Learning Theory Often, Learning Theories

Learning Theory

Often, learning theories is mixed up with other educational theories or concepts. Learning theory is concerned with the manner in which learning occurs, while instructional design deals with how to teach, and curriculum design summarizes what is to be imparted for teaching. Moreover, learning theory is valuable for comprehending as to why a particular instructional technique functions or might function and helps in the growth of individual philosophy towards instruction. A lot of ideas of learning theories instantly hold good in case of training, the instructional environment, cognitive-processing variations among an expert and a greenhorn, and transfer of learning. It is crucial to familiarize learning theories to that of the business conditions and apply reason and discrimination to choose and employ the most excellent learning remedies to attain learning as well as business results. (Harrelson, 2002)

The risks of reacting to insistent pressures for growing productive enhancements, an extremely competitive job market, and fresh laws and corporate governance rules have accorded manpower concerns the top priority. Regardless of their business, every organization, either public or private, newly started or hived from an existing one, taken over or de-merged are required to place themselves as employers of preference. However, attaining this is not a simple task: an organization's potential to draw, motivate and prevent attrition will be inimitable, but might importantly depend on disciplines as vast as, for instance, reward, learning and development, organizational culture, performance enhancement, leadership style, and efficiency of human resources functions. During periods when the movement in the direction of globalization and rising competition is persisting, organizations that are unsuccessful in deriving the maximum mileage from their most important asset which is their workforce will stand to be weaker. Hiring, preventing attrition and profiting from the dedication of the most excellent employees is no more an added alternative, since, it is going to be these people who will be making the all important difference between staying in the business for the long-term and short-term failure. (Price Water Coopers, 2007)

Increased globalization coupled with jittery economic conditions has sharply fueled employee attrition and consequently majority of the employers are faced with challenges to retain valuable employees. The fact of the matter of the present day job market is the rising expectations of the employees from their employers and they don't think twice to switch to greener pastures in case their needs remain unfulfilled. Hence leading organizations like Paypal must devote time to analyze their retention dynamics and assure that their valuable employees in their payrolls don't leave the organization. World-class organizations maintain low levels of turnover and high levels of employee satisfaction through organizational culture and learning. Paypal must perceive that what best converts into the hiring and retention of an excellent employee is shaping an environment of organizational culture and learning. Hence focusing on four distinctive cultures will augur well for keeping employees focused on organization and its long-term goals. ("The Four Cultures of Employee Retention," 2007)

These four effective strategies for developing these cultures comprise a deep focus on choice, balance, development and care. (i) the Culture of choice: Presently employees are seeking choices in the methods they employ for accomplishing an assignment, in the benefits they get from working and in the time and manner in which they report to work. For instance the last two decades have witnessed employee benefits rise to phenomenal levels through ESOPs, partnering etc. Preferences in the tools that they employ, the procedures employed, and the acknowledgments they get are all typified as modernization in human resource management. Precisely, we go on learning increasingly regarding employee hiring and the association between empowerment and retention.

A ii) the Culture of Balance: Despite rising acceptance of flexi-time and work/life balance attempts, employers point out that work pressures continue to remain high in their workplaces. Employers who have lower levels of turnover perceive the growing concern of balance and are dealing this requirement with hands-on programs to assist workers in finding contentment at home as well as in workplace. Companies like Paypal must recognize the importance of creating a culture of balance through offering more levels of compulsory annual vacation. Along with flexible working hours and family-friend benefits, Paypal must perceive what the outcome of a balance-focused work can put on the retention of top achievers of the organization. ("The Four Cultures of Employee Retention.," 2007) iii) the Culture of Development: Increased incidence of retention are distinctly associated with the degree of attention the employee receives as regards their professional development and growth. At the time when employee sense that their career target are been recognized, it will prevent attrition. Hence it is important to understand how leading organizations like Paypal can build cultures of development. A culture of development can be nurtured by several apparatus. These are training, mentoring, and distinct career directions and everything play a role in this culture dynamics. It is going to be the managers and supervisors who need to have routine 'stay' talks with every employee and ask him about new teaching opportunities that can be supported, work challenges that interest the employee. Asking these core questions will help in creating a culture of development, and prevent attrition. (iv) a Culture of care: The kind of motivation in the present environment is inspired instead of induced. Employees will be motivated to remain in the organization and raise their work standard at higher levels in case they perceive that they are cared for and in case they care regarding the work they are performing. ("The Four Cultures of Employee Retention.," 2007)

Evaluating the manner in which corporate brand identity impacts the action of the employees following recruitment, for instance employee decisions to stay with the company, must provide marketing and supply chain managers with scope to prevent employee attrition that renders the company a scope to serve their customers in a better manner. While making use of corporate brand identity to augment employee retention and lower turnover, companies like Paypal are required to take into account, company as well as factors that are employee-centric. For instance, while hiring exercises of the company are underway, Paypal is required to convey information to the likely candidates regarding the cultural for instance values, objectives and customs of the organization. Consequently, applicants correspond their values and objectives to those adopted by Paypal, which is implied as a value-goal equivalence, that results in some candidates to self-selecting out of the hiring and selection procedures. Increasing this value goal or culture equivalence by Paypal at the time of hiring and selection by the organization will result in employees attributing Paypal's adopted culture after the recruitment is over. Besides, in case Paypal maximizes value-goal equivalence during the occasion of organizational hiring and selection exercises, it could discover that staff are more content with the job, dedicated to the organization, showing good results and have increased chances to stay with Paypal. (Wheeler; Richey; Tokkman; Sablynski, 2006)

