Hello Everyone,
I am in a very peculiar condition here. I have recently joined a new organization which has multiples branches and stores. My position is of a mid level employee in L&D and i am responsible for country wide L&D intervention. My reporting is to someone who does not understand my function & i have spent 4 month is the organization, meaning i am still not a confirmed employee yet.
Now the problem is that I do not have work. My KPI's were handed over to me on the very first day & have nothing to do with my L&D profile & are mostly based on operations performance. I have tried to speak with various people in the organization (including my boss) regarding lack of work/opportunities to work. The list also includes people who are above me in my function but operate through a different region.
I have 8 years of L&D experience which is totally going waste & the reason i left my previous organization (1.2 yrs) was due to the same reason.
I am now in a situation where i am not able to decide , if i should stick here (spoil all i have learnt) or move on (spoil my resume)
Also i want to ask all the seniors (who would agree with me that L&D is an important and integral function) something :
1. Is hiring a L&D person a trend/ fashion that most organizations follow ?
2. What should a L&D person while appearing for an interview focus at so that he does not end up in a situation like mine.
3. For L&D function to give something back to the business, is it required that somebody in the management understands the function.
I am a passionate L&D professional & now i am always wondering if i made the right move by switching into L&D .
Cheers & Thank you for reading it all.
Regards
From Qatar, Doha
1I am in a very peculiar condition here. I have recently joined a new organization which has multiples branches and stores. My position is of a mid level employee in L&D and i am responsible for country wide L&D intervention. My reporting is to someone who does not understand my function & i have spent 4 month is the organization, meaning i am still not a confirmed employee yet.
Now the problem is that I do not have work. My KPI's were handed over to me on the very first day & have nothing to do with my L&D profile & are mostly based on operations performance. I have tried to speak with various people in the organization (including my boss) regarding lack of work/opportunities to work. The list also includes people who are above me in my function but operate through a different region.
I have 8 years of L&D experience which is totally going waste & the reason i left my previous organization (1.2 yrs) was due to the same reason.
I am now in a situation where i am not able to decide , if i should stick here (spoil all i have learnt) or move on (spoil my resume)
Also i want to ask all the seniors (who would agree with me that L&D is an important and integral function) something :
1. Is hiring a L&D person a trend/ fashion that most organizations follow ?
2. What should a L&D person while appearing for an interview focus at so that he does not end up in a situation like mine.
3. For L&D function to give something back to the business, is it required that somebody in the management understands the function.
I am a passionate L&D professional & now i am always wondering if i made the right move by switching into L&D .
Cheers & Thank you for reading it all.
Regards
From Qatar, Doha
Dear friend,
You have written a long post but in your long post what is missing is the nature of your industry. What product or service do you provide? What type of customers do you have? Are you from Retail industry? What kind of training programmes did you handle? Did you personally handle the delivery or forever you had depended on the external trainers?
If you are given placement in the operations then I would say that you should take advantage of it. Let us not take narrow view of the L & D profession. L & D profession does not mean the classroom training, L & D does not mean engage the participants in some games and simulations, L & D profession does not mean take a pat on back after feedback, L & D profession does not mean outsource some training to the training agency that further outsources to some freelance trainer, L & D profession does not mean get elated by the (false) praise of the external trainers.
If you are told to work in operations then you can understand the various costs involved in the operations. When you understand those costs, you can do Cost Benefit Analysis for the training and put up business case to the management on how to curtail those costs.
Working in operations may also mean coming across with quality issues. What is the cost of poor quality you can measure and design training to plug these costs.
Working in operations may also mean coming across with customers or their satisfaction or their dissatisfaction. This gives room to measure the cost of customer dissatisfaction. Secondly, you can incorporate your experiences into the hardcore case studies and enrich the trainings.
Hardly any training professional in India ventures to measure the training effectiveness on Kirk Patrick Model. If you get chance to work in operations then you may design the trainings so as to measure its effectiveness on this model. If you do this, will you not be able to stand out from the crowd?
Training profession is very dynamic. Training profession demands doing research of how the operations are conducted. Training professionals are expected to provide this hardcore research data to those who actually deliver the training.
You have written that "I am now in a situation where i am not able to decide , if i should stick here (spoil all i have learnt) or move on (spoil my resume)"
Why you feel that there is no scope of implementation of your learning of 8 years or implementation of whatever you taught in the last 8 years? Try your hand and find out challenges of the implementation of the knowledge.
If you are from retail industry, then you may refer my replies of the past posts. The links are as below:
https://www.citehr.com/484179-retail-industry.html
https://www.citehr.com/483491-traini...employees.html
Training is the most misunderstood concept in India. Partially this is because training companies that conduct TTT misguide the participants. Above all there is no pressure from the bosses on showing ROI on the training.
