Are Older Workers Being Trained?

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I was conducting a new program yesterday and in one of the sessions a common theme emerged from a number of the groups during an exercise. Ageism. In discussing the issue with a number of participants they firmly held the belief that their organisation discriminated (consciously or unconsiously) against older members of the team.

I have had lots of anecdotal evidence like this but have rarely come across evidentiary support. Well, here it is:

training for older workers

A labour force survey in the Europe demonstrates that older workers do not receive similar levels of training as their younger counterparts. The question is “why?”.  Some reasons were given but the category of 21% “Other Reasons” begs further investigation.

I know of a number of people who get called for interviews but regularly miss out on jobs post interview due to being ‘over-qualified’. I speak to a number fo people who claim they have difficulty securing permanency due to their age and have to live from contract to contract if they can get one. Many people complain that they don’t get the opportunity to take up trainng to refresh their skills.

Are we inherently ageist?

How will this come to pass as the workforce and population continues to age?

How can we capture and engage and utilise the expertise and wisdom of our elders (ie people over 45!)

Motivating People

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Daniel Pink is brilliant in this exposition of what motivates people. And the graphic facilitation is way cool, too.

So, if we know this stuff, why do we keep sticking to the old paradigms thinking they will work?

We have to get the message out there. Use some of that strategic planning time to look at the proven research and work out how to apply it to our businesses rather than stick with what we think we know (and learned at uni twenty years ago based on what research said fifty years before that!).

I agree with Pink. Obviously, as Herzberg said, remove money as a dissatisfier first. Then, how can we engage people by helping them to satisfy their sense of Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose?

Grants and Scholarships And More

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ARLPCalling all Regional and Rural people.  Here is an outstanding opportunity to apply for a comprehensive and proven Leadership Development program. It’s run over 17 months and is not for the faint-hearted but looks like a brilliant program to enable you to build your leadership skills in ways which will benefit the rural and regional communities of Australia. Get all the info here: http://www.rural-leaders.com.au/ – click on the ad or the ‘Programs’ tab.  Hurry – applications close 31 July. Hint – see if you can contact past attendees for tips on applying  great way to network as well.

 

j0433185 If you’re after something a little more environmental… Community Action Grants are open. They aim to help community groups take action to conserve and protect their natural environment.  Proposals are sought from environmental, Indigenous, Landcare, Coastcare and sustainable agriculture community groups for grants of between $5000 and $20 000 (GST exclusive) to take action to help protect and conserve Australia’s environment. What can the grant achieve? Local activities such as tree planting, re-vegetation, dune rehabilitation, field days, improving land management practices, and recording and use of traditional ecological knowledge. For full details see: http://www.nrm.gov.au/cag/index.html. Closes 31 August.

 

Australian Red Cross - The Power Of HumanityTelecross volunteers needed for Dubbo. A potentially life saving Red Cross service, Telecross provides a daily phone-call to check on the well-being and safety of elderly people living alone. Regional Community Services Coordinator, Kerry Palmer says “The daily phone call from Telecross helps provide peace of mind to older people and their families. It breaks down the sense of isolation many elderly people feel and allows them to maintain their independence for as long as possible. The service is supported by volunteers who undertake to make one or two brief calls to clients between 8.00 and 9.00am each morning. Easy! If the client has not responded to the calls after two attempts, volunteers are trained to call staff at the Telecross office who then respond with a standard procedure. Volunteers are the backbone of all the services we deliver and without their commitment and support much of our work would not be possible”

What:             Telecross Orientation and Training Session
When:            Friday 16th July, 2010
Where:           CWA Rooms, Dubbo
Bookings:      Phone 6884 6061 or 1300 883 463

Universal HR

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These days, many of us are interacting on an international level. Sometimes that can provide challenges when the standard English translation dictionary doesn’t have  an equivalent for something like ‘learning curve’.

 

j0433165Problem now solved!

 

Here is a specific translator for Human Resources and Payroll terms.  It can be a godsend for those who are struggling to make sense of converting English.

 

You can even download the lexicon by alphabet letter if you need a physical reference at hand and can’t access the internet – may be handy to take on your next overseas jaunt.

 

http://www.lexicon.adp.com/

State Government Conference

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IPAA NSW (Institute of Public Administration) is hosting a one-day conference on THURSDAY July 22.

The conference is expected to provide an exciting and topical program including keynote addresses from notable politicians, as well as national and international speakers.

If you are interested in

  • the cost of delivering services
  • improving community views and service delivery outcomes
  • improving transparency and accountability
  • exploring the what happens if we have a change in government
  • state and federal relationships

then there is likely to be some useful and actionable information for you , not to mention the networking with colleagues in other departments and agencies.

Share ideas, listen in … the early bird pricing closes soon.

Find out more at www.nsw.ipaa.org.au

I may even see you there!

