SWTng 11: Change and Learning at Work

     Article number 11, by Hetzner, Gartmeier, Heid, and Gruber, is titled "The Interplay between Change and Learning at the Workplace: A Qualitative Study from Retail Banking." It is published in the Journal of Workplace Learning with 41 references and the author-supplied keywords professional education, performance management, and workplace learning. Here's the abstract (p. 398):

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to analyse employees' perception of a change at their workplaces and requirements for learning and factors supporting or inhibiting learning in the context of this change.
Design/methodology/approach - Data collection included personal face-to-face semi-structured interviews with ten client advisors inthe retail-banking department of a German bank. The interviews took place during a time when the participants' workplaces were affected by a drastic change, namely the implementation of an integrated consulting concept. The data were analysed by a qualitative, content analysis approach, adapting Billett's framework for analysing workplace changes.
Findings -  Challenges and requirements for learning as a consequence of the workplace change were analysed. The results show that the employees realised many affordances of the modification of work routines, especially concerning work performance, professional knowledge, and professional role. Thus, employees recognised the change as an opportunity for the acquisition of knowledge and competence development.
Originality/value - This paper contributes to the understanding of workplace change's effect on employees' knowledge, work routines and professional development.

     The tenuousness of the organizational structure in most workplaces combined with the fluctuation in the very nature of the job or product have created a situation today where workers must constantly adapt their workplace knowledge to new conditions, procedures, and peers. "Learning to cope with new requirements means employees must modify existing work routines or establish new ones (Becker, 2004; Becker et al., 2005; Hoeve and Nieuwenhuis, 2006)" (p. 398). "However, effective learning in change situations does not occur automatically, mainly due to the tension between needing to keep up the pace and ensure job performance efficiency on one hand, and time-consuming learning activities on the other (Eraut, 2004)" (p. 399). This is most commonly seen in supervisors' unwillingness to release employees to training for fear their absence will derail the production schedule. This frequently results in a search for a "quick fix" to most problems that arise, which is often both a symptom and a cause of superficial learning. Trainers are turning to informal learning processes more and more. In order for the workplace to function as the learning environment, the employees' participation must be active. One of the major stumbling blocks to employee acceptance of change is their perception of inability to influence even the change process, let alone the change itself that is impressed upon them from on high. This article looks at two factors: (1) "how employees perceive a change at their workplaces and the requirements for learning"; and (2) "which factors support or inhibit learning in the context of this change" (p. 399).
     First, the authors look at a workplace learning perspective on workplace changes from the individual perspective, the individual from a contextual perspective, and then formulate conclusions for a study on workplace changes and workplace learning. The result is a qualitative study that investigates the interrelation between change in the workplace and workplace learning (p. 401).
The change context of the study  involves a new concept for client advising in the retail-banking department of a German bank. Advisers went from specializing in a small number of products to working with a larger number of products. Also, their interaction with the client was scripted with little room for adjustment or modification.
     The researchers formulated two questions to guide their inquiry: (1) How did the employees perceive the change and what were the resulting requirements for learning? and (2) Which factors were perceived as supportive or inhibitive for learning in the context of the change? They conducted semi-structured interviews with ten client advisers, all of whom had the same exposure to the change, worked on the same functional area, and had at least five years' experience in retail banking.
     Responses to question 1 were categorized according to routineness, intensity, multiplicity, complexity, and artifacts and external tools. Responses to question 2 were categorized under discretion, accessibility, homogeneity, working with others, and status of employment. While the employees found the challenge invigorating, the tangible rewards for their efforts, aside from keeping their jobs, were not forthcoming. However, there was evidence that each employee adapted the learning process to their learning style and the new requirements. However, the most important conclusion was that "As learning at work is basedon negotiations between the individual and the social context (Billett, 2008), a communication strategy is recommended that explains to the employees the learning requirements involved and the resulting individual benefits, such as professional development, rather than just the necessity and reasons for change" (p. 411).

REFERENCES

Billett, S. (2008). Emerging perspectives on workplace learning. In S. Billett, C. Harteis, and

     A. Etelapelto (Eds.), Emerging perspectives on learning through work (pp. 1-15). 

     Rotterdam: Sense.

Hetzner, S., Gartmeier, M., Heid, H., & Gruber, H. (2009). The interplay between change and 

     learning at the workplace; A qualitative study from retail banking. Journal of Workplace 

     Learning, 21(5), pp. 398-415. DOI: 10.1108/13665620910966802