Eugene Taipan

Abraham Labitori
Danfel Mae Ila
MODULE 10

LEARNING AND
DEVELOPMENT
STRATEGY
 Learning and development strategies ensure that the
organization has the talented and skilled people it
needs and that individuals are given the opportunity to
enhance their knowledge and skills and levels of
competence.

 Learning strategies are concerned with developing a

learning culture, promoting organizational learning,
establishing a learning organization and providing for
individual learning.
STRATEGIC HRD
DEFINITION:
 Walton (1999)
Strategic human resource development involves
introducing, eliminating, modifying, directing, and
guiding processes in such a way that all individuals and
teams are equipped with the skills, knowledge and
competences they require to undertake current and
future tasks required by the organization.
STRATEGIC HRD
DEFINITION:
 Harrison (2000)
development that arises from a clear vision about people's
abilities and potential and operates within the overall
strategic framework of the business'. Strategic HRD takes a
broad and long-term view about how HRD policies and
practices can support the achievement of business
strategies. It is business led, and the learning and
development strategies that are established as part of the
overall strategic human resource development approach
flow from business strategies, although they have a positive
role in helping to ensure that the business attains its goals.
 AIM:
 to produce a coherent and comprehensive framework
for developing people through the creation of a
learning culture and the formulation of organizational
and individual learning strategies.
OBJECTIVE:
 to enhance resource capability in accordance with the
belief that a firm's human resources are a major source
of competitive advantage. It is therefore about
developing the intellectual capital required by the
organization as well as ensuring that the right quality
of people are available to meet present and future
needs.
main thrust of strategic HRD:

 to provide an environment in which people are

encouraged to learn and develop
One of the primary objectives of
HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT :
 primary objectives of HRM is the creation of
conditions whereby the latent potential of employees
will be realized and their commitment to the causes of
the organization secured. This latent potential is taken
to include, not merely the capacity to acquire and
utilize new skills and knowledge, but also a hitherto
untapped wealth of ideas about how the organization's
operations might be better ordered.
 The philosophy underpinning strategic HRD
is as follows:
 Human resource development makes a major contribution
to the successful attainment of the organization's
objectives, and investment in it benefits all the
stakeholders of the organization.
Human resource development plans and programs should
be integrated with and support the achievement of business
and human resource strategies.
 Human resource development should always be
performance related - designed to achieve specified
improvements in corporate, functional, team and
individual performance and make a major contribution to
bottom-line results.
Everyone in the organization should be encouraged and
given the opportunity to learn - to develop their skills and
knowledge to the maximum of their capacity.
The framework for individual learning is provided by
personal development plans that focus on self-managed
learning and are supported by coaching, mentoring and
formal training.
The organization needs to invest in learning and
development by providing appropriate learning
opportunities and facilities, but the prime responsibility for
learning and development rests with individuals, who will
be given the guidance and support of their managers and,
as necessary, members of the HR department.
key elements of human resource
development are:
o Learning defined by Bass and Vaughan (1966) as 'a relatively permanent
change in behavior that occurs as a result of practice or
experience'. As Kolb (1984) describes it, 'Learning is the major
process of human adaptation.
o Training the planned and systematic modification of behavior through
learning events, programs and instruction that enable
individuals to achieve the levels of knowledge, skill and
competence needed to carry out their work effectively.

o Development the growth or realization of a person's ability and potential

through the provision of learning and educational
experiences.

o Education the development of the knowledge, values and

understanding required in all aspects of life rather than
the knowledge and skills relating to particular areas of
activity.
LEARNING CULTURE
Reynolds (2004) as a 'growth medium' that will 'encourage
employees to commit to a range of positive discretionary behaviors,
including learning' and that has the following characteristics:
empowerment not supervision, self-managed learning not
instruction, and long-term capacity building not short-term fixes.
Sloman (2003) Discretionary learning happens when individuals
actively seek to acquire the knowledge and skills that promote the
organization's objectives.
Reynolds (2004) that to create a learning culture that acts as a
growth medium it is necessary to develop organizational practices
that raise commitment amongst employees and 'give employees a
sense of purpose in the workplace, grant employees opportunities to
act upon their commitment, and offer practical support to learning'.
STRATEGIES FOR CREATING A
LEARNING CULTURE
 Develop and share the vision - belief in a desired and emerging
future.
• Empower employees - provide 'supported autonomy': freedom for
employees to manage their work within certain boundaries
(policies and expected behaviors) but with support available as
required. Adopt a facilitative style of management in which
responsibility for decision making is ceded as far as possible to
employees.
• Provide employees with a supportive learning environment where
learning capabilities can be discovered and applied, e.g. peer
networks, supportive policies and systems, protected time for
learning.
 Use coaching techniques to draw out the talents of others by
encouraging employees to identify options and seek their own
solutions to problems.
• Guide employees through their work challenges and provide them

with time, resources and, crucially, feedback.

