WPL Principles, Experiences and Challenges

Principles, experiences and challenges

 What are your experiences ofWPL?
 Do you considerWPL relevant to/ in your
program?
 Buzz feed your experience with the rest of
the group.

 Research Projects: Sustaining health system
leadership and management development
 The Atlantic Philanthropies’
 Partnership for Health Leadership and
Management
 Teaching:
 OTF (Postgraduate Diploma)
 DrPH-LA

 A literature and program Survey
 Interviews with a range of institutions
responsible for leadership training programs
usingWPL and other interventions in the UK

 Survey using EBSCO Host, Emerald & Google
Scholar
 There is a lot of information yet very limited!
 Individual interventions andWPL and WPBI
 Results of survey
 WPL forVET, technicians, industry, and professionals
– a lot out there
 WPL in health – Focused on nursing and
physiotherapist and ltd Med. Practitioners
 WPL for Leaders and Managers –Less Info
 WPL for L&M in Health – Lesser info

 Grey literature search
 Very useful through Google search to obtain policy &
practice documents onWPL in UK, Australia, New
Zealand, USA(very limited)
 WPB leadership intervention Programmes
 Searched using google for leadership intervention
programs in health,WBL intervention programs and
added NHS leadership training programs
 Focus on leadership, health, and NHS programmes
 Identify areas of particular interest on leadership
training, support & Development programmes

 Workplace learning is learning that is organised in or by the
workplace, and that supports employment role and
progression (Walmsley et al, 2008).
 An informal learning that enable the individual employee to
progress and develop, making the most of talents, and the
employer to benefit from a more skilled and productive
workforce (Cunningham, 2001)
 It is “a flexible form of learning which enables employees to
engage in the regular processes of up-dating and continuing
professional development (Reeve & Gallacher, 1999: 125-6)
 Common theme:
 The ‘learning tasks are influenced by the nature of learners’ work’
(Fuller, 2003)

 Broader sets of interests are often promoted inWPL
 It addresses the shift in thinking about the best ways
people can keep abreast with their jobs and improve
performance in a world where change is not only
becoming the norm, but is accelerating on an almost
daily basis.
 The understanding that context is vital for learning and,
aligned with this, that performance in a formal training
environment is not necessarily a good indicator of
performance in a different environment, such as the
workplace.

 To an extent context is replacing content as the key
factor in organisational learning.These realisations are
leading to greater focus on workplace learning –
learning in the context of work.
 An increasing awareness that experiences are critical
to learning and performance. Our experiences are vital
building-blocks for our development.
 Learning how to ‘do’ something is far more important
than learning ‘about’ something in terms of improving
performance.
 Learning and work are merging (C. Jenner, 2011)

 Informal learning is central inWPL
 Based on interrelationship between the individual
learner and the workplace affordances (Rainbird et al.
2004)
 WPL is participatory & flexible
 WPL it points to the importance of the context of the
learning environment (Fuller and Unwin, 202)
 Hard to measure and difficult to value adequately
with more formal type of learning (Coffey, 2004)

 Support at the organizational level
 Having structured orientation on the job
 Using good teaching strategies to support
structured learning
 Learning from experience
 Use of formative and summative assessment

 For Instance -Support at the organizational
level:
 Having dedicated person with the interest and
authority to promote learning in the workplace by
creating opportunities that learners could take up as
affordances to really learn.
 Provision of quality resources, time, and moral
support so that learning is not pushed aside when
other things appear to be important.
 Having a organizational level mechanism to reward
learning success.

 The Knowledge and Skills Framework (KSF):
 Potential to link training to current or future job roles
 Work as Learning Framework (WALF)
 (Felstead et al, 2009:1) this approach ‘traverse a series
of analytical layers of enquiry’ that necessarily focus on
the conditions, strategies, principles and particularities
of work tasks, and apply or investigate these within the
wider context of work.
 Union Learning Representatives (ULR):
 Supporting WPL for unregistered staff and less
permanent staff.
▪ (IndustryTraining Federation 2011;Walmsley et al, 2008)

 A good learning environment is an elusive
element ofWPL due to the complexity of practice,
the limitation on practitioners to time, and to
support and guide the learner
 Challenge of sustaining preceptors, buddies,
mentors and coaches to support learning and
assimilation into the team.
 Barrier to progression partly due to professional
dominance, and partly due to inability to sustain
funding because of secondment and job rotation

 Lack of capacity in healthcare organization
 Inconsistencies in funding WPLs and training regarded
as cost rather than an investment
 WPL learners are non-traditional students so they need
support sensitive to their needs, clear progression
routes, and support from line managers and mentors
which can be a challenge sometimes.
 WPL is seen as just doing the job rather than learning
 Time and resource consuming

 It requires a culture change to work in
partnership with employers
 There is also a challenge of timeframes and
ensuring the learners have the time necessary to
undertake the programme.
 Concern about capacity of training institutions to
meet demand
 The flexibility of interventions
 Based on relationship development & networks