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Build Your Expertise… Fast

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Key tips from Gihn Perera.

  1. Create your newsletter – short and sweet better but HAS to be high value content. Subscriptions to newsletters dropping but blog subscriptions increasing.
  2. Post to your blog – post at least weekly, prepare a batch of posts in one go and schedule their release dates, cut and paste from your newsletter, review videos or articles or books and summarise or comment on those, talk about what you know
  3. Create a podcast – audio mp3 file
  4. Produce a video – sit in your backyard with your webcam and knock it up. It’s about quality content more than high production values.
  5. Use tools to automatically update – twitterfeed.com, tell LinkedIn to update from your tweets, tell YouTube to post video to twitter and Facebook, AddThis.com.
  6. Blogger or WordPress – either! Blogger is quicker to set up and get going. You can then export your posts to WordPress if you go that way. WordPress is good if you want to monetise.
  7. Blog because you’ve got something to say! Best time ever for experts right now so don’t do it just for promotion. Share what you know.
  8. Should your blog be on your site or not? Either. Arguments exist for both. Just do whatever is easiest to get going.

This was a great session to realise it doesn’t take time to demonstrate and share your expertise.

Getting More Things Done

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No matter what our role, it’s increasingly a challenge to fit everything in.

Multi-tasking is great but it often means we get less done even though we manage to start and attend to a lot of things that need progress.

I was reminded today of Charles Schwab’s enduring formula for managing productivity:

 

productivity, managing time, getting things doneThe “Big 6”

1. Make a list, before the start of each day,
   of the things that need to be accomplished.

2. Identify your "Big 6" and put a star (*) by them.
   Commit to accomplishing the top six that are
   CURRENTLY most important to your goals . 

3. Begin work on the one that is most important.
   Continue working until that task is completed
   (or something else became more important).

 

So as simple as it sounds, it is effective.

1. Write your list

2. Prioritise your "Big 6"

3. Take Action !

 

The difficulty for most of us is getting the undisturbed time to focus on those six things. That might mean scheduling them one by one. Maybe even start with just your most important four tasks.

 

The trick is to not make the tasks mammoth projects in themselves. Making progress on a major project by completing 10 tasks this week is way better than fiddling around the edges and not getting any concrete results towards it.  The old ‘chunk it down’ principle.

 

Personally I’d rather reach the end of the week and have definite progress that I can ppint to than lots of analysis and ideas that I still haven’t got off the ground.

 

What do you think of the big 6 system?

Retention or Transfer of Learning – What’s up?

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Do people retain what they learn?

 

It’s a continual struggle to prove the value of learning let alone validate whether someone not only learned from training but are actually applying it. In my personal and professional experience of courses, workshops, seminars and other learning odes, most people learn but few actually do anything with the learning.

 

So retention of learning is one thing. What’s more important is transfer of learning to create change in behaviour, values, attitudes, skills, competency.

 

Matt Moore, cites the figures at around 10% transfer of knowledge and refers to a seminal work (Ford, J.K. & Weissbein, D.A. (1997). Transfer of training: an updated review and analysis. Performance Improvement Quarterly, 10(2), 22?41. doi:10.1111/j.1937-8327.1997.tb00047.x). Matt also suggests the following references to expand knowledge in this area:

 

Vanessa Lynne actually covered this topic off in her thesis for her Master in Adult Ed research. She states:

In a workplace setting, transfer of knowledge to the job is notoriously poor (Tennant, 1997; Lim and Morris, 2006). Proving it is also very difficult with the main measures of effectiveness being return on investment (Kopp, 2006). Through his research Kopp (2006) estimates that about 30% of new knowledge is transferred to the job. Lim and Morris (2006) are even less optimistic about the transfer of knowledge citing Georgenson, 1982, Holton & Baldwin, 2000 and Kuprits, 2002 in estimating that only about 10% of knowledge is transferred to the workplace. According to Buckley and Caple (1994) transfer will increase if participants are involved in all aspects of the planning of their training." (Lynne, V, 2008. Teaching and Learning Together – Emergent Learning in a Workplace Setting).

Vanessa’s main finding overall is contained in that last sentence. If people are engaged in the process, what they learn is relevant to them and they will both retain it and use it. There are other factors of course – the amount of support they get once back in the workplace, their degree of attachment to the "old way" and so forth. The closest Vanessa could get to a theory that underpins the notion that engagement = retention and application is the work that Stuart Hase and others are doing around what they call "heutagogy". New thinking around adult learning is very refreshing.

 

As learning professional we are often so concerned with the front-end from a process and content point of view that it serves us well to remember involving learners as much as possible throughout the entire learning experience  from planning to post delivery and beyond.  When we can truly engage and demonstrate clear specific outcomes then we are in a stronger negotiating position and have served our learners well.