February, 2001
Volume 40 / Number 2
A Tale of Two Technologies
by Donald T. Tosti, PhD and Stephanie F. Jackson
Information technology and human performance technology (HPT) have been evolving
over the past 30 years and both are now reaching levels of maturity that
position them to have a profound impact on our society and on the performance of
organizations. As with all technologies, these two are evolving beyond their
initial applications and maturing as principled disciplines. For some human
performance practitioners, this requires a shift in traditional ways of
approaching problems. Tosti and Jackson say that corporations have problems that
HPT can solve reliably—not necessarily with performance technology
applications, but, rather, with performance technology principles. The problems
that can be solved with criterion-referenced tests, task analysis, or even
multimedia still exist, but they are dwarfed by the opportunities that can be
addressed by an HPT systems orientation when corporations alter their goals,
strategies, and structures at computer-like speeds.
HPT in a Dot-Com World
by Jeanne Farrington
Working with startups can be extremely rewarding: identifying gaps in
performance, making recommendations to assist where interventions will do the
most good, reviewing and measuring the results. Everything one has ever learned
about business, performance improvement, and training can be pressed into
service to help these companies meet their goals. Each startup is unique, with
its own goals, culture, challenges, and opportunities. Watching them meet their
goals and helping them to thrive is a challenging way to use one’s
professional knowledge and skills to make a worthy contribution.
Motivation = Goal + Control
by Jim Hill
In Silicon Valley, every organizational leader is looking for an advantage, for
a way to make his or her company more agile, flatter, and less reliant on strict
hierarchy and structure. The dot-com revolution, the focus on
globalization, and subsequent changes in organizational directions and goals are
realities that leaders and workers face every day. Organizational leaders need
to move beyond theory and into the practical by implementing methods that
promote motivation. This article outlines some basic approaches to promoting
productivity in the modern workplace. Basically, employees are smart, and they
work more effectively when they have a measure of control over how they expend
effort and in what direction. Following these guidelines, leaders can create a
supportive work environment that engages employees and draws from them their
best efforts.
Employee
Retention and Performance Improvement in High-Tech Companies
by B. Lynn Ware, PhD
Attracting and retaining top talent is a major concern of most information
technology companies. One out of 10 IT jobs in the United States remains vacant
because of an insufficient number of skilled workers. Furthermore, as the
Internet economy speeds corporate growth and change, the mobility of the
workforce continues to escalate. For these and many other reasons, the senior
managers of today’s most productive and profitable companies need to take an
active role in developing strategies to retain their top talent. The role of the
human performance technologist in these circumstances is to educate and support
senior management in structuring and implementing the programs and processes
that keep valuable people on the job.
The E-Business
Revolution and Human Performance
by Paul Harmon
This article provides an overview of the e-business revolution and suggests ways
it will affect those involved in human performance improvement. Harmon begins by
describing how companies are moving from relatively simple Web applications to
more complex types of e-business applications. In the process, core business
processes are being redesigned to support new e-business strategies. E-business
applications will need to be more automated to respond to customers in
"Internet time." That will lead to the elimination of jobs and the
development of intelligent systems to automate certain kinds of decisionmaking.
At the same time, it will require that lots of people be retrained, starting
with software developers, and it will create a variety of new jobs.
Creating
a Very Large E-Learning Library Within a Very Short Timeframe
by Robert Edgar
Converting a large library of legacy training materials to a Web-based format,
particularly in a short timeframe, is very different from developing new
e-learning. In a conversion project, the emphasis is on organization and project
management so that materials can be batched and converted rapidly. Content is
touched as little as possible to retain meaning. Initially the developer and the
client should invest time to define all the requirements for the project. Then
work will not slow down for design discussions. Portions of the conversion can
be automated; for example, the developer may create templates for content and
feedback with special tags and an engine that will read the tags automatically,
encoding the material. Additional planning for resource requirements, team
combinations, workflow, and procedures will ensure better communication and
greater attention to detail. Time spent in training teams before work begins
will guarantee consistent results. With attention to every detail in the
process, experience has shown that a large-scale conversion can be completed in
a short timeframe.
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