4.1 Best Practices -- Large Production Companies

Similarly, whereas it had been the practice to have a central body charged with responsibility for organizing a continuing series of in-house and outside training courses, these groups have been disbanded and a much greater onus has been placed on individual employees for their own continuing education.

Leading companies, for their part, know that they are dependent on a highly skilled workforce if they are to grow and prosper. Accordingly, they continue to provide approximately two percent of their human resources budget for employee training and education. New learning is fostered in a variety of ways: through courses provided by the companies' technical specialists or by bringing in vendors of new technology; by encouraging employees to attend technical conferences (after which they are expected to summarize the salient points on local area networks (LAN)); by arrangements with universities to permit engineers to gain Master's degrees by attending evening sessions; by moving selected (and interested) employees around the organization at a rapid pace to broaden their skills and to help them gain exposure to a wide range of technical challenges. Companies measure lifelong learning by the increased capability and contribution of employees, not just by achieving additional formal education.

However, providing an appropriate budget and identifying routes for continuing education need to be supplemented with specific "best practices" to ensure that employees and the corporation achieve their mutual objectives. The practices used by one large corporation to support the continuous development of employees' capability are summarized below.

Best Practices in Large Production Companies Develop a policy statement that affirms the belief that lifelong learning is a key to continued business success and to the personal success of each employee. Establish the primary responsibility for lifelong learning with the employee, with active support and involvement of management. Define elements of life long learning as a combination of timely education and training, challenging work experiences, coaching and counseling, and self- study. Define and measure the competency level required to perform specific work and the actual proficiency that an individual demonstrates through the equation: Competency Level - Proficiency Level = Competency Gap Define three principal areas of competency -- core competencies (applicable to all employees), job-family competencies (unique to each job family/discipline) and managerial competencies (specific to those with accountability for work of others). Establish corporate wide programs and tools to support core and managerial competencies, and decentralized programs and tools to support job-family competencies. Establish a supporting formal methodology within the corporation, involving the preparation of individual lifelong learning development plans consistent with an employee's proficiency gaps and career expectations, providing a `reality check' on the development plan and career aspirations to ensure that the plan is mutually acceptable to the employee and the corporation, and undertaking and monitoring the plan. Evaluate the effectiveness of the learning experience, centred on employee evaluation.