Chief Learning Officer - October 2007 - (Page 37)

environment There is an alternative to purchasing human capital assets (recruiting) that does not exist with fixed tangible assets. Companies have the potential to develop their own stock of human capital through learning. One additional refinement is valuable before exploring how learning can be used to expand the stock of human capital assets in the organization. With current usage, the word “talent” is being used as though it were synonymous with human capital. It is not — human capital encompasses four dimensions: talent, skills, knowledge and experience. The value of each dimension differs, as do the processes required to create the greatest value for the organization. To The Gallup Organization and the positive psychologists, talent represents the strengths of a human that result from connections in the brain formed early in life, well before the teen years, let alone those of a professional career. According to Gallup, those connections and the strengths (talents) they create cannot be learned later in life. Under this definition, the process to manage talent is to identify and then align it with job roles to maximize the engagement of the person in the role that matches his or her inherent strengths. Under this definition, learning does not affect talent. Learning affects skills, knowledge and experience, and the cumulative effect of all four constitutes a firm’s human capital assets. (Independent of this discussion, the general usage will no doubt continue to be talent as the icon for human capital.) Another perspective on learning involves experience. The Labor Department estimates as much as 70 percent of what a worker knows about successfully performing a job comes from direct experience gained from doing the job itself. Another way to look at this is to conclude that 70 percent of the knowledge an employee has about doing a job is learned through on-the-job experience. This makes the process of onthe-job experience a “freebie.” It is a process that creates human capital asset value without forcing the company to actually spend any additional funds. It comes as a result of doing the job. This means 30 percent of the knowledge required to learn activities is outside on-the-job experience. Thus, organizations need to develop a plan and commit resources to implement a learning strategy to develop that 30 percent. The remaining two dimensions of human capital (skills and knowledge) are developed differently. For the most part, skills are taught. The know-how exists external to the learner, and the development of the skill can be taught by an expert in the skills — an expert develops the skills, and a trainer teaches the skill to learners. The process is largely one of transfer of information from the expert or trainer to the learner. For example, the skills required to program a Web site are defined by the structured rules of Internet programming languages and the structure of the Web itself. Likewise, the skills required to sell a complex product or service are dictated by the characteristics of the product or service, not the characteristics of the person receiving training. This makes training a process of know-how development by the expert (product or compliance expert, for example), combined 37 October 2007 I www.clomedia.com I Chief Learning Officer http://www.clomedia.com

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Editor's Letter Table of Contents Letters to the Editor Taking the Lead Trends Best Practices Effectiveness Guest Editorial Elements of Social Media Arrive on the Learning Scene Trend Micro: Making Learning More Modular CLO Profile Learning’s Role in Talent Management INTTRA: Using Global Learning to Better Enable Talent Management Operationalizing Communities of Practice U.S. Army: Sharing Lessons from the Field Looking Back, Moving Forward Leveraging Business Data to Develop Strategic Learning Solutions Chrysler LLC: Metrics, Score Cards and Automobiles Advertisers' Index Editorial Resources Connecting the Dots: Recognizing Talent Development Differences at Nonprofits Nonprofits in Health Care: Learning at ENH Case Study Business Intelligence Case Study In Conclusion

Chief Learning Officer - October 2007

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