Strategic Learning and Development

- Learning initiatives should be aligned to organization directions, to enable the

organization to ensure its future.

Corporate Learning
Gained prominence over the years as a strategic imperative in managing a
growing business. It has been the mission of the learning corporation

Ateneo CORD’s Strategic Training and Development framework

“To sustain learning and make it a strategic component of an organization it
has to be anchored on its vision, mission, values and strategies This framework
operationalizes how an organization’s direction should lead to the individual
employee’s development

1. Direction
2. Gap Analysis. Analysis of the gaps between the organizations current and
desired performance
3. Recognition of One working System. Organizations need to recognize that
they are not independent entities but rather, one system working within a
bigger system.

Understanding where the organization is and where it wants to be also

helps determine the competencies required of its employees to effectively
perform their work and contribute to the achievement of the organization’s
goals. These identified competencies become the standard by which
employees will be assessed for effective performance and further
development. Through a process of employee development needs analysis,
organizations can then determine the specific gaps between their employees’
current proficiencies and the desired proficiencies. These gaps can be
determined by gathering information about the employee’s behavior, and are
sourced from performance evaluation reports client feedback, self-
assessments, interviews and focus group discussions, observations, surveys
and others
Specific learning and development interventions are then identified and
designed to address the gaps. Designing a learning and development
 intervention first involves crafting the learning objectives. Learning
objectives need to be specific and measurable and describe what the
participants are expected to do or be capable of as a result of the intervention.
After which, the content needed to achieve the objectives is organized and
developed, learning and development materials produced and finally the
intervention is executed.
Things to Consider when choosing or designing the learning and development
method or intervention
1. Methods’ Appropriateness to the organization culture
2. Organizations Capability to implement and sustain the intervention
3. Prior effectiveness of the method
4. Over-all cost benefit to the organization
5. External Factors
a. Political Landscape
b. Economy
c. Social Concerns
d. Technological Advancements
e. Environmental Policies
f. Legal Mandates
6. Implications of Internal Factors
a. Organizations financial capability
b. Policies and procedures
c. Physical and human resources

EVALUATION
Learning and development does not end with just implementing the
intervention; the effectiveness and impact of each implemented development
intervention should also be evaluated. Evaluation helps the organizations examine
the outcomes of a particular intervention
Levels of Evaluation
1. Reaction. The recipient’s attitudes, perceptions, opinions, beliefs thoughts
and feelings toward the intervention is assessed.
2. Learning. Tests, simulations and skill practices help assess whether the
recipients have gained any new knowledge or skills from the intervention
3. Behavior. Change in behavior as a result of the intervention and whether what
has been learned is translated into actual application in the workplace
4. Business Impact. The intervention’s impact to organization performance is
assessed. Measures output increases, time and cost savings and quality
improvement.
5. Return on Investment (ROI), The final level of evaluation assesses the
monetary value and benefit of the intervention vice versa the costs associated
with it.
 ORGANIZATION DIRECTIONS
VISION / MISSION / VALUES / STRATEGIES
ORGANIZATION
ANALYSIS
COMPETENCIES
CORE / FUNCTIONAL / JOB

CORE / FUNCTIONA;

NEEDS ANALYSIS

DEVELOPMENT INTERVENTIONS

ORG DEVELOPMENT INTERVENTION TRAINING INTERVENTION NON- TRAINING INTERVENTION

LEARNING OBECTIVES

CONTENT

METHODS

INSTRUCTIONAL MATERIALS

IMPLEMENTATION

EVALUATION
Developing Learning Organizations
A learning organization has the “structural characteristics of an organization that has an
ability to learn” (Ang and Joseph 1996). It is an organization “where people continually expand
their capacity to create results they truly desire, where new expansive patterns of thinking are
nurtured, where collective aspiration is set free, and where people are continually learning how to
learn together” (Senge 1991). It is an organization where the employee-learner acquires
information, processes, interprets and converts it to knowledge. The employee-learner then
dialogues with other members of the community about this knowledge, and together they come up
with new ways of doing things. Such knowledge does not make a learning organization; it is how
an organization responds to such knowledge. Any knowledge acquired by individuals must be
translated in term of the organization’s systems, processes, and policies and policies in order to
institutionalize learnings into the organization’s culture.
“Organizational learning occurs when individuals within an organization experiences a
problematic situation and inquire into it on the organization’s behalf” (Argyris and Schon 1996).
It is the process by which an organization improves or changes something, either in cognition or
behaviors of organization members (Jeong 2004). It refers to the means or actions that an
organization takes to learn.
Developing a Learning Culture
Creating a culture in an organization that is open to learning is an important factor in
developing a learning organization. Learning culture refers to how an organization views and
encourages a collaborative learning experience such that it contributes to its being a learning
organization. It concerns the learners’ perception of how supportive the organization is towards
learning (See 2011). The three main players involved in building a learning culture, the leader who
supports the learner, the organization that allows managers support the employee-learner and the
employee-learner (Canada Public Service Agency 2007).