My down to earth reply possibly you may not like. However, being from training fraternity I could not stop from pulling punches. Sometimes one needs to remove the kids gloves.
Thanks,
Dinesh V Divekar
dineshdivekar(at)yahoo.com
who always strived to measure to effectiveness of the training
From India, Bangalore
You have written a long post but in your long post what is missing is the nature of your industry. What product or service do you provide? What type of customers do you have? Are you from Retail industry? What kind of training programmes did you handle? Did you personally handle the delivery or forever you had depended on the external trainers?
If you are given placement in the operations then I would say that you should take advantage of it. Let us not take narrow view of the L & D profession. L & D profession does not mean the classroom training, L & D does not mean engage the participants in some games and simulations, L & D profession does not mean take a pat on back after feedback, L & D profession does not mean outsource some training to the training agency that further outsources to some freelance trainer, L & D profession does not mean get elated by the (false) praise of the external trainers.
If you are told to work in operations then you can understand the various costs involved in the operations. When you understand those costs, you can do Cost Benefit Analysis for the training and put up business case to the management on how to curtail those costs.
Working in operations may also mean coming across with quality issues. What is the cost of poor quality you can measure and design training to plug these costs.
Working in operations may also mean coming across with customers or their satisfaction or their dissatisfaction. This gives room to measure the cost of customer dissatisfaction. Secondly, you can incorporate your experiences into the hardcore case studies and enrich the trainings.
Hardly any training professional in India ventures to measure the training effectiveness on Kirk Patrick Model. If you get chance to work in operations then you may design the trainings so as to measure its effectiveness on this model. If you do this, will you not be able to stand out from the crowd?
Training profession is very dynamic. Training profession demands doing research of how the operations are conducted. Training professionals are expected to provide this hardcore research data to those who actually deliver the training.
You have written that "I am now in a situation where i am not able to decide , if i should stick here (spoil all i have learnt) or move on (spoil my resume)"
Why you feel that there is no scope of implementation of your learning of 8 years or implementation of whatever you taught in the last 8 years? Try your hand and find out challenges of the implementation of the knowledge.
If you are from retail industry, then you may refer my replies of the past posts. The links are as below:
https://www.citehr.com/484179-retail-industry.html
https://www.citehr.com/483491-traini...employees.html
Training is the most misunderstood concept in India. Partially this is because training companies that conduct TTT misguide the participants. Above all there is no pressure from the bosses on showing ROI on the training.
My down to earth reply possibly you may not like. However, being from training fraternity I could not stop from pulling punches. Sometimes one needs to remove the kids gloves.
Thanks,
Dinesh V Divekar
dineshdivekar(at)yahoo.com
who always strived to measure to effectiveness of the training
From India, Bangalore
Dear Mr. Dinesh,
Thank you for the reply !
Well to begin with i am from retail segment and there seems to be a little misunderstanding. When i wrote about my KPI's which are related to operations excellence, i meant is that whatever KPI's an ops manager should have , i have the same.
Now i understand that training is not about collecting accolades or feedback forms , but i do believe that by imparting the right training, skill sets of the employees can be enhanced. Isn't it the reason why kirkipatrick model is so highly regarded, as it enables you to understand the effectiveness of any program.
Now the point that i want to make is that, a L&D professionals core strength is understanding people, their learning abilities & providing them with guidance or right skill sets, but you cannot do that until you have people, weather they are in classroom or On the job.
I can do a lot of research, probably give advice only of i am given that opportunity. I can not force myself in day to day tasks, until operarions really wants.
So my point still stands where it started. Defining a role for a trainer is very important. A role that has to be analyzed carefully before hiring one. Else, the person would only lay eggs(like i am) because operations feels you are interfering and you are only left to observe and give feedback to the people working on the floor which operations anyways feels is useless & lets be honest no matter whatever you try to train , till the time there is no operational support you cant achieve the desired results.
Thanks again for showing interest!
Regards
J.CT
From Qatar, Doha
Thank you for the reply !
Well to begin with i am from retail segment and there seems to be a little misunderstanding. When i wrote about my KPI's which are related to operations excellence, i meant is that whatever KPI's an ops manager should have , i have the same.
Now i understand that training is not about collecting accolades or feedback forms , but i do believe that by imparting the right training, skill sets of the employees can be enhanced. Isn't it the reason why kirkipatrick model is so highly regarded, as it enables you to understand the effectiveness of any program.
Now the point that i want to make is that, a L&D professionals core strength is understanding people, their learning abilities & providing them with guidance or right skill sets, but you cannot do that until you have people, weather they are in classroom or On the job.
I can do a lot of research, probably give advice only of i am given that opportunity. I can not force myself in day to day tasks, until operarions really wants.
