To Professor Alan Felstead, anecdotes are amusing at best, or worse, misleading and even dangerous. The academic ‘big science’ approach is more forensic, sober and considered, and hence more reliable. This doesn’t mean it’s boring. Quite the contrary, the findings which emerge are based on large samples of data which when pieced together, like a jigsaw, reveal the big picture. This takes time, but the results are more robust.
Alan will be talking about some of these results at the ALS 2012 conference:
1. Policy in any organisation must be based on good, scientific evidence and not hunches based, at best, on anecdotes.
Organisations should use tried and test survey questions in their own staff surveys rather than reinvent the wheel. After all, academics have often spent many years pouring over the nuances in questions, constructing sets ofquestions which tap different aspects of the same phenomenon, crunching the resulting data, and making links between this and that phenomenon. Why not engage with them?
2. The most effective learning is closer than you think.
While governments across the world are fixated by qualifications and courses, the most effective workplace learning happens on-the-job. Watching others at work, being showed what to do or simply doing the job are the best ways of increasing worker performance. These activities are rated more helpful than attending training courses or acquiring qualifications.
3. But not all jobs require much learning at all.
When surveys ask those who say they learn next to nothing at work how this affects their work performance, the resounding answer is that it makes little difference. This is not because their employers refuse to provide learning opportunities, but because their jobs do not require them. This applies particularly to jobs lower down the pecking order. The policy implication of this finding is that the delivery of formal training and the provision of learning opportunities has to be understood in the wider context of production.
4. While it is true that work is increasingly organised in teams, not all teams are the same.
For some, the word team is little more than a label which refers to a group of workers. However, in other cases, it means much more. In these cases teams self-direct themselves. They decide what effort to put in, what tasks to do, the methods of carrying them out and the quality standards expected. However, despite much talk about the importance of teamworking for business performance, the British data suggests that while the prevalence of teams in general has risen, the proportion of self-directed teams has actually fallen. Is the same true in Singapore and in other parts of Asia – what types of teams do these economies now have?
5. Knowing who’s committed to the cause.
Singapore, like Britain, has an ageing population. One policy solutionis to keep older workers in work for longer. This makes business sense when older workers often have tacit skills which are difficult to replace and are reckoned to be the most committed members of the workforce. However,survey evidence in Britain suggests that this is no longer true. Organisational commitment among older workershas decided sharply over the last ten years and is now little different fromother age groups. Businesses need to know more about why older workers have become so disillusioned and what can be done to recapture their commitment.
The best answers to questions facing organisations in the changing world of work and learning come from solid evidence.The systematic collection of such data is best placed to provide these big picture insights. So, don’t tell anecdotes, show the data – that’s Alan’s big takeaway message to delegates of the ALS Conference.
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