DESCRIPTION ON HOW MAIN PLAYERS INTERACT TO FORM A LEARNING CULTURE

1. Leaders as role models, coach, and mentors

 Leaders must see learning as strategic move that would lead to and sustain organization
success.
 Leaders must cultivate a learning culture through “open communication” to create a
“climate of openness and trust” where everyone feels safe to share their ideas and opinions.
 Leaders must be ready to transfer their own learning through coaching and mentoring. It is
not about informing people what to do; it is about empowering them to be accountable and
to make decisions; it is about staying on the sidelines but still remaining present to guide
employees in reflecting and learning from experiences.
 Coaching refers to the act of directing another person to improve their proficiency in a
certain competency by providing encouragement and advice.
  Mentoring refers to achieving learning and development for further growth and
advancement through the relationship between the mentor and his/her protégé.
 The main difference between the two is in the process; while coaching is perceived to be
more hands-on, practical, and structured, and focuses more on solutions and actions, tasks,
performance and development. Mentoring, on the other hand is more of a free-form
partnership between two people with the mentor being more capable, experienced, and
senior.

Ateneo CORD’s cyclical 6-A Coahing Model:

 Aim- identifying the goal of the employee-learner

 Assess- evaluating where employee-learners are vis-à-vis their goals
 Affirm- providing the employee-learner with positive feedback about their current
performance
 Advance- identifying the employee-learner’s areas for improvement
 Act- determining what they can do to reach their goals and determining what support
they will need
 Achieve- monitoring what they have committed to doing and identifying other
support they would need

2. Rewards and Reinforcements

 Aside from the leader’s own attitude towards learning, the organization itself can
through its systems and structure, provide employee-learners with an incentive to
pursue learning because desired behavior is likely to be produced as long as desired
reward is present to reinforce it. (Deci, Koestner, and Ryan 1999)
 Care should be taken in giving too much external rewards because the presence of the
external rewards may weaken a person’s intrinsic motivation towards an activity. Thus,
it is still important to promote not just compliance but a mindset that learning is for
their own benefit and is a reward. (Yao, Franco and Hechanova 2005)

3. Developing self-directed and team-based learning

 Braman’s (1998) study on adult self-directed learning readiness found that there is a
strong relationship between readiness for self-directed learning and the cultural
dimension of individualism, described as “a social pattern that consists of loosely
linked individuals who view themselves as independent of collectives and who are
motivated by their own preference, needs, rights and contracts.”
 The key is how the organization can harness the power of Filipino employees’
collectivistic nature while helping them become self-directed learners.
 To promote self-directedness, the organization, through its leaders, should encourage
and develop a culture of self-directedness

The process for team learning involves:

 Sharing- entails communicating or disturbing knowledge, competencies,

opinions, creative thoughts, routines, or behavior among the members of the team.
  Construction- refers to developing shared knowledge and building shared
meaning within the team; constructive conflict refers to a discussion or dialogue
that stems from differing thoughts which leads to further communication and
eventual agreement.
 Team Reflexivity- refers to a process of reflecting on shared mental models about
the team’s reality, goals and methods, then reconstructing them.
 Team Activity- refers to team members working together to achieve the team’s
goals.
 Boundary Crossing- involves the process of “sharing” with individuals outside
the team or with other teams.
 Storage and Retrieval- refers to a process of saving the results of the previous
team’s learning processes (that is, shared knowledge, developed plans, habits, etc.)
in the software and/or hardware of the team for later use or review.

4. Evaluating learning
Sustaining momentum means continuously monitoring and evaluating initiatives and
seeking ways to improve them; therefore, the organization must:
a. Understand the changes the learning will bring to the organization
b. Determine the role learning plays in the organization’s strategy
c. Ensure that leaders and support systems are in place to sustain the program
d. Ensure that the organization’s stakeholders, which include the individual learners,
are ready.

Implications
Differences in learning styles suggest the importance of designing interventions to match
the needs of their learners. Beyond encouraging individual learning, however, it is also important
and innovation. This implies that cultural construction and participation in learning can occur at
the individual or the organization level. Individuals and the organization have a wide range of
reasons for undertaking learning initiatives. However, for learning to truly happen, it has to be
integrated seamlessly into the organization’s culture and the individual’s everyday life.