Interview with Kamal Birdi, University of Sheffield

Citation

(2008), "Interview with Kamal Birdi, University of Sheffield", Development and Learning in Organizations, Vol. 22 No. 6. https://doi.org/10.1108/dlo.2008.08122faf.001

Interview with Kamal Birdi, University of Sheffield

Article Type: Leading edge From: Development and Learning in Organizations, Volume 22, Issue 6

Kamal Birdi has been engaging in research and practice in the areas of organizational innovation, learning and performance for over 18 years at the world-renowned Institute of Work Psychology at the University of Sheffield. He gained his PhD on researching training effectiveness with BMW/Rover Group and has since collaborated with a wide range of public sector and private sector organizations. He has published in both UK-based and international journals, and regularly presented his research to audiences in a variety of countries including the USA, Greece, Sweden, Argentina, Brazil and Portugal. He is a fully Chartered Occupational Psychologist with the British Psychological Society and is Director of one or the UK’s leading MScs in Occupational Psychology.

In your opinion, what are the biggest obstacles to effective learning and development in organizations?

First, I think organizations need to ensure they align their learning and development objectives with their strategic performance objectives. They need to undertake appropriate needs analysis to be clear about which employee behaviors they are trying to change or improve in the workplace (and why) and the underpinning knowledge and skills required to change those behaviors. Poor needs analysis can be the reason why training and development initiatives fail to have the desired impact on organizational performance due to targeting the wrong behaviors, knowledge, skills or even individuals.

Second, HRD staff need to keep themselves up to date with the latest research on what makes for effective training. It is a welcome development that there is now more professionalism in the occupation but I still see a gap between what is being produced and recommended by researchers and what is being done in organizations.

Third, lack of consideration as to how to support the transfer of training can undermine the long-term impact of learning initiatives. Research shows that the use of goal-setting and relapse prevention strategies in training coupled with ensuring opportunities and social support for workplace application of new knowledge and skills will help improve transfer.

Fourth, fear of evaluation is an issue. So much time and money goes into developing learning initiatives that it is essential to understand if the desired objectives have been achieved. Having a systematic evaluation strategy in place will help demonstrate the value of training and development initiatives plus also indicate how future programs could be improved.

Who would you consider to be the key influencers in this field?

The person that immediately comes to mind is Donald Kirkpatrick who proposed that training effectiveness could be evaluated in terms of the four levels of trainee reactions, learning, work behavior and organizational business results. Since its publication in 1959, the four-level model has had a huge influence on training evaluation due to its simplicity and intuitive nature and is still cited widely today. I also see the influence of David Kolb’s approach to experiential learning and learning styles a lot in organizations, as well as Reg Revan’s ideas regarding action learning. The work of Irwin Goldstein on outlining the characteristics of a positive transfer of training climate, Eduardo Salas on effective team training and development activities and Jack Phillips on strategies for identifying return on investment is more recently proving influential.

Where do you see learning and development in organizations in say, ten years’ time?

We will see an even greater role for technology than at present. I imagine there will be an increased use of virtual learning environments in order to link up learners in different locations and provide them with much more complex training simulations. For example, Second Life is already starting to host training hubs such as the Virtual Neurological Education Centre. Improvements in mobile technology will mean that learning solutions will be much more readily available wherever you are. Advances in artificial intelligence will move into the mainstream so that training programs will be able to actively tailor the learning process to your own preferred style. There will be greater individual responsibility for engaging in and updating one’s own learning as people move more freely between jobs and organizations. There will be greater user-generated/peer learning solutions available.

Which company/organization do you most admire in relation to development and learning?

Recently, I have been impressed by Nike for its attempts to enhance the self-managed learning of its leaders through its MyGame initiative. This integrates activities for reflecting on personal development needs with a wide variety of learning methods such as online study, coaching and workshops. There is a continuous process of review and support from line management as well as evaluation to ensure that learning is embedded in work and evidence is provided of its impact on the workplace.

What is your biggest achievement to date in the field?

I think it would be a study conducted by myself and colleagues at Sheffield and Leeds Universities, and which is just about to be published in the US journal, Personnel Psychology. There is a lot of debate about the bottom line impact of people management practices so we set up a study looking at the impact of a range of management practices on organizational performance. We studied 308 UK manufacturing companies and asked them if and when they had implemented any of three people management practices (empowerment, extensive training initiatives, teamworking) or four operational management practices (total quality management, just-in-time, supply-chain partnering, advanced manufacturing technology). We then collected objective financial productivity data on these companies covering a 22-year period so that we could assess levels of productivity before and after the introduction of each of these practices.

We found that the human resource management initiatives had an overall statistically significant impact on subsequent productivity while the operational management practices had little or no direct effect in general. So, firms adopting empowerment strategies (i.e. greater devolution of decision-making responsibility to front-line employees) showed a significant 7 percent increase in £value added per employee in the years subsequent to adoption. Firms introducing a broad range of employee training and development opportunities had a notable 6 percent increase in £value added per employee in the years subsequent to adoption. Empowerment and training together resulted in a 9 percent increase in £ value added per employee. Teamworking, though having little effect in itself, enhanced the impact of the above two human resource management initiatives and all four of the operational practices. This type of longitudinal, large-scale study of management practices and performance has been all too rare so we have provided now more rigorous evidence that certain types of HR practices do appear to be related to better subsequent organizational productivity.

How can organizations best go about evaluating the results of training programs?

End-of-course reaction questionnaires are by far the most commonly used evaluation method and they can be useful if the information provided by participants is specific enough. You should therefore ask for detailed feedback on features such as the environment, materials, trainers, different phases and so on as well as more general statements about how they felt about the course overall. Research shows that someone’s rating of how useful the training has been is a better predictor of whether they will transfer their learning than asking whether they enjoyed it. Open-ended questions should be used along with ratings.

Beyond reactions, it is valuable to get some indication of learning of knowledge and skills by using knowledge tests and practical exercises. However, it is also important to gauge how motivated and confident people are to apply their learning back at work. It does not matter how much you know, if you do not want to use your learning then nothing will change back at work. Questionnaires are a good way of getting a handle on levels of motivation and confidence and they can be incorporated into the end of training reaction survey.

It is vital that you do some form of follow-up to see if trainees are in fact applying their learning at work. This can be done through sending questionnaires to trainees, gathering ratings from supervisors, peers or other colleagues or sending in expert observers. These methods can also be used to identify barriers and enablers of transfer of training to help improve the long-term impacts of interventions.

There is a greater pressure now to evaluate the impact of training initiatives so some measure of organizational performance is needed. Direct measures of performance may be readily available but make sure that you pick the relevant ones to track. Interviews with senior management on the wider impact of training can help provide a richer level of data in terms of the contribution of the training compared to other initiatives in changing performance.

Benchmark measures of pre-training levels of knowledge, skills, attitudes, work behavior and organizational performance, as well as post-training indices will help indicate the level of change generated by the training. To really get a handle on the impact of the training, it is important to get the same information from comparison groups of employees who have not undertaken the training but are similar in all other ways.