Rethinking Workplace Learning And Development

Cognizant of the complexity and uncertainty that characterizes our post-pandemic world, this book highlights how learning and development needs to be wired into the culture of a business. Karen E. Watkins and Victoria J. Marsick extend the vision of learning and development to embrace a full range of learning interventions, considering what it means to change the culture of an organization into a learning-rich environment.

How can I develop an effective workplace learning culture to drive employee and business success? This new edition of Workplace Learning provides the knowledge and tools to create an outstanding learning culture in the new world of work. It's no longer enough for Learning and Development professionals to only offer a catalogue of workplace learning courses: competing effectively in today's business environment requires organizations and their employees to adapt and learn daily. Providing an evidence-based model for identifying key areas of focus and measuring success, Workplace Learning is a practical guide that shows how to build and embed a culture that continuously encourages and engages employees in learning and achieve business success. The updated second edition features new material on organizational and self-determined learning, and case studies from Microsoft, Novartis and PwC. Packed with practical suggestions, tools and tips, Workplace Learning is an essential resource for establishing an outstanding continuous learning culture in all parts of the organization.

This edited volume aims to evaluate the promises of workplace learning by addressing the following related questions: What are current developments in theory that informs workplace learning research? How can learning in the workplace be measured? What is the impact of various organizational settings (e.g., team-based work and call centres) on workplace learning? Which are the promising new avenues for research? And which research-based recommendations can be made to boost learning opportunities in various work contexts? The topic is conceptualized as an interaction between the individual and the work context, as a combination of individual and collective processes, as a link between cognition and action, and as a political process. With a wide array of contributions from academics such as Stephen Billet, Tara Fenwick and Victoria Marsick, this volume will be an important research and reference tool with all those academics and practitioners who are interested in the field of human resource development. Targeted at researchers, (post) graduate students, and reflective practitioners and managers interested in the area, "Workplace Learning" provides must-read material for anyone wanting to advance the theory, research, and/or practice of learning in the workplace.

Learning and development is essential to organizational success. Training courses were traditionally used as the key method of teaching, but the focus is increasingly shifting to individuals and managers adopting a more flexible approach to learning. Organizations want to ensure that their employees are not just learning new skills, but are using their existing skills to maximum effect. Workplace Learning and Development guides managers and employees through the concept of workplace learning. It identifies the variety of flexible learning strategies and methods, explains how to select the right method for a specific situation, and illustrates how these methods can add value to overall performance. Real-life examples of workplace learning give readers insight into how the process works and how they can use these tools for their specific needs.

Russ Vince examines learning as both a social and a strategic process, invariably linked to emotions and politics that are mobilized by attempts at learning and organizing. He makes a substantial contribution to theories of organizational learning and develops new ideas about critical reflection and collective leadership. The author outlines a critical perspective on HRD, arguing that staff responsible for learning and change in organizations have put too much effort into the development of individuals and not enough into understanding and engaging with organizational dynamics that limit and shape individuals' opportunities and abilities to learn and change. HRD is explained as an intervention within a political system and practice of management and leadership, with all the difficulties and contradictions that attempting to manage and to lead are likely to contain and reveal. This means that the focus of HRD is on action, on developing the capacity to act, on generating credibility through action, and on influencing and working with others in situations loaded with emotion and politics.

During the middle third of the 20th century, workers in most industrialized countries secured a substantial measure of job security, whether through legislation, contract or social practice. This “standard employment contract,” as it was known, became the foundation of an impressive array of rights and entitlements, including social insurance and pensions, protection against unsociable working conditions, and the right to bargain collectively. Recent changes in technology and the global economy, however, have dramatically eroded this traditional form of employment. Employers now value flexibility over stability, and increasingly hire employees for short-term or temporary work. Many countries have also repealed labor laws, relaxed employee protections, and reduced state-provided benefits. As the old system of worker protection declines, how can labor regulation be improved to protect workers? In Rethinking Workplace Regulation, nineteen leading scholars from ten countries and half a dozen disciplines present a sweeping tour of the latest policy experiments across the world that attempt to balance worker security and the new flexible employment paradigm. Edited by noted socio-legal scholars Katherine V.W. Stone and Harry Arthurs, Rethinking Workplace Regulation presents case studies on new forms of dispute resolution, job training programs, social insurance and collective representation that could serve as policy models in the contemporary industrialized world. The volume leads with an intriguing set of essays on legal attempts to update the employment contract. For example, Bruno Caruso reports on efforts in the European Union to “constitutionalize” employment and other contracts to better preserve protective principles for workers and to extend their legal impact. The volume then turns to the field of labor relations, where promising regulatory strategies have emerged. Sociologist Jelle Visser offers a fresh assessment of the Dutch version of the ‘flexicurity’ model, which attempts to balance the rise in nonstandard employment with improved social protection by indexing the minimum wage and strengthening rights of access to health insurance, pensions, and training. Sociologist Ida Regalia provides an engaging account of experimental local and regional “pacts” in Italy and France that allow several employers to share temporary workers, thereby providing workers job security within the group rather than with an individual firm. The volume also illustrates the power of governments to influence labor market institutions. Legal scholars John Howe and Michael Rawling discuss Australia's innovative legislation on supply chains that holds companies at the top of the supply chain responsible for employment law violations of their subcontractors. Contributors also analyze ways in which more general social policy is being renegotiated in light of the changing nature of work. Kendra Strauss, a geographer, offers a wide-ranging comparative analysis of pension systems and calls for a new model that offers “flexible pensions for flexible workers.” With its ambitious scope and broad inquiry, Rethinking Workplace Regulation illustrates the diverse innovations countries have developed to confront the policy challenges created by the changing nature of work. The experiments evaluated in this volume will provide inspiration and instruction for policymakers and advocates seeking to improve worker’s lives in this latest era of global capitalism.

Informal learning has become an extremely important issue as post-industrial workplaces seek to harness its productive potential. Managers and HRD practitioners have attempted to deploy informal learning in the design of corporate cultures, however, most discussions of the subject have tended to be uncritical expositions which do not challenge the underlying economic, philosophical and organisational rationale. Uniquely, this book goes against this tendency. It critically examines definitions of informal learning, and focuses on its application in a variety of workplace contexts. It features: * theories of informal learning * the unmasking of contemporary corporate rhetoric * the implications for accounts of workplace learning of poststructuralist and post-modern perspectives. Incorporating case studies based on interviews with practising managers and HRM practitioners, and a detailed glossary of key concepts and issues, this book will be a valuable reference for students of workplace learning.

Today, rapid change is a constant challenge in the workplace, and thousands of individuals need to be involved in continuous learning. Traditional training approaches, however, do not emphasise informal and incidental learning. Furthermore, since informal learning us seldom designed, learning outside of a structured experience may lead to mistaken or dysfunctional learning. Strategies for improving informal learning are urgently needed. This book, first published in 1990, responds to this need by taking a challenging look at many assumptions about workplace learning outside of the classroom and by proposing methods to improve it. They develop a theory of informal and incidental workplace learning based on current developments in training and human resource development which they illustrate with readable and illuminating case studies which tell vivid stories of adult education and human resource development practice. Informal and Incidental Learning in the Workplace is essential reading for researchers and practitioners of human resource development, and also for students of education and adult learning.