Training and learning in the post-industrial workplace.

Abstract

Post-industrial firms exhibit characteristics that profoundly affect the range, complexity, and delivery of knowledge required by employees. This raises the question of whether new principles are needed to guide training in the post-industrial firm. The article argues that three fundamental principles that apply to training and learning generally are also applicable to today's business organizations: (1) approach training scientifically, (2) treat employees as active learners, and (3) make learning an ongoing process. Training managers should tailor these principles to fit the specific training and learning needs of their organizations.

Introduction

Our post-industrial age marks not only the end of the heyday of the industrial era, but the emergence of a distinctive kind of business organization. While this new, post-industrial, kind of firm is a more-or-less orderly development out of older organizational structures (Bigner, 1999), it exhibits a number of important characteristics that distinguish it from past business organizations. Most obviously, post-industrial firms are ones that increasingly engage in activities that do not require a heavily industrial infrastructure. They are also characterized by changing phenomena involving such key factors as the firm's purposes, its internal and external operating environments, the nature of the tasks to be performed, how and how fast the firm changes, and its structural and functional mechanisms (Parham, Santiago, & Sue, 1998). The post-industrial firm is also the locus of profound changes in the range, depth, complexity, and timely delivery of the knowledge and skills required by employees to perform their jobs effectively. These changes have important implications for training and learning in today's workplace and raise crucial questions for training managers. These include questions such as the following: What training and learning principles are appropriate for the new business environment? Do substantially new conditions indicate that a novel set of principles is needed in the post-industrial firm? Or can at least some older gaining principles be carried forward into the new environment?

This article provides at least partial answers to these questions. The first section of the article discusses how characteristics of post-industrial firms affect workplace training and learning. The second part identifies three basic principles that are applicable to virtually any training environment, principles that training managers can carry forward into the post-industrial workplace to help guide their efforts in developing and implementing effective training and learning programs.

Increased Training Needs of the Post-industrial Firm

One of the most significant characteristics of today's firms is a change in the kinds of work that people perform. This is largely due to the fact that the success of firms in the new information and knowledge society is increasingly measured not by the muscle power exercised by its employees but by their effective use of information. The result is a growing need in the post-industrial firm for professional, technical, and clerical white-collar workers (Bell, 1973).

Another important characteristic of today's firms is rapid change (Tetenbaum, 1998; Tushman & Nadler, 1999), which greatly affects training necessities. The industrial workplace was characterized by simple, stable, standardized tasks; in fact, many staffing models still assume stable job duties over relatively long periods (Murphy, 1998). However, job descriptions in the post-industrial workplace are increasingly fluid rather than fixed. Moreover, this is a dynamic fluidity, for the modern firm is still undergoing the structural and functional transformations necessary to take into account advances in information technology and meet new demands of global markets (Peters, 1999). Because of the modern firm's fluid nature, employees must be continually learning and perfecting new, often complex competencies. The former simplification and stability of tasks in the industrial workplace meant that jobs could be quickly learned, with little substantial new training being required once appropriate skills were in hand. But today's jobs often demand that employees continually be adding new ideas and skills, resulting in a greater need for effective training and learning programs.

The challenge of creating such programs is sharpened by the speed with which new jobs develop in the modern firm. The Industrial era's highly structured division of labor enabled the systematic and even automatic design of work processes. But this has been replaced by a workplace where short product life cycles and rapidly changing tasks are often the rule. This creates a continuing need for designing new work designs for new products, which in turn results in smaller time frames for developing and implementing effective training programs for newly designed jobs (Buckley & Caple, 2000; Sparrow, 2000). Further adding to the importance of training programs today is the fact that change management has become a vital issue in the modern workplace, with the development and implementation of effective training programs being an indispensable tool for managing that change.

Another factor that increases the amount of training required in today's firms is higher job turnover due to increased employee mobility. Turnover is also affected by job insecurity. As industrialized countries adapt to increasing global market competition, a short-term work culture with a declining sense of loyalty to the employer is developing (Cooper, 1999). Many firms today have a two-tiered workforce made up of contractual workers and a large number of contingent workers who receive few fringe benefits and have little allegiance to the company. As more employees feel less secure in the post-industrial firm, higher absenteeism and turnover result, which in turn means that replacement employees must be trained. Given that significant new training and learning needs arise out of the unique character of the post-industrial workplace, does it follow that training managers should be applying an entirely new set of training principles specifically designed for the modern firm? Below, a negative answer is suggested to this question, and three general principles of training and learning are identified that continue to be highly appropriate for today's flexible and fast-changing business environments.

Three Training Principles Applicable to the Post-industrial Firm

Principle 1: Approach Training Scientifically Drucker (1999) views Frederick Taylor's (1911) scientific management as one of the most important concepts of the modern world, with Taylor's ideas still being appropriate for manual operations and for knowledge work that involves manual operations. But more than this, it is also evident that key elements of Taylor's scientific management approach should inform virtually all training and learning programs, including those in post-industrial firms. First, scientific management stresses observation, and accurate observation is vital at all stages of training. This includes the performance analysis stage, where the performance of workers is observed in order to determine what further training may be needed (Wilson, Jonassen, & Cole, 1993); and the assessment and evaluation stages (Furanjic & Trotman, 2000), where detailed observations are required to assess a training program's effectiveness. Though these points may seem obvious, it has been found that up to 80 percent of all employee training is unused a month later (Chase, 1997), which suggests that training decisions are often based on considerations other than observation of actual need, and are not evaluated on their observable results.

