Management Competencies for Employee Engagement at Enlight

Introduction

With the current changes in technology that are creating ripple effects on the human resource development, learning and development cycle, it is necessary to enhance the employees’ competences of engaging in various activities (Thomas 2009). Effective learning design recognizes various kinds of learning domains that are incorporated in the Human Resource Development. Learning and development cycle of the employees involves various learning based domains such as emergence, transmission, acquisition and, lastly, accretion of the employees. In order to meet the necessary objectives of the learning process among the employees, most of the instructional designers may focus on instruction, fostering learning reflection and effective learning critical thinking, efficient to access the necessary development resources, networks and, finally, ecologies. The recent introduction of the cycle in managing the employees need purpose  to effect  positive attitude of the employees, as their learning needs are found to change regularly, due to the ever changing technology and world effects, such as globalization. These factors have been found to alert the employees’ brain and information based mind set and, hence there is learning to develop the employees’ competences, so as to effectively engage in the ever competitive production world (Blachard 2012).

The paper focuses on the management competence of the employees’ engagement at the Enlight. To meet the objective of the paper; we will look at the contextual factors that are currently affecting Human Resource Management in line with the philosophy policies and approaches of the organization. Moreover, we will address the various stakeholders in the human resource management together with the key barriers and facilitators’. Lastly, we will address the perceptions and roles that are currently directed to the HRD functions. Secondly, the paper will address the learning theory and particularly the adult learning principles and laws pertaining to learning, learners readiness, motivation and the cycles.

In addition to that, the paper will address the development cycle of the employees and the training needs analysis of the employees will be addressed, where we will focus on the various techniques, such as ITN and TNA, the three levels of TNA, methods and sources of data used in the training process before defining the needs and the wants of the employees (Thomas 2012). The paper will also stretch to meet and address the learning objectives of the employees by addressing the standard, measurement and learning theories applied in the objectives.

Lastly, it will address the intervention learning designs, training delivery and implementation during the learning session, evaluation of the training process, and ways of planning for an effective quality HRD before addressing the contemporary issues, facing the employees’ development in the current issues (Mondy & Gowan 2005). All these elements will be matched to employees’ engagement, so as to devise ways of improving the employees’ performance. In the contemporary issues, we shall mainly focus on areas of the management development of the employees, new learning organization, methods developed and, more important, the new coaching and mentoring changes in the current world proposed to meet the changing learning needs of the employees. We also need to address the devolution of the learning process and how outsourcing and technology currently impact the learning and development process of the staffs.

Discussion

Contextual Factors Affecting HRD

Human Resource Development is an essential element in growth and development of the organization. Usually, the change in philosophies, policies approaches of the organization impact the employees’ and other stakeholders’ engagement in successful implementation of the goals to be attained (Mathis & Jackson 2003). Several factors have been identified to influence the human resources developments with organization. First, the level of technology has been found to impact the global mind set of the employees, teaching them to think differently in the organization. The essence of this has been innovation and frustration of some of the employees, hence there is a need to train the employees to learn how to handle new world change complications. Secondly, due to new world changes, such as globalization and introduction of internet, the competition level for the same market has increased in most of the organization, triggering an alarm to improve the competence level of the employees, so as to engage in realization of the organizations goal cautiously. This calls for the organization to embrace learning and skill development of the staff, so as to meet the demands of the consumers in the market (Harrison 2009). Some of the recommendations on reducing the competition level are inward focus developments of the employees, so as to improve their skills on application of strategies in an efficient manner for the human resource developments.

In addition to that, incentives and structural adjustment programs have been found to impact the human resource development by influencing their skill, ability to work, mindset and innovations. The structural programs have been found to cause distortions in the expansion of the incentives for private training of the employees, leading to innovative ideas. The various stakeholders in the HRD include the employees and the managers, where the managers are instrumental in influencing and implementing the HRD policies (Beevers & Rea 2010). Several factors have been identified to act as a barrier to the human resource development. They include reluctance of the employees to learn new things, over ambitiousness, technology and inadequate resources, necessary for implementation of the policy changes. The Human Resource Development specialists have found that HRD play active role in promoting innovations among the employees, developing the Morales of the employees, reducing frustration and disharmony in the organizations, among other roles. The specialists play the role of ensuring that the employees are trained and all necessary resources are provided for the employees to remain competent (Thomas 2009).

