Conceptual Model of Workplace Training and Learning Strategies to Shorten Time-to-Proficiency in Complex Skills: Preliminary findings
Proceedings of 9th International Conference on Researching in Work and Learning (RWL), Singapore, Institute for Adult Learning, Singapore,, (December 2015)Abstract
The race among global firms to launch its respective products and services into the market sooner than the competitors puts pressure to equip its employees with job related skills at the pace of business. Today's global and dynamic business requires employees to develop highly complex cognitive skills such as decision-making, problem-solving, troubleshooting to perform their jobs proficiently. Traditional training models used by some organizations lead to a very slow speed at which employees gain an acceptable level of proficiency in the targeted job skills. Also, these models have long and regimented instructional development cycle. Thus, traditional models are inherently counter-productive to the business and do not enable employees and organizations for today's business needs. Therefore, business organizations need to explore new training models and strategies that could reduce the time an employee takes to reach target proficiency in complex skills without compromising the effectiveness or outcome. A comprehensive review of the literature shows a very limited amount of academic or practitioner research on this topic. This doctorate research study aims to find various training strategies that have proven successful in organizations for accelerating proficiency of employees in complex job skills. The researcher collected data primarily through 74 in-depth interviews with 86 training experts with known work experience of reducing time-to-proficiency in various settings. A total of 105 project cases is collected across 42 industries to date. A grounded theory approach with constant comparison method is used to guide the theoretical saturation, analyze the data and to develop a theoretical model of training strategies. This paper presents the preliminary findings and the conceptual model of major training and learning strategies discovered in this study that leverages workplace to shorten time-to-proficiency of employees. This paper will also discuss the implications for practitioners and academicians. The preliminary findings of this study confirmed that boundaries between work and learning are getting diffused. It is further noticed that organizations are now more inclined to leverage workplace learning and training strategies as the primary mode to accelerate skill proficiency as opposed to lengthy traditional or formal training methods. Research findings suggest a pattern of three workplace training and learning strategies that are more successful in reducing time-to-proficiency - 1) manufacturing and structuring on-the-job experiences; 2) sequencing activities in a lean learning path; 3) providing performance support systems and resources. This paper will also discuss the implications for practitioners and academicians.