Important Learning and Our talent development
Our talent development is one of the key aspects of performance management and can help our organizational achieve high performance; It is also a key factor in managing and retaining talent in time of economic uncertainty that most employers still recognised the value of learning and talent development, even if they had to work within reduced budgets. Most our employees also want to improve their performance in their Jobs or learn new skills perhaps to get a pay increase or promotion or maybe to move to a better job. Learning and talent development can help achieve. It can also help attract individuals to our organisation and can then engage their commitment, so that the organization benefits by keeping their talent within themselves; this in turn helps the organisation to achieve its current and future strategic objectives. Governments too are concerned that their countries are economically viable and that they provide a good level of services and standards of living for individuals once agains learning and development can play a key role in achieving this.
Although there are huge benefits to be gained for organisations , individuals and countries, there has sometimes been reluctante by some employers in the UK to spend money on training or promoting learning and development, so successive governments have started various initiatives such as apprenticeships, all of which aim to encourage employers to improve the skils of their workforce. The Leitch Report in 2006 called for the UK to spend much more money on boosting skilld for everyone at every level in order to avoid the UK losing competitiveness becouse of lack of skills. The Report also called for the creation of a new Commission for employment and skills and for employers to have more say in the way were developed (UK 2006).
The term training was originally used to refer to some specified event designed to improve an individual´s performance in a specific aspect of their work. However, as a the UK moved from a largely manufacturing economy , where it was appropriate to train people to carry out clearly specified tasks and where a top-down instructor-led approach was suitable, to a much more flexible service and knowledge-based society, good workers became a source of competitive advantage to an organisation and it became more appropriate to focus on individual learning and encouraging people to learn how to learn.
More recently the term learning and talent development has gained in popularity as organisations increasingly recognise that in order to say competitive they must use. Develop ans then retain the knowledge of their workers as fully as possible. The focus of their activities has started to switch to learning and talent development as a means of achieving their organisation´s strategic objectives.
According to the BGC Code (2010) the focus on the our talent also implies that whoever is identified as having potential receives appropriate experience and opportunities to develop their skills so they can progress.
This could be very wide definition as it can be argued that everyone has talent and potential and organisations should seek to maximise this for everyone. In time of scarce resources and limited Budget some organizations use it to identify those who will make the biggest difference to the organisations performance. either because of their high potential, or because they are in critical roles within the organisation. Focusing on a narrow band of people who are perceived to have talent can be counterproductive as it may, however build resentment among other workers and may result in higher labour labour turnover among these groups.
For employees too, in an increasingly competitive job market, it is also vital that they develop their own talent to keep a competitive edge. The World development also implies something that is ongoing and that progress is made over time. This fits also with the emphasis nowadays on lifelong learning. As people work longer they need to continue to develop to improve their skills , knowledge or competencies and nurture and develop their talent throughout their lives.
It appears that many people would like to see their employer offering more opportunities for development such as a training or personal development package and employers who do not provide this could be missing out in attracting staff to their organisation and in retaining staff they already have. The concept of individualised learning and talent development implies that this occurs in all sorts of situations, not just in the more traditional, formal training opportunities, although we hope that learning will occur here too. Learning and talent development includes other less formal, more learner- centred approaches to learning such as coahing, mentoring, work shadowing, job swapping.
Changes in technology also play a part, enabling the completion of learning and development packages whereas individual workers are in the world, whether at home or at work, as they have Access to a computer or telephone. Developments also mean the sharing of information and learning have become easier. A move form training to learning and talent development also needs different roles to be adopted by line managers, human resource managers and learning and development specialists who have to become increasingly flexible often adopting a facilitator role rather than alwals appearing to be the expert as the traditional trainer might have been. However, although this change in emphasis is undoubtedly occurring, you will still find other terms being used as different organisations will be at different stanges in changing the emphasis from training to learning and talent development.
Creating a learning culture
Of an organisation is to encourage learning to occur, then it must develop a culture which recognises that people learn in different ways and must provide a range of experiences from which they may learn. Human resources managers and learning and talent development specialists have an important role to play in ensuring that the organisation develops in a way which facilitates the learning that the organisation wants to occur, and that a suitable environment is created in which continuous improvement and talent development is actively encouraged. They themselves need to understand the learning process and the key stages in the position of learning and development activities to ensure that this happens. Line managers also need to be involved in understanding and encouraging the occurrence of learning and the organisation should try to minimise barriers and encourage individuals to seek learning opportunities for themselves. The training or learning and talent development opportunities that occur should clearly link with the objectives of the organisation.
The right to request time off for training
Our employers want to focus their resources on just developing talent in certain groups that they identify as having the potential to make a difference to their organisation and its strategic objectives, all employees in organisations with more than 250 employees who have been employed by that organisation for at least 26 weeks have, since april 2014, had the right to request time off for training and this right has been extended to employees in all organisations of whatever size from april 2014. The training requested can lead to a qualification or could be to help the employee develop specific job or work-related skills.