, to coincide with the launch of its new appraisal system, the University also wanted to implement a new Leadership Model to encourage, facilitate and drive the development of leadership capabilities within the University’s senior staff.

What were the organisation’s needs?

To ensure the revised appraisal process was introduced effectively, it was clear that Canterbury required an all-encompassing solution. The University was looking for a solution to support all staff going through the new appraisal process, in effect, a means of providing 24/7 support for all staff.

Furthermore, the University was pending its IiP accreditation and was keen to ensure that staff at all levels had access to resources to support their ongoing professional development.

Additionally, to support the new Leadership Model, the University required a wealth of high quality resources to support and develop its leaders before, during and after its formal programmes.

What solution was provided?

Working directly with Canterbury Christ Church University, the team at GoodPractice devised a truly unique solution, comprised of two innovative, dedicated toolkits.

Encompassing a wealth of topics, the University introduced its Appraisal and Professional Development Toolkit for all managers and staff, designed to empower all staff to take a proactive approach to learning and development, and its Leadership and Management Development Resource Centre, aimed specifically at senior leaders.

The Leadership and Management Development Resource Centre provides the University with a one-stop shop for its busy leaders. The GoodPractice solution incorporates a Leadership Development Programme Centre for delegates, supported by development topics which are based on the GoodPractice Toolkit for Leaders. To encourage user engagement and ensure ease of use and relevance, the content is mapped against the University’s four key leadership capability clusters.

What were the outcomes?

The University is now using the toolkits to support staff on many levels across its five campuses. The resources are used from employee induction right through to appraisal, professional development, workshops and training events. Across the University, use of the toolkits averages at an impressive 500 document downloads per month.

Client Testimony

“Using the GoodPractice site and materials to support our relaunch of appraisal has been hugely beneficial and shown our staff that learning can happen in a variety of ways, not just the standard ‘course’! We have been very pleased with our staff use of the site, the support from GoodPractice and the flexibility the tool offers us.”

Tracy Bell-Reeves, Canterbury Christ Church University

Here at GoodPractice we believe learning and performance are two sides of the same coin, but we understand the exact measurement for delivering such learning is the source of much debate in today’s world of employee development.

So, how would you know that using on-demand learning resources would deliver the results you desire? This white paper explores the link between performance and learning and uncovers the compelling case for performance toolkits.

Download your copy of ‘The Case for Performance Toolkits’

The University of Liverpool is one of the UK’s leading research institutions, with a world class research portfolio, and an annual turnover of £340 million. Educating over 20,000 students and employing over 5,000 staff, the University is a member of the Russell Group, reflecting its position as one of the UK’s leading research-intensive universities.

Business opportunity

In 2008, the University implemented a thorough Professional Development Review (PDR) strategy for its entire workforce. The University fully understood that for this strategy to be executed effectively, it needed to provide adequate resources to create and foster a learning and development culture amongst its 5,000-strong staff base.

What were the organisation’s needs?

To ensure the University remains one of the UK’s leading research universities by supporting a continuous improvement approach to performance, and by instilling a sense of partnership between employer and employee. This cultural change initiative led to an increased demand on the type and range of development opportunities available, where individuals take greater responsibility for their own career and personal development. It was also important to the University’s diversity and equality strategy to increase the accessibility of the learning and development opportunities available to staff by increasing the diversity of methods of delivery available.

The University therefore required a comprehensive solution to empower all of its employees to take responsibility for their own learning and development. The University identified the following deliverables and objectives:

• Develop capability to support managers in being accountable for the new PDR process and enable managers to support their own teams on a day-to-day basis.
• Increase the resources available to support the effective implementation of PDR.
• Reduce the time HR spends dealing with basic management issues.
• Provide instant support for formal programmes and courses.
• Create a forum for learning that was not confined to a formal classroom based environment.

Why GoodPractice?

From the outset, GoodPractice worked collaboratively with the University, offering a bespoke and consultative service. The University recognised that GoodPractice was supported by the HE sector, which suggested an understanding of the issues facing universities, and was also endorsed by other universities with whom they had worked successfully.