Taking a thoroughly scientific approach to training and learning also requires analyzing aspects of the training situation in detail. Such analysis is valuable not only in industrial settings--for instance by breaking motor skills into their basic elements (Simpson, 1972) to provide valuable information for trainers of manual workers--it is also clearly appropriate in the post-industrial workplace. For example, undertaking a scientific analysis of how individuals learn at work, such as is done by Gerber (1998), is an important step toward designing effective training programs in today's workplaces. Combining such analyses with situational information about matters such as the prior skills and the motivations of a group of learners can help managers to effectively target training programs to that group. Another way training should be done scientifically is by breaking the various aspects of training into step-by-step procedures, in the way that scientists develop a protocol for approaching an experimental problem. Phillips (2001), for example, does this for the evaluation phase of training; but other training phases, including design and implementation, can also be divided into specific procedures. In addition, whenever possible, the training or learning task itself should be composed of distinct steps that the employee can easily understand and retain, with new skills to be learned being divided into manageable parts (Wright & Belcourt, 1995).

In sum, virtually any training program, including those in today's firms, should follow scientific principles by insisting on accurate and thorough observations, analyzing the training situation, and breaking procedures and tasks into their parts. Though time constraints may sometimes impinge on the implementation of these maxims in fast-changing post-industrial environments, training managers should strive to adhere to these scientific principles as closely as possible.

Principle 2: Treat Employees as Active Learners What are probably the two predominant learning theories of the last century--cognitivism and constructivism--are in considerable agreement on the matter of how learners best learn: both hold that human beings are by nature active learners who learn best by doing and by solving real problems. Cognitivism, for example, holds that workers learn best by performing meaningful and realistic tasks. It follows that training should be problem-centered and should involve the actual needs and real contexts of the organization (Wilson, Jonassen, & Cole, 1993). Constructivism takes a similar perspective, viewing learning as an active process in which the learner engages the world (Hein, 1991). At work, individuals learn through experiences with other workers, trainers, supervisors, and equipment, and through purposeful and meaningful actions (Piaget, 1950). Therefore, where possible, the information conveyed to the learner should be connected to real activities of the organization (Piaget, 1954).

The idea that people are active learners is also present in the understanding of adult learners outlined by Charney and Conway (1998), who hold that adults want the content of their training to be relevant to their jobs and best remember concepts that they can implement and practice right away. Furthermore, a synthesis of results of several studies ranging over different industries and organizations found that workers learn by a number of active methods, including applying theory, practicing skills, solving problems, making mistakes, and interacting with others (Gerber, 1998). These ideas have important implications for training managers in post-industrial firms. First, they suggest that learning by doing and on-the-job training are among the most effective training methods by providing real problems to solve in a context that allows learners to immediately understand the relevance of their training. They also suggest that where possible, realistic settings should be used for learning, and that testing should be integrated with the task (Merrill, 1991). Both on cognitivist and constructivist principles, such learning helps workers better retain information and develop skills.

The idea that learners learn best through action can guide training programs even when learning by doing or on-the-job training is not feasible. For example, programs that provide instruction by computer, video learning programs, and even classroom learning can exploit the active-learning principle by including ample problems that closely emulate real-life situations. This helps to actively engage learners' thinking on the subject matter, gives them practice in applying lessons, and helps them appreciate the relevancy of what they learn. Another way to engage employees in active learning is to design collaborative learning programs. Collaborative learning is a form of active learning and is supported by social constructivism, for it is natural for individuals to work in communities where they model and observe other members (Kerka, 1997; Jonassen, 2001). Activities to encourage collaborative learning include team-based learning projects and group discussions. Technology can be exploited for this purpose by connecting learners through computer networks that allow them to assist each other in the learning process.

Principle 3: Make Learning an Ongoing Process Both cognitivist and constructivist learning theories view people as constantly seeking to understand their environment and thus as being receptive to ongoing learning whether inside or outside of formal training programs. Both learning theories therefore support the principle that workplace learning should be an ongoing process that includes both formal and informal learning opportunities. Only recently, with the growth of the concept of the learning organization (Senge, 1990), has this principle been clearly seen as applicable to organizational training and learning, but arguably it is a foundational principle valid for practically any workplace environment. The fact that the idea of the learning organization is itself an outgrowth of the unique character and demands of the modern firm suggests that this third principle is especially well suited for post-industrial environments.

For training managers, the principle of making learning an ongoing process implies being open to all opportunities for teaching and training workers in the workplace, including nontraditional ones that may not at first be obvious. For example, managers should understand that workers are constantly learning from each other, which entails that each employee's co-workers constitute an important learning resource for that employee. With this understanding, managers can seek to marshal this resource by designing environments that support peer learning (Novicki, 1996). Another type of nonformal and ongoing program that can help employees understand the work environment is visual factory management. In such a program, visual displays are used to provide workers with important information about current processes, while other graphic displays may help them understand the ways in which jobs are to be performed (Greif, 1991). In general, signs and other visual devices and methods can be used both to inform workers and as informal training guides in many different kinds of work situation.

While such innovative ways of providing ongoing training and learning in the workplace should be sought by training managers, it is important that development and implementation of informal methods be done no less scientifically than in the case of formal training programs. Decisions should be made on the basis of careful observations and a clear understanding of learning objectives. As in the case of formal training programs, results should be carefully evaluated on the basis of objective data. Overall, these three principles--approach training scientifically, treat employees as active learners, and make learning an ongoing process--are not only solid general training guides, they are especially important to follow in today's demanding and fast-changing work environments. By tailoring them to their firm's specific circumstances and applying them diligently and creatively, training managers can help ensure that their training and learning programs effectively meet their organization's needs.

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Chong-Tek Aik, Walden University 

Chong Aik is a doctoral student in the School of Management at Walden University. His research interests include sustainable forest management, visual training methods, post-industrial workplace, and change management.