Learning Theory

Employees as adults and part of the learners in the institutions benefit greatly from the adult learning theories, provided in the institutions. Learning theory is a set of assumptions, principles and approaches about how an adult learns in an organization. The theory contains several principles, such as adults are practical, goal oriented, relevancy oriented, like to be respected, bring within the institutions experience and knowledge among others. There are several laws that have been designed to improve the learning process of the employees in organizations. These laws include law of relevance which advocates for the learning to be relevant to the life and work place of the employees (Blachard 2012). It is required for the learning process to simulate employees by training, briefing and discussing the strategies in the organization goals. Other laws include, law of previous experience and it advocates the linking of the previous experience to what is learned, before applying it to the organization goals. Moreover, we have law of self direction in which the employees are allowed to be self directive learners. The other laws are law of expectation, self image, multiple criteria, law of alignment, law of practices and feedback after training, law of individual differences in which we learn about different ways of applying the competences, law of domain which embarks on different types of company strategies and, lastly, we have response and reinforcement laws. The last law of emotional learning involves the employees accompanying the learned items with emotions before relating them to the organizations’ goals as a matter of competences.

The learners’ characteristics can be divided into general, specific and learning styles. These traits include the capabilities’, interest for the learning process and needs the depth of personal treatments. The general characteristics are defined to include the working experience, age, gender, ethnicity and, lastly, the education level. In addition to that, the specific traits that can influence the employee’s competences include the pre requisite of the employees, attitudes and the level of benefits the individual aspire from the learning process (Thomas 2009). Lastly, the learning styles are those characteristics of how the learners process the received information and involve various analyses such as visual, intuitive, auditory and sensory interpretation process of the information. All these factors should be highly valued and advocated on the race to ensure that the employees in the organization receive correct and adequate capabilities and competence skill, so as to well engage in the productivity of the organization.

Development Cycle: Training Needs Analysis

Training Need Analysis (TNA) is an essential part of the training process used by the training consultant. It is the initial critical training stage in the training cycle, followed by the design, presentation and evaluation process. In any organization that is applying the TNA and LNA in the training process, it is found that there are three main levels of TNA which include organizational, occupational and individual. They are used in the training needs assessment, where they are used in identifying various performance requirements and the necessary requirement, such as knowledge, abilities and skills (Beevers & Rea 2010). They help in the process of identifying the causes and reasons behind the training gaps found in the creation of the employees’ competence in the work place. The main types of level in the Training Need Assessment include: the organizational assessment which entails critical evaluation of the organizational made performance. It helps in the process of determining the knowledge, abilities, and skills, as parts of ensuring that employees get the necessary competence. It helps in the process of enhancing the strength and employees competences, especially in the engagement process (Thomas 2009). The organization based assessment facilitates provision of various factors in the country, such as political trends, technology, economy and even the changing demographic elements that can enhance the employees’ competences.

The second level is the occupational assessment level that tries to examine the various knowledge, abilities and the skills that affect the employees as a group. It aims at identifying the various occupational changes in the potentially made gaps in the employees’ performance and competence. It also helps to ensure that these gaps are eliminated from the employees, so that they can become ever competent. Thirdly, we have the individual level that tries to analyze the capacity of an individual in the line of duty. The individual assessment will help in facilitating the need to know the level of each of the employees need in the training process. The various data sources available for TNA include interviews, surveys from both of the managers and the employees, employees performance appraising documents, customers collected complaints, critical incidents, products and services quality data and, lastly, organization operations plans (Harrison 2009). Training needs refer to the gap that exists between an employee’s ability to do and what is currently being done and, lastly, solve the conflict existing between the employees and managers. On the other hand, training refers to what is usually optimal, but not actual; hence all these help in improving the gap existing in employees and improving the employees’ competence.

Development Cycle: Learning Objectives

A learning objective refers to the various outcome statements that try to specifically capture the skills, knowledge attitudes that learners should try to show as part of the instruction. There is a need to create effective learning objectives through the process of having correct competences to the various employees in the organization. The main purposes of a good learning objective are: they help the planners in understanding the whole learning process; it also facilitates the process of connecting the assessment around the learning environment for the effectiveness of employees. Moreover, it guides the teaching activities in the employees’ engagement. The main content of learning objective includes: specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and, lastly, targeted the learners so as to achieve organization and employee development (Blanchard 2012).

