Developing people and high performance organizations Essay Example

Proposal for Learning and Development Project

Name of the Client: Management — Red Telecom Australia

Work Group

Project Manager: [your name]

Team: John, Aryan, Thomas, Arnold, Josh, Paul and Joseph

Name of the Company: Red Telecom Australia

Project Co-ordinator: [your name]

Executive Summary

This proposal deals with the Learning and Development project relating to Red Telecom Australia organisation. As this company is expanding globally, it is facing problems, such as lack of co- ordination between team leaders and new members, lack of awareness of policies, budget and technical support issues among the personnel of the Customer Resolution Call Centre. The main objective of this project is to formulate a learning and development plan to resolve the above mentioned issues. In addition, the learning plan is intended to make the employees, aware of the strategies and goals of the organisation. In this regard, 70:20:10 Learning and Development model will be adopted. Furthermore, adult learning theories, relating to personnel development, will be examined. Moreover, team leaders will be provided with support and technical assistance to deal with issues relating to budgets and policies. In addition, this plan will organise the team meetings with focussed agendas, so that the goals of the company will be achieved effectively. Finally, recommendations, with regard to HRD interventions, will be provided.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Proposal: Team Leaders at Red Telecom Australia

Proposal Objective

Background Information

Red Telecom Australia decided to restructure and expand its Australian Customer Resolution Department in the wake of an unprecedented number of complaints. During this exercise, the Customer Resolution Department was shifted to a call centre in Australia, multiple work teams were formed, team members had to become multi-skilled, and Team Leader roles were introduced. The altered goals of Red Telecom Australia were critically dependent upon the novel Team Leader role in the Customer Resolution Department. This was attributed to the contact of Team Leaders with clients, global call centres and frontline employees.

Key Objectives

Conducting Training Needs Analysis

This identifies the competency and skills deficiencies via the isolation of disparity in and between future and present competencies and skills. This involves the collection of quantitative and qualitative data[ CITATION Wor172 l 1033 ].

The Training Needs Analysis for this proposal has been based upon feedback from performance reviews with Team Leaders; discussions with upper level managers and employees; self-reporting of Team Leaders through surveys; analysis of critical incidents with employees; nature of customer complaints; and feedback from team members and overseas staff.

Workgroup Profile

Group composition, work roles and demographics

The function of the new Team Leader in the Customer Resolution Department is central to the realisation of the improved objectives of Red Telecom Australia. This role emerged from the pruning of the Supervisor role, which had previously been superior to the Team Leader’s role. Some Team Leaders were selected from existing Supervisors, and they felt that they had been demoted but were required to perform some of their erstwhile duties. Other Team Leaders were from the ranks or from external recruitment. The new recruits were provided a week’s induction training. There was a proposal to mentor them by the experienced managers. The latter’s heavy workload prevented this proposed mentoring. This proposal aims to improve the working environment for mentors and new recruits.

Human capital and experience level

Adult learning theory can be employed for assessing human capital and experience level.

For instance,

• Adults should be self-directing.

• Adults possess considerable life experience that can be correlated to learning.

• Adults have to know why they have to learn and the resultant benefits thereof.

• Adult motivation is promoted by learner-centred training.

• Learning environment promotes interaction[ CITATION LIV13 l 1033 ].

These attributes facilitate evaluation of the experience level of company personnel. Vis-à-vis Red Telecom Australia, team members can adopt adult learning theory. This improves work output and helps the organisation to achieve its goals.

Adult learning theory, per se, improves business substantially, merely by involving people to a greater extent in what they learn. As such, a hands-on approach provides significantly greater benefits. It is vital to convey to learners that their ideas are valued and wanted (Thudium, 2015). Adult learning theory promotes perception change regarding adult learners, which provides a competitive market edge to companies.

Analysis and description of key core capabilities and relationships to organisational goals

Comprehending knowledge’s nature is essential for its effective sharing. As such, specific knowledge can be shared conveniently via several formal training and development methods[CITATION OBr131 p 98 l 1033 ]. Awareness of organisational knowledge gaps is essential for it to adapt and transform upon envisaging disparate challenges[CITATION OBr131 p 104 l 1033 ]. Red Telecom Australia’s personnel should share knowledge among various sections of the organisation for easily attaining organisational goals, including global expansion without technical or cultural barriers in overseas services.

Problem Statement / Competency Gap

Human resource development focuses upon learning and its management. This deals with interventions that could promote learning; and engender behavioural change, as demonstrated by improved or new skills, new knowledge, comprehension and attitudes[CITATION Wil122 p 7 l 1033 ].

Red Telecom’s focus should be upon competency gaps and skill inadequacies among its team leaders and other personnel, for realising success in its global operations.

Some of the shortcomings of Red Telecom Australia were:

• Absence of awareness, knowledge or skill among team members

• Harmful values or debilitating attitudes in team leaders.

• Physical or mental issues and limitations of new members.

• Supervisors’ problematic or dysfunctional conduct.

• Limited access to services or resources.

• Fragmented services and other systemic and institutional hurdles.

• Disorganised meetings with weak agendas.

• Lack of awareness regarding budgets and information software.

• Regulations, practices or policies leading to undesirable outcomes[CITATION Col082 p 43 l 1033 ].

Needed Competencies / Skills

Development and learning providers can be sourced internally or externally from the organisation. Internal providers, include employees with the attributes, skills and knowledge necessary for effecting the recognised development and learning[CITATION Pre031 l 1033 ]. Similarly, in Red Telecom Australia, providers be competent to convey their attributes, knowledge and skills pragmatically, relevantly and comprehensibly to the trained or taught.