In order to ensure that this culture-based value goal equivalence is the maximum, Paypal must formulate hiring strategies which communicates this information in the most effective manner. A particular hiring methodology of communicating culture-rich information is by means of realistic job previews -- RJP. RJPs give likely job applicants with positive as well as negative job and organization information and the application of pre-hire RJPs has been seen to raise job contentment, organizational dedication and organizational culture strength and higher propensity to stay. Moreover at the time of selection interview, Paypal must strive to adopt the present culture of the organization. The company should also include behavioral context-centric interview questions devised to evaluate applicant work values. Besides, at the time of interview session, Paypal may ready other marketing staff who should talk regarding the value and culture of the organization. Following recruitment, Paypal have a 12-18-month interactive session to mingle and socialize into the present organizational culture of Paypal. (Wheeler; Richey; Tokkman; Sablynski, 2006)

The finding of Cable and Parsons was that prescribed socialization programs promote close insider feelings within the employees that would create a feeling of being a part of an appealing, strong brand identity organization. Besides, Autry and Wheeler discovered encouraging longitudinal association between prescribed organizational socialization programs, prescribed marketing staff training programs and value goal equivalence. Therefore, in case Paypal makes investment in prescribed employee selection functions, feelings of value-goal equivalence, it could result in long-term gradual loss in marketing employee turnover and long-term progresses in marketing employee contentment. Groups might also stand for another constituent of Paypal for building a powerful organizational culture and brand identity. Individual-team goal equivalence can result in encouraging results for the team as also for Paypal. Besides, in case Paypal promote team development, it raises value-goal equivalence. Moreover a properly structured mentoring program can be put in place to set up consistent and unequivocal communicated work values and standards. This type of close social strengthening must raise the organizational culture of Paypal till the mentors do not make application of responsibility as a political armory or convey inconsistent culture information. (Wheeler; Richey; Tokkman; Sablynski, 2006)

In order to accomplish an outstanding job of supervising external relationship, companies must be ready for undertaking an outstanding job of carrying out internal relationships. This endeavor initiates with the recruitment, selection and retaining the appropriate staff. Whereas companies try hard to stand up to the knowledge, skills and aptitude -- KSAs of the prospective workforce to the urgencies of the job, majority of them does not have the time or the wherewithal to execute detailed recruitment and selection systems. This is particularly the case in which comparatively increased turnover levels authorize that hiring and selection processes be speedy and feasible. In order to live up to this challenge, managers sometimes concentrate on a collection of simply expressive personal attributes such as experience, length of service, age or education that can be evaluated during interview or going through the details of a job application. (Hartline; Witt, 2003)

The importance of employee retention cannot be understood better by any company than Paypal as its business consists of real time on-demand business. Hence employee retention contributes a great deal in the development and performance of an employee. Therefore companies like Paypal must address in carefully planning the orientation process and execute the same to make sure that employee is aware about the company and its profile, policies, the business objectives and the contribution which the employee makes in assisting the company to achieve its goals. It is important for Paypal that its human resource manager, in charge of employees is required to follow-up the orientation program for some time till employees are fully aware of their responsibilities and every appropriate aspects of the business. This process renders the new hires a sense of welcoming and assists them in understanding the things that are expected of them and the manner in which to help the company in the optimum manner. (Gass, 2007)

Various tips for good employee orientation which can be useful for a company like Paypal are (i) ensuring that the employees feel welcomed and are accustomed with their responsibilities. (ii) Assigning a mentor to guide them in case of doubts and ensuring that the mentor allocated has the time to guide them. (iii) Making the employees has a feeling of inclusiveness and they are introduced to their team members and colleagues. (iv) Ensuring that the mentor is completely ready to train and guide them, making certain that they are given everything that is needed for them to carry out their duties well, like computers, email ids and passwords for access. (v) it has to be made sure that the orientation goes on for the first months while joining at the minimum (vi) the atmosphere at the orientation has to be enjoyable, interesting and must have some achievement. They must be filled up completely with redundant information and it should not miss out on important information. (vii) the performance of the new recruits has to be monitored on a regular basis ensuring that they are performing the duties that has been assigned to them in the proper manner. (viii) Sound employee orientation will guarantee that the employee feel motivated and have a feeling that they belong to a part of the team and hence will make an endeavor to perform their best to help business attain its goals. Employee development is important for satisfaction of customer, retention, and the further development of the company. (Gass, 2007)

However sometimes, it is felt that the size of company does not matter and anybody managing people or involved in the job description process is able to build a job description that has a life transcending merely filling the position. Paypal can make understand that a good job description can be utilized across the total life of the job, not merely describing the same, but also demonstrating how to be successful in the same. Over the years it has been witnessed that HR functions is greatly de-linked from the main business to be thought of as having a great value. In organization of the likes of Paypal, the HR staff can sometimes get as preoccupied in the function as the police or in tactical operations, that they are diverted from their most important responsibility which is propelling the business ahead. Therefore Paypal has to bear in mind that the HR is a very important function and the challenge lies in choosing the appropriate people for the jobs and giving employees guidance for success. (Murphy; Burgio-Murphy, 2006)