Industry News and Notes

HR and Training Jobs Secure

With many human resource professionals retiring, companies trying to rein in healthcare costs and regulatory agencies instituting new requirements, HR job availability should increase. According to the U.S Bureau of Labor Statistics, job growth in this area will be above-average due to the increased hiring of new employees, benefit specialists and compliance personnel. “Employers are expected to devote greater resources to job-specific training programs over the next decade in response to the increasing complexity of many jobs, the aging of the workforce and technological advances that can leave employees with obsolete skills,” according to Workforce Management magazine. “This should result in strong demand for training and development specialists.” WFM also predicts outsourcing will increase training personnel demand at consulting, staffing and recruiting companies.

According to Culpepper and WFM, internal training and development specialists in their first three years are set to make $61,400 compared to entry level college grads with labor relation degrees who can expect $37,000 annually.

FREE PodCast on PodCast Creation

Do you create PodCasts for your training? Elliott Masie (also featured in this month’s guest column), Russ White from Apple and other learning executives discuss challenges and approaches in creating podcasts and offer a few models for PodCast design in a free PodCast you can find at http://www.masieweb.com/pod4learning.

Management Meets Employee Expectations Half of the Time

 Krauthammer International, Brussels, surveyed people from various industry sectors researching the behavior employees seek from their managers. Managers did not meet expectations about half of the time.

"These potentially alarming results show that in many key tasks, and basic management skills, such as guiding others, listening to ideas, securing delivery and giving feedback, managers simply fail to meet their employees' expectations", commented Ronald Meijers, Krauthammer Executive Board member. "And this lack of performance obviously has a direct impact on companies' success in business itself, so these results present company executives with interesting food for thought, to say the least.”

In the core areas of management behavior that were surveyed, amongst the biggest gaps between the expectations of employees and reality were the following:
• 95% would like their manager to analyze their task problems together with them; 41% experience this.
• 86% would like their manager to create the right context prior to implementing a decision; this is the case 42% of the time.
• 82% would like their manager to listen to their ideas, and encourage them to continue, 56% experience this.

On the other hand, managers seem to be closer in meeting the expectations of their employees in the following areas:
• 94% would expect their manager to spontaneously admit their mistakes, and 69% actually do this.
• 90% would like to be fully involved in the definition of their development goals, and this is the case 68% of the time.

Based on the results, a list of "golden rules" for managers has been identified. Here is a selection:
• In receiving an objection, use questions (rather than defending facts) to formulate your response.
• In handling dilemmas, involve employees more
• Check your own emotions and assumptions first before giving feedback - and then deliver it without a delay (rather than either telling people off or not confronting them at all).
• When communicating change, the rationale behind it is not enough - people expect to hear both what the change means for them and to get regular updates on the progress.