Training as a Cultural Experience
Training as a Cultural Experience
In the late nineties, I attended a seminar at The International Human Resources Institute in Canada discussing the impact of globalization on the future of the Human Resource profession, and the role it plays to help the management prepare their employees accept the facts of the new age and overcome the resistance to change that the international and multinational companies are going to face. The seminar was attended by top management and Human Resources professional representing leading organizations in almost all walks of business.
Most of the senior management speakers blamed the Human Resources in their organizations for the slow reaction to their demands, and their inability to cope with the required changes in both people and systems to become competitive. Consequently, a flood of questions came to my mind about what organizations should do to match their escalating demands of the Human Resources. Certainly, feasible methods to enhance the effectiveness of Human Resources plans are needed, otherwise these plans will amount to nothing but colorful binders that decorate executive shelves, reminding everyone that looks at them of unfulfilled dreams and abandoned targets.
If organizations are really serious in considering people as their best asset and are willing to invest in them by continuously improving their skills and developing new methods to keep them motivated they should treat human resource professionals as full partners in all major strategic decisions relating to employees instead of imposing decisions on them. The old traditional view of Human Resources being a services department whose reason of existence is to oblige other departments by providing them with the services they needed without participating in shaping these kind of services, will have to change into giving the function a more strategic role in shaping the organizational culture of valuing people and their input. The new trend nowadays sees HR as an integrated strategic management system that overlaps with and impacts all other systems in the organization.
If we analyze the three main strategic functions of HR we will notice that they constitute the core business competency of any organization, i.e. helping the organizations Attract good caliber people; develop those people; Maintain them as a qualified strategic asset. Obviously, we are talking about a ‘proactive’ type of HR that is always one step ahead in going out into the market and attract qualified competent people to fill present and future organizational needs, plan to continuously invest in improving their skills and enhancing their competencies, as well as create a challenging, motivating work environment that decreases people turnover and maintains a stable labor-force.
It is essential, therefore, to specify the level and role of HR with an appropriate level of authority to enable the function operate with a reasonable amount of flexibility to ensure both efficiency and effectiveness. There is what I call ‘authority gap’ between HR and the other functions which in many cases cripples the process of fair implementation of even the standard policies and procedures. Bridging this gap will result in more emphasis on the HR systems to be respected by the other organizations functions, and would change the image of looking at HR as an inferior support service, and instill a culture of dealing with HR as an equal to the other functions which will increase the level of harmonious collegiality among all the key players in the organization. This could only be fulfilled through a number of measures, standards, and criteria applied to ensure that essential resources are aligned and qualified management of these resources guaranteed. HR is neither a dumping ground for trouble-makers and unqualified personnel, nor a function that needs minimal resources to render its services. Necessary funds to establish integrated education and training plans, succession and career development, competitive compensation, retirement and pension plans, and recreation activities should be secured. HR authority should also include vetoing other functions decisions that violate the SOPs of the organization. Lacking consistency, the credibility of the whole management team becomes vulnerable.
Allowing HR to periodically conduct opinion surveys should be encouraged. This gives senior management honest indicators of people’s feelings and needs so that decisions are made to fend off problems. In order for HR to be the organization’s conscience, in needs management support for its educated efforts to feel the pulse of the organization. Likewise, in order to maintain the neutrality of that conscience and the departmental balance of power, we need to protect human resources from internal politics and power games that seeps the power out of the Intellectual asset of the organization and kills their creativity and innovation.
Training as a Cultural Experience - To learn more about this author, visit Dr. Fathi El-Nadi's Website.
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Therefore, I have always believed that a good instructor will be able to both stimulate and challenge his audience to talk about ‘how’ they would use the knowledge he is giving them when they go back to work rather focusing on seeking as much information as they could have. This application approach is a major step towards ‘learning’. It also draws the line between education and learning. Learning is what organizations should be keen to enhance in their working teams if they wish to get a high return on their investments in training. This brings to the front the issue of selecting the right people to work for us; People who will constitute the intellectual capital of the organization. This particular issue brings to my mind memories of seminars I had attended around the topic of full utilization of human resources.
In the late nineties, I attended a seminar at The International Human Resources Institute in Canada discussing the impact of globalization on the future of the Human Resource profession, and the role it plays to help the management prepare their employees accept the facts of the new age and overcome the resistance to change that the international and multinational companies are going to face. The seminar was attended by top management and Human Resources professional representing leading organizations in almost all walks of business.
Most of the senior management speakers blamed the Human Resources in their organizations for the slow reaction to their demands, and their inability to cope with the required changes in both people and systems to become competitive. Consequently, a flood of questions came to my mind about what organizations should do to match their escalating demands of the Human Resources. Certainly, feasible methods to enhance the effectiveness of Human Resources plans are needed, otherwise these plans will amount to nothing but colorful binders that decorate executive shelves, reminding everyone that looks at them of unfulfilled dreams and abandoned targets.