• Recognize the importance of managers acting as role models:
'The new way of thinking and behaving may be so different that
you must see what it looks like before you can imagine yourself
doing it. You must see the new behavior and attitudes in others
with whom you can identify' (Schein, 1999).

• Encourage networks - communities of practice.

•Align systems to vision - get rid of bureaucratic systems that
produce problems rather than facilitate work.
Organizations
(Harrison, 2000)
continuous learning systems

Organizational Learning
Marsick (1994)
a process of: 'Co-ordinated systems change, with
mechanisms built in for individuals and groups to
access, build and use organizational memory,
structure and culture to develop long-term
organizational capacity.
Human Capital Theory
Ehrenberg and Smith (1994)
indicates that: 'The knowledge and skills a worker has -
which comes from education and training, including
the training that experience brings - generate a certain
stock of productive capital.
Five Principles of Organizational Learning
Harrison (1997)
1. The need for a powerful and cohering vision of the organization to
be communicated and maintained across the workforce in order to
promote awareness of the need for strategic thinking at all levels.

2. The need to develop strategy in the context of a vision that is not

only powerful but also open-ended and unambiguous. This will
encourage a search for a wide rather than a narrow range of
strategic options, will promote lateral thinking and will orient the
knowledge-creating activities of employees.
3. Within the framework of vision and goals, frequent dialogue,
communication and conversations are major facilitators of
organizational learning.

4. It is essential continuously to challenge people to re-examine

what they take for granted.

5. It is essential to develop a conducive learning and innovation

climate.
Argyris (1992)
organizational learning occurs under two conditions:
first, when an organization achieves what is intended
and, second, when a mismatch between intentions and
outcomes is identified and corrected. But
organizations do not perform the actions that produce
the learning; it is individual members of the business
who behave in ways that lead to it, although
organizations can create conditions that facilitate such
learning.
Single- and double-loop learning
Single-loop learning organizations
define the 'governing variables‘
i.e. what they expect to achieve in terms of targets and standards.
They then monitor and review achievements, and take corrective
action as necessary, thus completing the loop.
Double-loop learning
occurs when the monitoring process initiates action to redefine the
'governing variables' to meet the new situation, which may be
imposed by the external environment. The organization has learnt
something new about what has to be achieved in the light of changed
circumstances and can then decide how this should be achieved.
LEARNING ORGANIZATION
 Pedler, Boydell and Burgoyne (1989)
an organization which facilitates the learning of all its members
and continually transforms itself.
• Senge (1990) calls the learning organization: 'An organization that
is continually expanding to create its future.
• Burgoyne (1994) has pointed out, learning organizations have to be
able to adapt to their context and develop their people to match the
context.
• Wick and Leon (1995) have defined a learning organization as one
that 'continually improves by rapidly creating and refining the
capabilities required for future success.
• Garvin (1993) defines a learning organization as one that is 'skilled
at creating, acquiring, and transferring knowledge, and at
modifying its behavior to reflect new knowledge and insights'.
Garvin (1993) has suggested that learning
organizations are good at doing five things:

Systematic problem solving

Experimentation
Learning from past experience
Learning from others
Transferring knowledge
INDIVIDUAL LEARNING STRATEGIES
 Pedler et al (1989)
The individual learning strategies of an organization are driven by its
human resource requirements, the latter being expressed in terms of
the sort of skills and behaviors that are required to achieve business
goals. The starting point is the approach adopted to the provision of
learning and development opportunities, bearing in mind the
distinction between learning and development.
 Sloman (2003)
Interventions and activities which are intended to improve knowledge
and skills will increasingly focus on the learner. Emphasis will shift to
the individual learner (or team). And he or she will be encouraged to
take more responsibility for his or her learning.
The learning strategy should cover:
 how learning needs will be identified;

 the role of personal development planning and self-managed

learning;

 the support that should be provided for individual learning in

the form of guidance, coaching, learning resource centers,
mentoring, external courses designed to meet the particular
needs of individuals, internal or external training programs, and
courses designed to meet the needs of groups of employees.