Chapter 9 Employee Development

Agenda

1. Employee Development
a. Definition
b. Objectives
c. Training vs. Development
2. Approaches to Employee Development
a. Formal Education
b. Assessment of Personality
c. Job Experiences
d. Interpersonal Relationships
3. The Development Planning Process
4. Company Strategies for Employee Development
a. E-Learning and Employee Development
 1. Employee Development

Definition

- Related to important business outcomes (create valuable workforce)

- Future oriented learning is not necessarily related to current job
- Helps employees prepare for changes in their current job that may result from changing
environment
- Definition
Development refers to formal education, job experiences, relationships, and assessments
of personality and abilities that help employees perform effectively in their current or
future job and company.

Objectives

- Improve quality
- Meet the challenges of global competition and social change
- Incorporate technological advances and changes in work design
- Retain key employees
- Reduce turnover
Improving reputation through employee investments and thereby attract new skilled
employees
Developing managers who create positive work environment

Training vs. Development

2. Approaches to Employee Development

Formal Education Assessment

Interpersonal
Job Experiences
Relationships
 - Often used as combination

Formal Education

- Off-site and on-site

- Short courses offered by consultants or universities
- Executive MBA programs
- University programs

Assessment

- Collecting information
- Providing feedback about employees behaviour, communication styles, values and skills
- Goals
Identify employees with managerial potential
Measure employees strengths and weaknesses
Identify managers with the potential to move into higher-level executive positions
Identify decision processes or communication styles that inhibit the teams
productivity
- Methods
Performance appraisals
Psychological tests
understand preferences and needs of employees
Example:
o Myers-Briggs Type Indicator
Questionnaire with 100 questions
Identifies individuals preferences for energy (introversion versus
extroversion), information gathering (sensing versus intuition), decision
making (thinking versus feeling), and lifestyle (judging versus perceiving)
Used for understanding such things as communication, motivation,
teamwork, work styles, and leadership
o Assessment Center
Multiple raters or evaluators evaluate employees performance on a
number of exercises
Usually held at an off-site location such as a conference center
Used to identify if employees have the personality characteristics,
administrative skills, and interpersonal skills, teamwork skills needed for
managerial jobs
types of exercises
Group discussions solve an assigned problem
In-basket simulation of administrative tasks
Role plays
o Benchmarks
Designed to measure important factors in being a successful manager
o Performance Appraisals
process of measuring employees performance
 several different approaches for measuring performance, including
ranking employees, rating their work behaviors, rating the extent to which
employees have desirable traits believed to be necessary for job success
(e.g., leadership), and directly measuring the results of work performance
(e.g., productivity)
o 360-Degree Feedback Systems
Employees behaviours or skills are evaluated not only by subordinates but
also by peers, customers, their boss, and themselves
Questionnaire that rates the person on a number of different dimensions
Reveals how self-evaluations differ from evaluations from the other raters

Job Experiences

- Refer to relationships, problems, demands, tasks, or other features that employees face in
their jobs
- Most employee development occurs through job experiences
- Development is most likely to occur when there is a mismatch between the employees skills
and past experiences and the skills required for the job
- Job experiences that are seen as positive stressors challenge employees to stimulate
learning
- Job challenges viewed as negative stressors create high levels of harmful stress for
employees who are exposed to them
- Types of job experiences
Job enlargement, job rotation, transfers, promotions, downward moves, and
temporary assignments, projects, and volunteer work
Interpersonal Relations

= development of skills and increase of knowledge through interaction with a more experienced
organizational member

Mentoring Coaching

Mentoring

- Mentor = experienced, productive senior employee who helps develop a less experienced
employee
- Mostly developed informally
- Can also develop as part of a planned company effort
advantage: access to mentors for all employees, regardless of gender or race
limitation: mentors may not be able to provide counseling and coaching in a relationship
that has been artificially created
- Success factors
Face-to-face or virtual interaction
The purpose of the program is clearly understood
A minimum level of contact between the mentor and protg is specified
The mentor program is evaluated
Employee development is rewarded
- Goals
Mentors can develop their interpersonal skills and increase their feelings of self-
esteem and worth to the organization
Protgs get career and psychosocial support

Coaching

- Coach = peer or manager who works with employees to motivate them, help them develop
skills, and provide reinforcement and feedback
- Typically occurs during a 7- to 12-month period
- Often used to groom current and future executives
- Goals
Develop high-potential managers
Act as a sounding board for managers
Try to change behaviours that are making managers ineffective
- Success factors
Good manager-coach relationship
High motivation (on the managers part) to change
Existence of a strong commitment by top company management to develop the
manager
Clearly defined coaching method
 3. The development Planning Process

Employee

- Identifying development needs

gaps between current capabilities and/or interests and the type of work or position that
the employee wants in the future
- Choosing a development goal
- Identifying the actions that need to be taken by the employee and the company to achieve
the goal
- Determining how progress toward goal attainment will be measured
- Investing time and energy to achieve the goal
- Establishing a timetable for development

Company/Manager

- Providing coaching
- Communicating information about development opportunities (e.g., job experiences,
courses)
- Helping eliminate barriers to development
- Refering the employee to other people (human resources) and resources (assessment tools)

4. Company Strategies for Employee Development

Success factors

Learner
Individualization Ongoing Support
Control

Capitalizing
employees strengths
and improving
weaknesses
Offer a menu of
development options

5. E-Learning and Employee Development

Shift from offline to online

If successful, it includes individualization, learner control and ongoing support