If organizations are really serious in considering people as their best asset and are willing to invest in them by continuously improving their skills and developing new methods to keep them motivated they should treat human resource professionals as full partners in all major strategic decisions relating to employees instead of imposing decisions on them. The old traditional view of Human Resources being a services department whose reason of existence is to oblige other departments by providing them with the services they needed without participating in shaping these kind of services, will have to change into giving the function a more strategic role in shaping the organizational culture of valuing people and their input. The new trend nowadays sees HR as an integrated strategic management system that overlaps with and impacts all other systems in the organization.
If we analyze the three main strategic functions of HR we will notice that they constitute the core business competency of any organization, i.e. helping the organizations Attract good caliber people; develop those people; Maintain them as a qualified strategic asset. Obviously, we are talking about a ‘proactive’ type of HR that is always one step ahead in going out into the market and attract qualified competent people to fill present and future organizational needs, plan to continuously invest in improving their skills and enhancing their competencies, as well as create a challenging, motivating work environment that decreases people turnover and maintains a stable labor-force.
It is essential, therefore, to specify the level and role of HR with an appropriate level of authority to enable the function operate with a reasonable amount of flexibility to ensure both efficiency and effectiveness. There is what I call ‘authority gap’ between HR and the other functions which in many cases cripples the process of fair implementation of even the standard policies and procedures. Bridging this gap will result in more emphasis on the HR systems to be respected by the other organizations functions, and would change the image of looking at HR as an inferior support service, and instill a culture of dealing with HR as an equal to the other functions which will increase the level of harmonious collegiality among all the key players in the organization. This could only be fulfilled through a number of measures, standards, and criteria applied to ensure that essential resources are aligned and qualified management of these resources guaranteed. HR is neither a dumping ground for trouble-makers and unqualified personnel, nor a function that needs minimal resources to render its services. Necessary funds to establish integrated education and training plans, succession and career development, competitive compensation, retirement and pension plans, and recreation activities should be secured. HR authority should also include vetoing other functions decisions that violate the SOPs of the organization. Lacking consistency, the credibility of the whole management team becomes vulnerable.
Allowing HR to periodically conduct opinion surveys should be encouraged. This gives senior management honest indicators of people’s feelings and needs so that decisions are made to fend off problems. In order for HR to be the organization’s conscience, in needs management support for its educated efforts to feel the pulse of the organization. Likewise, in order to maintain the neutrality of that conscience and the departmental balance of power, we need to protect human resources from internal politics and power games that seeps the power out of the Intellectual asset of the organization and kills their creativity and innovation.
Training as a Cultural Experience - To learn more about this author, visit Dr. Fathi El-Nadi's Website.
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David AchesonDavid Acheson is the founder of DCJA Consultancy. DCJA Consultancy is a management consultancy business specialising in B2B sales consultancy. They offer bespoke and packaged sales consultancy including Sales Optimisation Review, Interim Sales Management, Sales & Marketing Review, 1:1 Sales & Management Staff Analysis, Management Training, Solution Sales Training, Creation of New Pay Plan, KPI's, run Customer Feedback Campaigns, assist with Recruitment, Coaching, Appraisals and set up Strategic Marketing Campaigns. David spent his early career in accountancy and then moved into sales in 1982, working in Office Equipment, IT, Advertising, Training, Outsourcing and Consultancy. He has held many Senior Positions in SMBs and Global Organisations including Head of Sales Operations & Head of Business Development. His knowledge, skills and great experience of the Sales Industry has led to David making keynote speeches and running educational sessions to key businesses through organisations including The Chamber of Commerce and Business Link. - Visit David Acheson's Website |
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John BrennanJohn Brennan Ed.D. Dr. Brennan is President of Interpersonal Development, LLC, a training and development firm. Interpersonal Development has provided sales training and coaching to more than 3,000 sales reps from over 100 companies. A native of Australia, Dr. Brennan received his doctorate from the University of Rochester. His dissertation researched the effectiveness of Behavioral Modeling Technology in training people in interpersonal skills. While he has spent most of his career designing or delivering training, he was also a Vice-President of Sales of a training and development franchise with operations in 25 markets. Dr. Brennan has designed and delivered sales training in North America, Asia, Europe, Australia and the Middle East. He has been a guest speaker at numerous national and regional professional conferences. When Microsoft wanted Best Practices articles on sales for their web site, they called Dr. Brennan. The results are at http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/FX011387391033.aspx His firm’s clients have included Volvo, The Prudential, Merrill Lynch, Eastman Kodak, Gannett, Equifax Europe, the Economist Group and countless small businesses. - Visit John Brennan's Website |