 Overall program surveyed : 32 L&MTraining & 23
Support Interventions mostly (NHS related)
 Selected 7 with interesting intervention strategies
and contact information
 Response and follow-up interviews from 5 inst.
 Interviews took 90-45mins each via Skype/phone
 General Findings
 Similarities and Difference in Strategies, duration,
certification, curriculum design, targeted groups, modes
of intervention
 What we found was the common strategies

Global Advanced
Leadership Programme
(GALP) and the
LancasterAdvanced
Leadership Programme.
(ALP)
Action Learning Set
Facilitators
Development Program
(By: NHS leadership
Academy).
Emerging Leaders
Programme
(By: East Midlands
Leadership Academy)
Entrepreneurial
University Leaders
Programme (EULP)
Ashbridge Leadership
Programme

About the program
Training and Certification
Key strategies
Program Design and Curriculum
Who is involve in training
Targeted Participants and Enrolment
Feedback and Challenges
Lessons and Uniqueness of the programme

 Purpose ofWPBI for Leaders & Mgt
 For growth &development; Problem solving; Support &
Capacity building; Networking; Career progression; etc
 Timing relevant and program widely spread
 Programs range between 6months to 2yrs
 Work with organization involved
 By seeking written approval, fund and support of staff
 Actual problems used for training project
 Maintain contact after training
 Through networks, informal contacts and light
consultation, e-groups and feedback

 Common Interventions/ Strategies
 Action Learning
 Reflective practice i.e. using groups of 2-4, friendly
consulting, dealing with real company problems, use of
action learning, exchange program, etc.
 Shadowing/ company visits / Company exchange
programs
 Fostering Networking
 Problem solving oriented
 Use of faculty and external facilitators
 Follow-ups via the internet from programme organizers

 Flexible in planning and delivering interventions
andTime frame
 Combine both class contact vs. workplace; and
individual vs. group devt strategies
 Accommodate different clients’ needs
 Problem-based and reflective strategies
 Continuous engagement after training
 Use it to inform of interventions and
curriculum design

 WPL as integral part of HPSR training
 Team training
 Support of organization
 Alumni and practitioners will be trained as
coaches, mentors, ALS facilitators, etc.
 Example is the PAHLM Project

 OurTrainingTargetAudience:
 Managers, practitioners, researchers, policy makers, politicians, NGOs
workers, emerging leaders, etc.
 Characteristics of Our Audience:
 Usually very busy, tend to lack the time to study full time, excessive
workload, and in some cases lack the support of top management to
pursue a course (so do it in secrete).
 Purpose
 Qualifications only capture certain kinds of learning
 Learning opportunities afforded by the workplace affect the quantity
and quality of learning (Eraut et al. 1998)
 WPL is a growing initiative for organisation to develop HR and adapt to
changing environments (Doyles & young, 2007; Crouse et al, 2011).
 Health practitioners and managers tend to engage in continuous
professional development in the workplace anyway.

“Lessons learned by
successful and
effective managers are
roughly:
70% from tough jobs
20% from people
(mostly their boss)
10% from courses and
reading”

“Everybody is a genius, but if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it
will live its whole life believing that it is stupid”
- Albert Einstein

Well, it may mean using any of these ‘70’
approaches:
Or any of these ‘20’ approaches:
Identifying opportunities to apply new learning and skills in
real situations
Establish a culture of coaching from
manager/colleagues/others
Allocating new work within an existing role Encourage seeking advice, asking opinions, sounding out
ideas
Increasing range of responsibilities or span of control Engage in formal and informal mentoring
Identifying opportunities to reflect and learn from projects Embed informal feedback and work debriefs
Allocating assignments focused on new initiatives Encourage learning through team work
Providing the chance to work as a member of a small team Target building strong internal and external networks
Providing increased decision making authority Build a culture of learning through teams/networks
Providing stretch assignments Support professional and industry association membership
and external networking
Enhancing leadership activities, e.g.; lead a team,
committee membership, executive directorships
Encourage facilitated group discussion as a standard practice
Setting up co-ordinated swaps and secondments Use Action Learning
Arranging assignments to provide cross-divisional or cross-
regional experience
Or any of these ‘20’ approaches:
Providing opportunities to carry out day-to-day research
Providing opportunities to develop a specific expertise niche
Allocating assignments to provide new service experience (Jenning, 2011)

 Improve current job performance
 Improve quality of service provision (and goods)
 Respond to new technology
 Develop a more flexible workforce
 Improve employee safety in the workplace (Smith, 2000)
 For managers: WPL is a crucial tool to
 Achieve higher level of performance
 Deliver better results
 Be promoted and/ or secure their jobs
 Affect work performance, job satisfaction and increase
profits
(Longenecker, 2010; Nilsen, 2012)

WPL Principles, Experiences and Challenges

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