Employee Development Plan

Personal Development Plan

Personal Development Plan

This personal development plan will allow me to:

• Develop a greater awareness of myself and my work environment,
• Gather relevant information through career exploration,
• Set realistic career goals,
• Develop and implement career strategies to achieve my goals, and
• Appraise the effectiveness of my efforts.

I will apply the four approaches as outlined by Noe (2010). These strategies will
include formal education, assessments, job experiences and interpersonal relationships.

Assessments

I look at this approach as a prerequisite to any personal development process. As
the most important step in my personal development process, self-assessment will
assist me to understand my values, preferences and personality traits. This is key
to discovering the kind of work that will bring me personal fulfillment. Assessments
will help me identify and re-affirm what I already know about myself and help me
discover new things.  These assessments will give me an overall framework within
which I will be able to effectively strategize my career.

Formal education

I will be finalizing my MS IDT program in the next two months and will attend social
network marketing program to enhance the marketing skill. I will also ensure I attend
as many in-house training to take advantage of any existing opportunities. This formal
education will position me in line for promotion and expanded job role. In the future,
I plan to enroll in a Ph.D. program on training and performance improvement.

Job experience

Since upward mobility in my current employment is limited, I may have to look and
think outside the box. I will look for the opportunities available to me in my current
jobs.  I will seek alternative ways to help me develop a satisfying career in my
present job.  I may have to think creatively and look at career development from
a non-traditional view.  Among the options available to me is;

a) Job Enrichment: Job enrichment will involve vertically expanding your job with
additional responsibilities that may presently be undertaken by my supervisor.

b) Lateral Movement: Lateral movement may involve changing jobs but not necessarily
changing status, pay or level of responsibility. Such a move can broaden my base
of knowledge and skills and help me develop new competencies.

c) Job Enlargement: Job enlargement will involve expanding my job horizontally by
increasing the number of job tasks I perform.  The idea behind job enlargement will
be to increase job diversity.

d) Job Rotation: Job rotation is the movement between different jobs.  This career
strategy allows me to temporarily move laterally into other positions to broaden
my knowledge of other functions and departments in the organization.  Job rotation
will allows me to learn new skills and enables me to function in many different jobs.

Interpersonal relations;

This is when I will seek to develop my skills and knowledge by interacting with the
experienced members of staff. I will certainly pick a mentor who is successful and
experienced in the organization and in my career projectile. I will seek a formalized
mentoring process where my mentor will be clear on my expectations on him/her and
my aspirations.

References

inner architect . (2008 | , January 22). Employee Development: 5 Reasons “Why” It
Is Vital To Company Health and Longevity. Retrieved June 16, 2012, from inner architect
: http://innerarchitect.wordpress.com/2008/01/22/employee-development-5-reasons-why-it-is-vital-to-company-health-and-longevity/

Noe, R. A. (2010). Employee Training and Development (5th ed.). New York: McGraw
Hill/Irwin.

Pace, A. (2010). Unleashing positivity in the workplace. Training and Development,
64(1), 40-44.

High-Tech Training: The impact technologies have and will continue to have on how people learn and interact, and their implications for training

Web 2.0

Platt (2007) describe Web 2.0 as the collective ability to use the Web to write as well as read rich content which allows people to interact with the Web, with online content, and with one another. Web 2.0 represents a fundamental change in the way people interact with content, applications, and other users; the new Web is a platform for harnessing and promoting collective intelligence. In the future, learners and learning will no longer be merely consuming content and applications: They will be participants, creating content and interacting with different services and people. The availability of high quality image and video continues to provide a very low cost and simple way of providing training and demonstration materials. This rich content, when integrated with subject matter experts in the community and active discussion groups will provide a powerful and simple training and education environment.

E-Learning

This refers to instructions and delivery of training by computer online through the internet or web (Noe, 2010). This includes web based training, distance learning, virtual classroom and distance learning.

Online learning has several advantages. These include;

· Several features can be built into online learning

· It is accessible any place and any time

· Can be provided through dispersed geographical areas

· Can be provided faster and easier

· Eliminates paperwork

· Link learners to other content, experts and peers.

Online learning will blur the distinction between training and work (Noe, 2010).

Blended learning

This is coming in to fill some of the limitations of online learning. Blended learning combines E-learning, face to face learning and other methods of learning and instruction. It provides increase learner control over the program, allow self-directedness and requires learners to take more control over own learning. It has been found to be more effective than face to face learning in enhancing learner motivation. There is the thinking that blended learning has an advantage as it capitalizes the best aspects of face to face and online learning. Today blended learning primarily functions as a replacement for or extension of face to face environments. In future, blended learning will provide the needed face to face social interaction while still enhancing the capabilities of the other learning methodologies.

Bonk and Kim (2004) have identified 10 future trends in blended learning that will be linked to expansion in blended learning.

This will include;

· Mobile Blended

· Greater Visualization, Individualization, and Hands-on Learning

· Self-Determined Blended Learning

· Increased Connectedness, Community, and Collaboration

· Increased Authenticity and On-Demand Learning

· Linking Work and Learning

· Changed Calendaring

· Blended Learning Course Designations

· Changed Instructor Roles

· The Emergence of Blended Learning Specialists

Simulations

Noe (2010) demonstrates how the improvement in software development and computer technology has transformed simulation and how it is affecting learning. Online simulations and role play of different animated business customers offer training on various customer service challenges. In certain colleges, Clinical rotations have tremendously been reduced due to availability of simulated clinical experiences that are better than the real thing.

Full-Body Pregnancy Simulator allows training in a variety of obstetric procedures with interchangeable models for extra scenarios. The Manikin includes realistic anatomy and Scenario easily adjusted with additional models. The prohibitive costs associated with simulation development costs will be continue to decrease making them a popular training method.

Wikis

A wiki is a type of website that permits users to edit available content. Wikis are designed with the philosophy of making it easy to correct mistakes through collaboration. The theory is that a large audience will overall provide more accurate information than a single expert or source.

Some of the benefits of wikis include:

• Allows for access to posted information at any time from any location.
• Allows for the posting of multimedia including links, images, music, and videos.
• Allows the instructor to track submissions and changes to group projects.
• Useful in collecting data from groups of students.
• Allows students to collaboratively write reviews of courses or assignments.
• Provides a low-cost but effective communication and collaboration tool.
• Promotes the close reading, revision, and tracking of drafts.
• Allows students and instructors to collaborate to create simple websites.
• Allows groups of students to peer-edit and evaluate documents for group projects.
• Allows groups of students to group author papers and projects.
• Can be used in place of presentation software such as PowerPoint.
• Reduces the amount of paper-based assignment submissions. Additionally, wiki posts are time and date stamped allowing for instructors to enforce submission due dates.
• Tracks revision history allowing for users to go back to former iterations or undo changes.

In the future, wikis may be used to;

• Create a repository of information such as definitions, descriptions of theories, encyclopedia entries, research data and more.
• Use as a platform for group projects.
• Utilize as a repository of information across courses or semesters.
• Utilize as a training manual such as how to perform tasks.
• Allow student to edit the manual to improve it for future students.

References

Bonk, C., & Kim, K.-J. (2004). FUTURE DIRECTIONS OF BLENDED LEARNING IN HIGHER EDUCATION AND WORKPLACE LEARNING SETTINGS. In C. J. Bonk, Handbook of blended learning: Global Perspectives, local designs. San Francisco, CA: Pfeiffer Publishing.

Noe, R. A. (2010). Employee Training and Development (5th ed.). New York: McGraw Hill/Irwin.

Platt, M. (2007, july). Web 2.0 in the Enterprise. Architecture Journal,(12 ).