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Linda RichardsonLinda Richardson is the Founder and Executive Chairwoman of Richardson, a global sales training and performance improvement company. As a recognized leader in the industry, she has won the coveted Stevie Award for Lifetime Achievement in Sales Excellence and she was identified by Training Industry, Inc. as one of the “Top 20 Most Influential Training Professionals.” Ms. Richardson is credited with the movement to Consultative Selling and is the author of ten books on selling and sales management, including Sales Coaching — Making the Great Leap from Sales Manager to Sales Coach, and Stop Telling, Start Selling. She teaches sales and management at the Wharton Graduate School of the University of Pennsylvania and the Wharton Executive Development Center. Linda is a frequent speaker at industry and client conferences, has been published extensively in industry and training journals, and has been featured in numerous publications, including The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Nation’s Business, Selling Power, Success, and The Conference Board Magazine. Learn more about Richardson's sales training and performance improvement solutions at http://www.richardson.com web - Visit Linda Richardson's Website |
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John AlexanderJohn has taught keyword research and SEO skills to small groups of business owners and Webmasters from over 80 different countries world wide since 2002. John is also the Director of Search Engine Academy ; Co-director of Training at Search Engine Workshops offering live, SEO Workshops with his partner SEO educator Robin Nobles, author of the very first comprehensive online search engine marketing courses at SEO Training Online and the SEO Workshop Resource Center. I look forward to hearing from you! - Visit John Alexander's Website |
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Staging DivaDebra Gould, aka The Staging Diva®, is President of Six Elements Inc., an internationally recognized home staging company. Inspired by many requests from aspiring home stagers wanting to start similar businesses, Gould created the Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training Program. Gould has trained over 1000 Staging Diva Graduates worldwide to start staging businesses. Buying decorating and selling six of her own homes in four years lead to an interest in real estate staging which she turned into a career with the launch of sixelements.com in 2002. Since then she has staged hundreds of homes in addition to teaching home staging training. Gould is the author of several home staging resources including a series of popular ebooks made up of a Design Guide, Color Guide and Portfolio Guide. For more information about Debra Gould visit stagingdiva.com. - Visit Staging Diva's Website |
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Kim CastleWith nearly two decades in the advertising and design business, with clients like Domino's Pizza, General Motors, Direct TV, Pedigree, Wolfgang Puck, Higher Octave Music, Hollywood Celebrity Products, Disney, and Paramount, as well as thousands of entrepreneurs around the world define, structure, communicate, and position their business for greater profits, BrandU(R) co-creators Kim Castle and W. Vito Montone discovered that entrepreneurs could experience the same power that big brands command for a fraction of the cost with the world's only process-based results-drive Integral approach to business creation. BrandU(R) is helping entrepreneurs grow with the power of extreme clarity from idea...to brand...to market(TM) and helping one million entrepreneurs become successful and whole so that they can make a difference in the world. Are you one of them? If you want to experience clarity all the way to the bank(TM), get started now at http://www.brandu.com. - Visit Kim Castle's Website |
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Stephanie RobeyStephanie Robey is President and CoFounder of Pivot Positive, LLC - an Internet marketing business focused on helping people start work at home ventures. Previously, she was employed at The Search Agency with over 20 years experience in graphic design and 10 years experience in online marketing. She was responsible for launching the Conversion Path Optimization (CPO) unit where she and her team have conducted hundreds of optimization tests for online companies across multiple verticals. She is a successful entrepreneur having started and sold 2 companies and remains on the board of directors of the third, PhotoSpin.com Stephanie began her career in the direct marketing realm creating and producing direct mail for many of the major cable television companies and directly attributes her understanding of Internet marketing to those early offline experiences. Stephanie is a graduate of San Diego State University with a BFA in Graphic Arts and also holds an Executive MBA from the Graziadio School of Business and Management at Pepperdine University. Read Steph's Blog Meet Steph and Dave Sign up for our Free 7-Day BootCamp: Self Employed & Rich - Visit Stephanie Robey's Website |
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Leanne Hoagland-SmithAre your sales where you want them to be? Will you be one of the few who achieves sales or business success or one of the many who have failed to change? Are you tired of being told you are like everyone else? Then you may find my first book on sales of interest. Be the Red Jacket in the Sea of Gray Suits, The Keys to Unlocking Sales available at Amazon or at http://www.processspecialist.com/red-jacket.htm. This book is a reflection of my no-nonsense approach to improving sales to overall business results. If you are truly committed to making sustainable changes, then I can help you secure a positive return on your investment because I focus on executable solutions not telling you the problems you already know you have. From training to corporate (group) coaching to executive one on one coaching, my approach is to assess, create awareness, build a goal driven action plan and then execute. The bottom line question is "Not do you or your employees know it, but do you or they want to do it?" Please call for a free strategy session at 219.759.5601. - Visit Leanne Hoagland-Smith's Website |
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