All organisations, regardless of the nature of their services focus on certain objectives. Regardless of the nature of these objectives, they depend on the competencies of their people to achieve these objectives. Competencies set the tone for organisational performance by clarifying what to perform and to what standards.

COMPETENCY MANAGEMENT

• What skills do the organisation need to acquire?
• Where and how should these skills be deployed?
• How do we cover gaps in skills?

By directing organisations to build on strengths - as captured in the saying "You can teach a turkey to climb a tree, but it is easier to hire a squirrel." - a competency orientation conserves organisational resources.

The best plans and processes that are in place within organisations are affected by human behaviour. The relevance of performance management is in converting "can do's," (which are the forte of competency initiatives) into reality. If the essential processes of goals, standards, and monitoring/feedback systems are in place, organisations can manage the errors and variations associated with individual behaviour to a large extent.

How do we institutionalise competencies? What kind of performance management system would suit your organisation? How do we measure the return of investment on these initiatives? Let us find out in the sessions placed within the Competency Performance framework.

Once upon a time there was a place we went to work and then a place we went to learn and the two were seldom the same. Even when training sessions were conducted in the organisational premises we did not quite think of work and learning happening right at one’s workplace, except in the case of initiatives like coaching or on-the-job training. This combination of work and learning has gained ground sufficiently for us to rename the workplace as the work-learning place.

The change is not only the effect of technology that brings learning to the PC nearest to you. It is also the result of the changing nature of work itself. According to the new thinking, work and learning are inextricably linked. New knowledge and skills required at work are changing at a pace that makes it difficult for conventional classroom training and seminars to keep up. Learning has to take place when it is actually needed so that it can be transferred and tested for with near immediate effect.

A main feature of the new thinking is that an organisation’s contribution to learning starts from creating an atmosphere conducive to learning, which supports inquiry and dialogue. In such an environment, the challenges arising out of work in the form of problems to be solved, processes to be improved, etc., forms the setting for learning. This is the approach of learning organisations.

Is workplace learning informal or structured? What are the techniques in use in different parts of the world? What is the influence of national cultures on the techniques followed? What is e-learning? How does a manager take upon himself the role of facilitator in bringing about an environment of continuous learning? These are some of the questions we seek answer to in this orientation towards growing our people.

Technology has changed much of life, as we have once known it, including how organisations manage their people. Initially technology focused on the transactional aspects of HR by offering query-based communications and automating HR transactions like payroll processing. Technology has spread its scope much wider today.



One of the most significant developments in technology that has aided HR professionals is the Web. It has improved HR by offering learning and knowledge management support, business process support, and employee self-service opportunities. Web-based training is gaining popularity as it keeps pace with the urgency of skills a cquisition. Business process is being supported by Electronic Performance Support Systems (EPSS).

The EPSS is an electronic environment that provides each employee easy online access to specific information needed to perform a task, with minimal intervention by others. Employee self service allows HR professionals to spend less time in high volume transactions and allows them more time to focus on strategic HR and value added services. Technology makes some of our activities redundant, while we have to run harder to keep pace with change in certain other areas. For example, if the number of days spent in classroom training is going down because of web based learning and EPSS, what changes do HR professionals need to make? How much of new technology should we adopt and what are the priority areas? Our learning track on Technology will update you on the changes required.

The verdict has been out a long time: It is impossible to avoid change. While change itself is a complex process, understanding what change means in terms of its components is not so hard.



Change involves an initiating factor, which, for want of a better term, we'll call a change problem. Now, before all the negative implications of the term 'problem' kicks in, let us remind ourselves that here we take 'problem' to mean a situation that requires action.

The million-dollar question is what that action should be. Changes management is a quest for solutions, a fact that has made it a field where there are brilliant successes and spectacular failures. Some get the answers and some miss them by a mile, as is common in a journey of discovery. Having an end in mind doesn't always mean we get there. Knowing how to ask the right questions might be a good beginning.

• The 'How' questions
  They assume a given end and examine ways to get there.
  - How do we get people to be more service oriented?
• The 'What' questions
  While the 'how' questions focus on means, the 'what' questions focus on the ends.
  - What are the benefits in making people more service oriented?
  - What service standards should apply to us?
• The 'Why' questions
  The 'why' questions explore the network of means and ends to arrive at root causes where change efforts should be directed.
  - Why do we do what we do the way we do it?

Knowing what to ask is the easy part. The next step is knowing who should ask these questions and in what situations.

Corporate leaders today face problems in the workplace that are placing new demands on them for moral leadership. We hear of huge corporations brought to their knees because of corruption, product liability lawsuits, negligence, and discrimination.According to a Woodstock Theological Centre study, self-indulgent permissiveness has become so widespread that organisations are more than ever worried about lawsuits, institutional instability, and the erosion of respect for business as a profession.

Social trends of the time are such that there is less emphasis on the authority of community and more on the freedom of individuals. Organisations cannot clamp down on its people to ensure conformance. At the same time the costs involved in crossing the boundaries as represented by these rules are forbidding and it is too serious a matter to be left to the discretion of individuals. What can organisations do?

Many are turning towards building ethics into the environment in which individuals work. Not just in terms of policies and talk, but into work processes. It is important for the systems, rules, and policies of an organisation - its structure, performance standards, reporting and information systems, rewards and incentive programmes, and internal controls - to make it easier to uphold values. We are talking here about values that are lived, rather than ones that are talked about.

When discussing the values that an organisation holds we have to take into account the growing demand for corporate social responsibility, whereby the society is demanding a more active role from organisations in addressing social problems that we once thought to be the responsibility of the government. Ensuring compliance is the fact that no longer is financial performance the sole criterion for investor attraction. It now has to be combined with social and environmental performance indicators.

This track looked at values in the context of individuals, organisations and the society.