Training yourself works better

TRAINING and development are currently key words in business. While the quality of the trainers may vary, the courses are generally very similar in content. A few organisations however - including the police and the Post Office - are discovering a more focused approach that helps people at work to be increasingly effective, innovative and flexible.

Self-organised learning differs from traditional training in that the employee plays an active part, in contrast to the more passive role in formal training.

Ian Webb is a training consultant at Cameron Webb Management Services in Harrow, Middlesex, and an honorary senior lecturer at Brunel University's division of human learning. He told a recent meeting of trainers and personnel staff that although formal training is becoming more learner- centred, it still has many drawbacks:

It relies throughout on the trainer, first to assess the learner's needs by making assumptions or asking the manager; then to select the programme; finally to evaluate results (managerial briefing and de-briefing are rare). Often, learning is not transferred to the workplace and may soon be forgotten.

'Employees may enjoy the training and find the techniques interesting, yet difficult to implement when they are back at work,' Mr Webb said later. 'But after self-organised learning they are able to implement the knowledge, because they learn more effectively by examining how they learn. They can also identify their training needs.'

He pointed to a senior financial manager whose work was in arrears because he continually postponed meetings with his staff. After two formal time-management courses, he was no better. But the newer approach helped him to realise that what he really needed to learn was how to handle those who reported to him.

From college to retirement, from manual worker to director, practical and personal skills are learned more quickly and systematically through self-organised learning. Mr Webb said: 'A model of how the individual learns best is gradually generated and used as a basis for future learning.

'It evolves constantly and becomes more sophisticated; people then start to transfer this increased ability to other activities in life. Learning is not only a workshop or course activity - it takes place continually.'

Self-organising has been introduced in the Metropolitan Police and the Ministry of Defence (for Royal Naval officers on air intercept control), at Dunlop and in Edinburgh's main post office, where cost-effectiveness, productivity and quality of service increased.

To start, the organisation appoints learning coaches, usually line managers, who attend workshops run by Brunel.

Mr Webb is writing a book commissioned by McGraw Hill for professional trainers. He said they were 'hugely interested' in learner-centred learning. His fellow author, Sheila Harri- Augstein, co-ordinator of Brunel's human learning division, described it as a radical approach, rooted in the psychological aspects of individual learning.

'It is focused on the learner; on where he or she is now and where they want to be. We show employees how to learn on the job, whether for problem- solving, personal skills, product management, accountancy. They don't just absorb facts: they learn to interpret them, and to assess themselves.'