There are different learning theories of how the employees learn in organizations. These theories can be used in the learning environment to meet the organizations employees’ development. The various theories that can be used include: facilitation theory, sensory stimulation theory, holistic learning theory, action learning, and adult learning theories among others.

Development Cycle: Intervention Design

It is necessary for any organization to ensure that the employees are effectively matched through choosing the well balanced interventions. The right choice of interventions design facilitates various lessons learned in the past be used in the design process in improving the employees’ competence. Some of the intervention designs used are educational, policies and environmental strategies among others. The various types of the interventions that are used in the learning and development cycles are mentioned below.

The first type is simple intervention, which involves simply the employees in the learning process, so as to develop the competence of the employees and to attain the organizations development. The second type of intervention includes classical intervention. This involves the intervention of the actual activities, such that they improve the employees’ engagement and competence in the organization, so as to achieve the goals. Moreover, we have the crisis interventions which are applied in handling the crisis and difficulties in the employees’ competences and engagement in the organization (Thomas 2009). The greatest strength is that they help in understanding crisis and weakness of the employees, so as to solve their problems in a proper manner. However, the main weakness is that they cannot be consistently used in learning process and they are time consuming, when designing learning objectives.

Development Cycle: Training Delivery/Implementation

A learning plan is a form of document that is used in the learning process for enhancing the employees’ competence. Usually, most of the entities are using learning plans to execute the learning process to their employees. They can be used in the development of the employees, so as to enrich the employees’ life and thus end up enhancing the strength of the employees’ competence. A good learning plan should contain the following components: first, it should have the learning goal that the organizations aim to achieve; secondly, it should adequately have the necessary actions that will achieve the goals of the organization. Moreover, it should have the necessary resources and evidences of how the organization will actually achieve the goals. The necessary learning styles that will help in eliminating the difficulties to the learners include the having right communications to the trainers, so as to train the slow learners in the organization.

Development Cycle Evaluation of Training

The evaluation theory tries to help us in the process of making good judgements, so as to ensure that learning process of the employees. First, the theories help us in consolidating the various lessons learned, so that the employees can enjoy and develop their competences. The various levels of evaluations include: reaction of the employees, the learning capabilities, behaviour and capabilities of the employees and, lastly, the results obtained in the training process. In the evaluation process it is necessary to ensure that the costs and returns of the organization, so as to ensure that the organization goals are achieved. Whenever, the evaluation process is being carried out contemporary issues, such as the technology, learning disabilities and lack of cooperation of the employees should be adequately solved to attain the right employees’ competence (Harrison 2009).

Planning and Quality in HRD

The formulation and publication of the human resource development requires first the problem statement captured, so as to ensure that the HRD strategy is understood. Secondly, the learners should formulate the necessary alternatives that will assist in planning and, eventually, solve the learning problem within the employees. There have to be a clear mission, vision and sources of information in the formulation process, so as to solve the matter effectively.

Contemporary Issues in HRD

There are various contemporary changes witnessed in the management process development, so as to create competent employees. Some of the changes entail training of the employees about the ease to be innovative and use of globalizations items, such as internet and websites within the organization. Secondly, new technologies of product creation have seen the learning organization introducing the learning and development cycles, so as to equip the employees with necessary competitive standard that matches those of the competitors. The new method of learning currently introduced in the organization so as to meet the goals of the company and to help the employees in understanding their dreams. Some of the methods include learning interactively by engaging all the employees in some questions, to have a better understanding. Second way to motivate the employees in the learning process is by using practical resources or even providing them with necessary external rewards, perhaps to induce them to be cooperative. Others include trying to use the visual representation of the learning process materials, especially to the poor learners, so as to meet their competence goal. Usually, new coaching and mentoring methods are being used in the organization, so as to meet the needs of the employees. The companies are also employing new technology based methods of learning, so as to meet the various needs of the employees and more so, the disabled ones (Thomas 2009).

Conclusion

Thus it is necessary to appreciate that the employees’ performance can be improved in the Enlight by ensuring that they are engaged in all of the above mentioned learning and development cycles. In most cases, the employees will find it difficult but it is essential to use the correct modern learning methods or rewards to attract them. The modern coaching and mentoring programs in most of the organizations are essential in improving the needs of the employees and, thus eventually to their competence.

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