So my point still stands where it started. Defining a role for a trainer is very important. A role that has to be analyzed carefully before hiring one. Else, the person would only lay eggs(like i am) because operations feels you are interfering and you are only left to observe and give feedback to the people working on the floor which operations anyways feels is useless & lets be honest no matter whatever you try to train , till the time there is no operational support you cant achieve the desired results.
Thanks again for showing interest!
Regards
J.CT
From Qatar, Doha
Dear J.CT,
If your KRAs are same as that of Ops Manager, then have you spoken with HR for revision of KRAs? (Please note it is not KPIs but KRAs).
Secondly, how much amount of time you spend in operational activities and how much time in training? What is the ratio?
Thirdly, you have written that "Now the point that i want to make is that, a L&D professionals core strength is understanding people, their learning abilities & providing them with guidance or right skill sets,". This is the fundamental notion that has made you to write this post. Training is not about understanding people. Each business incurs various costs. Training is for sensitizing your people on these costs and further guiding them how to optimise these costs. Training professionals build these skills to minimise these costs. However, if only skills are built without raising awareness of the costs will make the training vacuous. We should optimise costs because while minimising one cost we should not increase some cost elsewhere.
You have not written anything about your retail business, what type of business it is, what kind of back-end operations or supply chain operations are handled etc. Approach your seniors for conducting study of cost of back-end operations, inventory carrying cost, how to utilise the space, how to manage inventory under space constraints, cost of lost sales, cost of obsolete inventory, capacity costs etc.
After conducting this study, do not give any feedback directly to the staffs or managers. You give feedback on this study to the Head Operations. If the Head Operations does not regard your study then only you can say that you are in wrong organisation.
Once you standardise these costs, you can start measuring these costs for every retail store or branch. Effectiveness of retail manager depends on management these costs. Volume of sale cannot be the only measure of effectiveness. Unfortunately, there are very few in India who take this holistic view of the operations.
I have given you two links in my previous post. Could you go through those links? If you wish, you may call me on my mobile.
Thanks,
Dinesh Divekar
From India, Bangalore
If your KRAs are same as that of Ops Manager, then have you spoken with HR for revision of KRAs? (Please note it is not KPIs but KRAs).
Secondly, how much amount of time you spend in operational activities and how much time in training? What is the ratio?
Thirdly, you have written that "Now the point that i want to make is that, a L&D professionals core strength is understanding people, their learning abilities & providing them with guidance or right skill sets,". This is the fundamental notion that has made you to write this post. Training is not about understanding people. Each business incurs various costs. Training is for sensitizing your people on these costs and further guiding them how to optimise these costs. Training professionals build these skills to minimise these costs. However, if only skills are built without raising awareness of the costs will make the training vacuous. We should optimise costs because while minimising one cost we should not increase some cost elsewhere.
You have not written anything about your retail business, what type of business it is, what kind of back-end operations or supply chain operations are handled etc. Approach your seniors for conducting study of cost of back-end operations, inventory carrying cost, how to utilise the space, how to manage inventory under space constraints, cost of lost sales, cost of obsolete inventory, capacity costs etc.
After conducting this study, do not give any feedback directly to the staffs or managers. You give feedback on this study to the Head Operations. If the Head Operations does not regard your study then only you can say that you are in wrong organisation.
Once you standardise these costs, you can start measuring these costs for every retail store or branch. Effectiveness of retail manager depends on management these costs. Volume of sale cannot be the only measure of effectiveness. Unfortunately, there are very few in India who take this holistic view of the operations.
I have given you two links in my previous post. Could you go through those links? If you wish, you may call me on my mobile.
Thanks,
Dinesh Divekar
From India, Bangalore
When you applied for this job, there must have been a job description.
You were hired to do a particular job, and surely the questions you were asked in the interview were designed to establish if you had the skills and experience to do this particular job.
However, as I noted before on CiteHR, the ways of recruitment in India are strange, and often at odds with established, and well tested methodology.
Go back to your job description, establish what it is you should be doing, use some initiative, and just start doing it. Management will soon pull you up if it doesn't suit, then you can establish with them exactly what it is they want you to do.
If that doesn't work, well then I would suggest you start doing a TNA on the staff, and then work out what training is needed, and put together the training and development plan for management to sign off on.
From Australia, Melbourne
You were hired to do a particular job, and surely the questions you were asked in the interview were designed to establish if you had the skills and experience to do this particular job.
However, as I noted before on CiteHR, the ways of recruitment in India are strange, and often at odds with established, and well tested methodology.
Go back to your job description, establish what it is you should be doing, use some initiative, and just start doing it. Management will soon pull you up if it doesn't suit, then you can establish with them exactly what it is they want you to do.
If that doesn't work, well then I would suggest you start doing a TNA on the staff, and then work out what training is needed, and put together the training and development plan for management to sign off on.
From Australia, Melbourne
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