The range of resources available through the toolkit provided the University with an instant learning and development profile within the University, where very limited resources were previously available. The technical support provided by GoodPractice was unrivalled, as the University had limited technical expertise.

What solution was provided?

The University deployed the Professional Development Toolkit, which is based on the GoodPractice Toolkit for Managers. The toolkit provides a wealth of resources, including theory, hints, tips, best practice guides and exercises for managers to support personal and team development.

Underpinning the new PDR process, the toolkit was deployed to meet the objectives set out by the University through the provision of purposeful, accessible resources and support for both ‘Reviewers’ and ‘Reviewees’ before, during and after reviews. Constantly updated to meet the evolving needs of the University’s staff, the dynamic Professional Development Toolkit plays an integral role in the University’s successful PDR process.

What were the outcomes?

Due to the success of the initial Professional Development Toolkit launch and the collaborative relationship between the University and GoodPractice, the University has now added the GoodPractice Toolkit for Leaders to its learning and development portfolio.

As well as comprehensive support throughout the PDR process, staff can now research and sign up for training courses online via the toolkit. Not only can staff choose from a catalogue of training courses, but the toolkit also provides links to suggested reading and related resources, from both within the toolkit and from external sites. Such customisation of the toolkit supports employees in a very simple yet effective way. By acting as a one-stop-shop for research, support and training materials, the toolkit empowers employees to fulfil their learning and development plans, which in effect contributes to improved performance.

The University also publishes regular Toolkit Topics, provided by GoodPractice, via various internal announcements. Highlighting current events and issues, the Toolkit Topics incorporate links to guide users to the relevant areas of the Toolkit, thus driving interest and further facilitating learning.

What are the benefits?

Liverpool is a global University, with interests in China and Malawi amongst others, and the toolkit provides a cost-effective way of delivering learning and development resources to its entire staff, including those overseas. By increasing access to learning and development resources across the University’s campuses, learners can complete pre-course work by accessing the toolkit prior to formal learning in their own time, thus meeting the demands of different learning preferences and styles.

The University also benefits from various administrative advantages, including:
• hosting the full listing of its development programmes online
• online development programme application
• detailed usage reports
• customisable online content
• full synergy between the toolkit articles and formal development programmes

Client Testimony

“The Professional Development Toolkit has become instrumental to the University’s approach to leadership and development for all staff.” Frances Hewison, Deputy Director of Human Resources at the University of Liverpool

Many studies produced about the learning activity in organisations are based on questions put to HR and L&D professionals rather than the learners themselves. GoodPractice has observed, on numerous occasions, that the perceptions of HR and L&D departments can differ quite significantly from the perceptions of managers. Hence they wanted to conduct a survey that went straight to the customers of HR and L&D departments.

How managers learn (in their own words) emphasises that the frequency and perceived effectiveness of informal learning activities suggests that learning and development professionals need to rethink their mental model of the learning and performance landscape, and they need to give informal learning a central role in their strategy. However, the findings also accentuate that there are significant differences in the learning habits of managers across different age groups, and there is not a definitive one-size-fits-all solution.

Commenting on the survey, Peter Casebow, CEO, states:

“For the last ten years at GoodPractice we’ve been fascinated by one question: how can organisations provide support to leaders and managers to improve their performance at work? To answer this, we need to understand what helps leaders and managers perform more effectively, and what they do when faced with workplace challenges. We want to know where managers look for learning when faced with a challenge in the workplace, how frequently they search, and how effective they perceive the different methods to be. Most importantly, we want to take a learner-centric approach and ask managers, not HR or learning and development professionals, whose perceptions and needs may be different. The results of our survey convey how current methods are perceived and valued, and also provide a starting point for further debate and discussion at goodpractice.com.”

To receive your free copy of ‘How managers learn (in their own words)’ visit GoodPractice on Stand 65 at Learning Technologies or email Lynsey Jenkins at ljenkins@goodpractice.com.

GoodPractice provides toolkits for over two hundred of the UK’s leading organisations, higher education institutions and public sector bodies. As the leading provider of on-demand learning in the UK, more than one million managers and leaders rely upon GoodPractice to help them improve personal and team performance at work.

