Stever Robbins wrote:
I've been following this thread with some interest although I've not
posted to this group before.
I'm working as a research assistant at Macquarie University, Sydney,
Australia and am currently doing some work for a very large Aust
organisation.
This org has a large number (some thousands) of customer liaison people
who work over the phone. Some time ago they were "multi-skilled" so that
they are now required to know a greater number of products and in more
depth. At the same time the guts were ripped out of middle management in
that area. The end result is that the org now has a staff turnover
exceeding 100% per year in this area and workers with poor product
knowledge and customer liaison skills. This is costing the organisation
dearly!
The problem is how to foster a learning attitude and retain staff whilst
paying them less than a secretary (company policy) and offering little
chance of advancement.
As Stever points out, it seems that the goals of an LO are almost
opposed to those of the new "flat" organisations.
Bruce Campbell
Bruce.Campbell@mq.edu.au
> >Your 'model' seems to equate learning with advancement. As organisations
> >are getting 'flatter' this becomes an increasingly impossible situation.
>
> I actually equate it more with "substantive change in job responsibities."
> In most organizations, such a change only comes about with
> promotion/advancement to a higher level.
>
> It does seem to me that the more skills a worker acquires, the more they
> would want to be paid (and the more they would be worth). But as
> organizations get flatter, I'm not sure how the pay scales would have to
> adjust?
>
>
> Unfortunately, I'm pretty pessimistic about human nature. In an
> economy where CEOs get multimillion dollar option packages while they're
> laying off front-line workers, I have a tough time imagining employees
> giving up the expectation of advancement with their increase in skills. I
> can easily imagine them taking an attitude of, "Hey, I've developed 80% of
> the skills of Mr. Multimillion-dollar CEO and I'm begin paid 1/45th of his
> salary. I'm outta here."
>
> To some extent I'm not sure why I'm bringing this up, except that it seems
> like a possible obstacle looming in the non-white-collar Learning
> Organization future. I wish I had a good answer, but other than the
> standard platitudes about getting people psyched about learning(*), I
> don't know how we'd have to change the system to address this kind of
> learning-glass-ceiling effect.
--Bruce Campbell <bcampbel@mpce.mq.edu.au>
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>