Learning and Development Options

These are:

• Working on new projects with other colleagues or in isolation.

• Completing various tasks and receiving feedback upon their completion.

• Adopting new roles.

• Working with new systems or processes.

• Completing tasks that stretch abilities. These stretch assignments promote acquisition of new knowledge or skills.

• Pairing or shadowing with senior staff or a colleague.

• Reflection and self-appraisal[CITATION ACT17 l 1033 ].

Team Leaders

Red Telecom Australia’s Team leaders should provide:

• Strategic leadership for development, implementation and sustainability of development and learning programmes, and strategies[CITATION Don141 p 11 l 1033 ].

• Assistance, advice and support for programme implementation.

• Assistance for ensuring morale of team members.

• Supervision for emerging and identified risks, and advice for preventing, mitigating and managing them.

• Identification of impediments and enablers of workplace positive conduct.

• Assistance for developing procedures that address behavioural issues.

• Supervision of employees’ health and wellbeing trends by eliminating stress.

• Monitoring of programme budget and expenditure.

Analysis and Appropriateness of Current L&D Policy / Approach

Learning is an interminable, and transpires only when the learner experience is benefitted by the acquisition of new attitudes, skills or information that exerts a positive influence on the learner’s life or work experience. From this perspective, a lesson is deemed learnt when the organisation recognises a deficiency or failure and designates it as a lesson[CITATION Bod16 p 270 l 1033 ]. As such, Red Telecom Australia will learn the lesson only when it implements remedial action to address the deficiency or to ensure that it does not recur. This results in a transformed and developed organisation.

Overview of Proposed Learning and Development Strategy

The learning and development model of Lombardo and Eichinger declares that in any organisation, approximately 70% of the learning transpires on-the-job, 20% from feedback, experience and learning, and 10% from formal reading or courses[CITATION Pai14 p 63 l 1033 ]. The exact implementation of 70:20:10 effect a basic change in the function of learning, as well as the learning team in organisations. As such, it inspires the learning team to deliver in the context of work. Moreover, this model presumes that learning output is determined by the impact of a specific learning event upon on-the-job behaviours. Thus, it links learning at a basic level to business performance[CITATION Pai14 p 62 l 1033 ]. Red Telecom Australia can adapt the above 70:20:10 model for their Learning and Development procedure.

A major benefit provided by the 70:20:10 model is that it engages the members of a team by rendering learning immediately actionable. Upon perceiving that they had been empowered to take action, employees concentrate upon their career goals, collaborate with peers to a much greater extent, and voluntarily interact with leaders and mentors (Smith, 2016).

In this regard, social learning emanates from group interactions and is dependent upon institutional, social and political contexts, and the structure and nature of the participatory process utilised. Participatory processes are critically dependent upon skilled facilitation, since facilitators determine interaction and guarantee that the physical and social environment is moulded to cater to the requirements of conversation and the participants[CITATION Joh126 p 291 l 1033 ].

Proposal Details: Key Learning and Development Interventions

It is necessary for organisations like Red Telecom Australia, to focus upon development and learning for the following reasons:

• Improves business performance, efficiency and productivity and thereby gain a competitive advantage.

• Improves the skills and knowledge of employees and thus make them more productive.

• Enhances generic skills of employees.

• Complies with legal requirements[ CITATION Aus172 l 1033 ].

• Ensures organisational development.

• Manages talent and succession planning.

• Develops employees’ career.

• Motivates employees[CITATION Agu09 p 453 l 1033 ].

Learning and Development Proposal Evaluation

It has to be ensured that the Learning and Development function at Red Telecom Australia, operates as per the best practice, optimises in-house learning capability, promotes cost effective and innovative approaches towards staff development and learning, and contributes towards the uninterrupted enhancement of employee performance.

The methods for assessing the success of the L&D proposal are enumerated below:

• Reaction level. This assessment level determines the reaction of the participants towards the programme.

• Learning level. This measures the learning achieved or the consequent increase in capability or knowledge[CITATION Pin10 p 676 l 1033 ].

• Behavioural change level. This scrutinises the extent to which the behaviour of the participants had been transformed upon return to the workplace.

• Results level. This examines the results and the outcomes on the environment or business emerging from the performance of trainees at the workplace.

• Return on investment level. This final level of evaluation translates training output to a monetary value[ CITATION Civ11 l 1033 ].

Conclusions / Action Plan

It is possible to transfer knowledge by shifting networks, members, tools or tasks, wherein knowledge is embedded, from a specific social unit to another unit or by altering these knowledge repositories[CITATION Arg16 p 147 l 1033 ].

This proposal is for the project of learning and development in Red Telecom Australia. It recommends the adoption of the following approaches:

Approach to develop innovative leadership and management skills among Team Leaders to tackle customer concerns effectively, and provide the necessary support to team members engaged in dealing with customer complaints,

A 70:20:10 learning and development model approach to train the team leaders,

Approach to make the Red Customer Call Centers, a work place devoid of stress for all employees,

Approach to equip the frontline personnel with cultural knowledge and technical support,

Approach to make personnel well versed with product changes and policies of the organization,

Relieve tensions among team leaders and members,

Boost the morale of the workforce.

Make the processes and systems compliant with the development strategies of the organization to achieve its goals and objectives,

As a manager of the Red Telecom Australia, Team leaders can report to the management, regarding local conditions or problems and interventions required.

[CITATION Sim03 p 180 l 1033 ].

References

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