For further information on our range of toolkits and customised solutions, please contact Lynsey Jenkins, Marketing Manager, on 0845 22 33 00 2. Or visit our website goodpractice.com.

http://www.comres.co.uk/

The Improvement Network website is a joint initiative sponsored by the Audit Commission, Improvement and Development Agency (IDeA), Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy (CIPFA), Leadership Centre for Local Government and NHS Institute for Innovation and Improvement.

The website aims to help lay the foundations for successful partnership working in and across local areas, through building capacity for public sector managers and practitioners by providing resources, tools and practical examples of cross-sector improvement.

Improvement Tools

GoodPractice has worked in partnership with the Improvement Network since 2006, to deliver its dedicated online toolkit, the Improvement Tool. The Improvement Tool content is continuously updated and has been developed to support the partnership agenda and to deliver a positive impact on working practices.

There are currently over 10,500 users working in local government, police and health sectors utilising the website’s Improvement Tool. The tool provides free resources on a range of management topics that build capacity in public sector managers within core skill areas that facilitate the delivery of sustainability, value for money and service improvement.

With a strong focus on value for money in the public sector, the Improvement Tool is constantly evaluated for both the impact delivered and the outcomes achieved.

Educating 14,000 students and employing over 2,700 staff, the University of Exeter is one of the top 15 universities in the UK. Combining world-leading research with very high levels of student satisfaction, this popular, successful university has campuses in Devon and Cornwall.

What were the organisation's needs?

Following its attainment of the Investors in People (IiP) standard, the University had just three months to design, deploy and promote a new personal development review process for its professional services and academic staff.

Aligned with its vision of “helping to shape the future by extending the boundaries of knowledge”, the University required an innovative solution to integrate its competency framework whilst also offering training and support throughout the new personal development review process. The University also wanted to offer a more flexible learning environment in comparison to traditional training methods, to ensure the successful accomplishment of Personal Development Plans (PDP) and, in return, increase employees’ job satisfaction.

The University needed a partner that could respond to its needs efficiently and design a bespoke solution which would both support and facilitate its new review process. The solution would be available to all staff, and therefore needed to both engage and empower a wide user base with differentiating needs and skill sets.

What toolkit was provided?

GoodPractice worked in collaboration with the University of Exeter to devise a unique online PDP Support Centre. The dedicated solution was based on GoodPractice’s award-winning Toolkit for Managers, encompassing a range of resources to empower staff to achieve their goals and objectives.

In essence, the fit for purpose toolkit is a one-stop-shop solution, providing resources to guide and develop staff whilst also including all the University’s documentation to support its review process.

Why GoodPractice?

GoodPractice offered the University advice and guidance throughout the design and deployment of the PDP Support Centre, which was delivered within extremely tight deadlines. Furthermore, to ensure this dynamic resource remains relevant, GoodPractice continuously revises and updates its content.

All this, supported by unprecedented client service from the GoodPractice team, enabled the University to successfully launch, promote and utilise the toolkit.

What were the outcomes?

Through the PDP Support Centre, the University has provided staff with guidance and support on its new review process. By directly relating the content and documentation to the IiP standard, the GoodPractice solution not only ensures the relevance of the toolkit to staff but also guarantees that the content is easy to understand.

Empowering staff to take a proactive approach to, and responsibility for, their own self-development and learning needs, the PDP Support Centre has enabled staff across the University to better meet the outcomes and objectives set within their PDPs.

The University has acknowledged that the PDP Support Centre has added real value to its employees’ learning and development experience, and in turn has received a return on its investment.

Furthermore, in recognition of this innovative approach to supporting and developing its staff, Exeter University won the Excellence in Organisational Development category at the prestigious Universities Personnel Association HR Awards 2007.

Client testimony

“We need to do all we can to create a culture of staff taking responsibility for their own development. But this has to be in line with our competences and consistent with our stated mission, aims and values. The PDP Support Centre (created and hosted by GoodPractice) is an invaluable tool to help us to achieve this.”

Matt Levi, Learning and Development Adviser, University of Exeter