EdAssist and the University Phoenix explored the question of “who is responsible” for their study titled “The Real Story Behind Career Development: Who is Responsible?” found a marked difference in perspective between workers and managers.
Most workers believe that it is the responsibility of their employers’ to help develop their career. However, most managers believe employees must take responsibility for their career development. This disparity creates a dangerous situation where both parties in an employee-employer relationship wait on the other to develop their career through increasing their capability. This waiting often goes on forever.
It behoves the organisation to build capability by upskilling their existing employees. However, capability development budget is finite. So how do you spend that budget, and how do you get the biggest bang for your buck? Do you spend it on sending selected employees to conferences? Perhaps run a couple of in-house training days? However, that might not be the most efficient method of spending finite budget. More importantly, for you as an individual, that might mean that you will not get access to the training you need or want.
For individuals, the best way to learn and grow is by addressing your personal skill gap. To understand how your personal skill gap might arise, you have to understand how most individuals learn. One model for personal learning is 70:20:10 model for learning. First published by Michael M. Lombardo and Robert W. Eichinger, from a study in their 1996 book The Career Architect Development Planner. The 70:20:10 concept centres around the idea that 70% of our learning comes from experience, 20% comes from watching our colleagues, and just 10% comes from formal learning. The percentages are not exact, what’s important is the magnitude.
Our personal skill gap arises when there is a deficiency in any of the three modes of learning. For example, we might be asked to undertake negotiation we are not equipped to handle. I.e. we don’t have the formal training (10%), we might not have colleagues or mentors of sufficient skills whom we can observe (20%) and finally, while we are learning from doing, we have no mechanism by which to properly gauge if we are doing a good job (70%). If your issue is your negotiation skills, but you are not given the opportunity to shadow a negotiation and you are not sponsored to attend training on that topic, you are in an unfavourable situation.
However, by focusing on rewarding individuals who take the lead to develop their own careers, the organisation can foster a situation where you can LEAP to the skills required to keep developing your career.
The Academy of Procurement’s LEAP program works on the principle of up-skilling as you need it.
Step 1: The first step in LEAP involves you Learning theory in your own time.
Step 2: involves Experiencing a practical scenario based activity.
Step 3: calls for you to Apply what you have learnt in your work environment.
Step 4: calls for you to Progress not just yourself but your organisation as a whole by implementing your learning, coaching colleagues and thinking about the next step in building capability.
In other words, LEAP asks individuals to take the lead in their career development but needs the support of your organisation to successfully complete. In requiring the cooperation of both employer and employee, the principles of LEAP covers the best answer to “who is responsible for career development?” Both employers and employees must work together to development and build capability.
Have a chat with us about how you can improve the performance of your Procurement staff through our training programs or our corporate E-learning.
For chalk and talk, see our open training calendar for a session, date, location and time that suits you.
Email: info@academyofprocurement.com
Phone +61 (03) 8547 3940
