News: Performance Management
CIPD: "Embed" training in 21st-century workplaces
24 November 2008
Corporate training initiatives must be adapted for the 21st century's "service-led" and knowledge-driven economy, according to the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD).
As such, the organisation is urging for a new definition of trainers as "facilitators of learning" whose expertise is harnessed to meet the specific needs of employees and corporations, in addition to integrating their training ethos into the day-to-day activities of staff.
Line managers are crucial when it comes to such "embedding", the CIPD suggests, echoing recent research indicating that such leaders increasingly determine the learning and development needs in firms.
The "embedded approach" should also be applied to coaching, which is now practised in 71 per cent of businesses, the CIPD notes.
Martyn Sloman, the body's learning, training and development adviser, says 21st-century trainers need "a new mind-set", as well as a new skill-set.
"The requirements for skills in a service-led and knowledge-driven economy are different from the command and control workplace, with its tight job descriptions," he adds.
In its Who Learns at Work? report for this year, the CIPD revealed that 49 per cent of organisations now have training programmes initiated by line managers and not human resources professionals.
