Diane Rumley asked:
>We need a transparent policy for prioritising [who] participates in formal
>learning opportunities and who does not.
I would agree on formal training only, when the employee is asking for it.
Also the employee has to justify his request for formal training (his
motivation, curiosity, perceived need to know...) and should participate
in the investment of time and money. Then the formal training or education
will be part of the employees career plan - something the employee is
committing to and the organisation is supporting (and not a distribution
of incentives). With this attitude, I don't expect that you will get in
conflict with budgetary constraints.
Another issue are learning opportunities that arise in the context of
specific tasks of the organisation that need to be accomplished. There it
is sometimes useful to buy external help to avoid expensive mistakes and
to enable the persons in charge to perform that task on their own or only
better. But for the focus is on the task, the question of "Prioritizing
Who for Formal Learning" does not occur - it is tied to the
responsibilities with respect to that task.
I am wondering, whether this is helpful for you, as you write:
>Traditionally, these decisions have been made by managers based on the
>relationships they have with their employees, a reward for good work or
>towing the line. Training budgets have also been spent on managers
>going to conferences in exotic locations instead of on more lowly ranked
>employees with pressing training needs (a not uncommon occurrence I
>would wager).
With this I guess that formal learning opportunities are perceived as
incentives and a promotion/ranking tool. People are looking for who is
getting what and become political about it. Prioritising accepts this
perception as true, thus leaves it unquestioned. Prioritizing is
protective in the sense that you try to rationalize the answer to the
envious questions "Why s/he and not I?" I am afraid, this will not be very
satisfactory. And if you include an attempt to cut the self-service
incentive for the managers you will have a hard time.
That's why I suggested a more basic change into a learning organisation
direction (isn't this what you expected from this list?). The clue to
this change is to successfully question the incentive character of formal
training. This is a "cultural change" and surely a difficult task, but the
only potentially satisfying direction I can think of in your situation.
Liebe Gruesse,
Winfried
--"Winfried Dressler" <winfried.dressler@voith.de>
Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>