Involving
Employees
You
can encourage your employees' participation and commitment to
learning by involving them in WEP development and
delivery.
Show
your employees that you value their input into the design and
development of your WEP and you build in their commitment to its
success.
Also,
by involving the participants of the WEP in the development
stages, you will likely increase the usefulness of the training
program to their jobs. Employees may have insights
into their own personal training needs that management may not
be aware of.
Penn State University's Institute
for the Study of Adult Literacy conducts research on
Adult Learning, and has published reports on Retaining
Reluctant Learners in Adult Literacy Programs and on
Understanding and Overcoming Resistance to Adult Literacy
Education.
URL: http://www.ed.psu.edu/isal/nfrm_pubs.html
Workplace mentoring
requires a partnership commitment that involves time, energy,
and resources of qualified mentors, school personnel, and
learners themselves. Workplace mentoring requires planning,
training, monitoring, and assessment to ensure that the
individuals being mentored will achieve successful outcomes.
URL: http://www.ericacve.org/docgen.asp?tbl=tia&ID=152
This report explores the
term, informal learning, reviews the results of
research conducted by the Education Development Center (EDC)
Inc., and describes the planning strategies and implications for
practice offered by EDC and others.
URL: http://www.ericacve.org/docgen.asp?tbl=pab&ID=100
The Career Planning and
Adult Development Network keeps adults in touch with career
counselors, career coaches, job search trainers and human
resource professionals through its publications, workshops and
conferences.
URL: http://www.careernetwork.org/
Stanford's International
and Cross-Cultural Education Program offers teaching
materials on cultural differences, cultural awareness, ethnic
studies, international studies, and multicultural education.
Interdisciplinary lessons and tools include cooperative group
activities.
URL: http://spice.stanford.edu/
Companies that build
up internal training resources can reduce their
dependency on outside consultants and this lower training costs.
This article discusses combining the training and design
expertise of an outside organization with internal experts
prepped to teach the material.
URL:
http://www.workforce.com/archive/feature/23/31/26/index.php
Teaching employees
who are subject-matter experts to be trainers can be a
low-cost way to teach the rest of the organization. This article
explores the issues of developing employees into trainers,
including training needs and assessment, design, delivery, and
evaluation.
URL: http://www.workforce.com/archive/article/23/24/25.php
Collective
bargaining agreements have spawned effective training
programs. By working together, unions and management can create
effective learning environments where adults can take their next
steps toward literacy and career development.
URL:
http://www.workforce.com/archive/feature/22/17/40/223650.php
This recent report
on joint labor-management educational programs uses best
practice examples to show the key design elements as well as the
benefits and impacts for organizations, unions and individual
workers.
Success
by Design
(pdf, 258 KB)
This paper discusses the union
role in ensuring that American workers have the skills they
need in a dynamic workplace.
URL: http://www.nald.ca/fulltext/report3/rep23-27/rep24-01.htm
This report on the importance
of learners' perspectives on the outcomes of adult basic
education stresses the importance of access to and participation
in training. It also provides a how–to guide for measuring
performance and outcomes. (69 KB)
URL: http://www.gse.harvard.edu/%7Encsall/research/op_bingman.pdf
A successful
joint labor-management training program is rooted in
cooperation. This article shares five qualities that illustrate
a good labor-management partnership for employee training.
URL:
http://www.workforce.com/archive/feature/22/17/40/223926.php
This article
discusses seven essential questions for employers to ask
before beginning an employee training program. Answering the
questions of who really needs training, what are the costs and
expected outcomes beforehand will help to ensure effective and
relevant training.
URL: http://www.workforce.com/archive/feature/22/17/10/223931.php
Employees can learn
informally through a learning process called taxonomies - a
matrix that shows how employees learn.
This chart condenses the four
taxonomies of informal learning by content.
URL: http://www.workforce.com/archive/feature/22/16/56/223792.php
A team-based approach to
mentoring can help reduce employee turnover. Potential
leaders are targeted by management and coached through the
development of critical leadership and technical skills. Their
progress is then carefully followed by senior management and HR.
URL:
http://www.workforce.com/archive/feature/22/16/68/index.php
Creating
a 'culture of work' by incorporating soft skills into
training can yield great returns in the workplace. This article
how examines how four groups have incorporated soft skills
training - such as courtesy and team work -
into hard skills training curricula.
http://www.astd.org/virtual_community/research/What_Works/action/top_10.html
Incentives to train:
Ensuring employer engagement is a UK research report (40
pages) looks at findings from interviews and a roundtable
discussion. Participants evaluated existing provision to
incentivise training for employers, identifying the major areas
of concern and proposing recommendations for change.
URL:
http://www.nationalskillsforum.org.uk/Incentives_to%20Train%20(2).pdf
A new movement turns workplaces into classrooms and
marginal students into productive workers. This
link is to a series of stories from a documentary report
available both as recorded radio programs and as
transcripts.
URL://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/workplace_ed
For
problems or questions regarding this web site contact campbell@conferenceboard.ca.
Last updated: Mar. 5, 2010. |