All Posts Tagged With: "learning"
10 Critical Questions: Results
The Baldrige model focuses on results: You don’t transform an organization without a very good reason, and for those organizations that transform themselves through Baldrige, the reason is because it delivers results. Check out some of the results achieved by Baldrige Award recipients in the following areas:
Better yet, read Category 7 in the award application summary of any winner you choose (click here) and you will find impressive results across all six of the areas measured.
The Results Category is the only Category in the Baldrige Criteria that examines your organization’s performance and improvement—but this one Category is worth 45% of the possible points when scoring a Baldrige application because the Baldrige model focuses on results. The best way to evaluate your results is through an assessment using the Baldrige Criteria. You can find out how to do that here. If you cannot do a full assessment but want insight into how to improve your results, here are 10 critical questions to ask and answer:
What are your current levels and trends in key measures of:
- Product performance OR student learning and improvement in student learning OR health care outcomes, health care process results, patient safety, and patients’ functional status?
- Customer/student/patient and stakeholder satisfaction,…
10 Critical Questions: Your Workforce
Several articles on Baldrige.com have emphasized the value of employee engagement and satisfaction. “Valuing workforce members” is a Baldrige core value, as the Criteria state: “An organization’s success depends increasingly on an engaged workforce that benefits from meaningful work, clear organizational direction, and performance accountability and that has a safe, trusting, and cooperative environment.”
The best way to evaluate how well you are creating an engaged and satisfied workforce is through a Baldrige assessment using the Baldrige Criteria. You can find out how to do that here.
The Criteria consist of powerful questions, rarely asked, about how an organization functions. If you cannot do a full assessment but want insight into how to improve your workforce focus, here are 10 critical questions to ask and answer:
- How do you determine the key factors that affect workforce engagement and satisfaction and assess performance on them?
- How does your culture promote open communication, high-performance work, and an engaged workforce?
- How does your organization benefit from the diverse ideas, cultures, and thinking of your workforce?
- How does your workforce performance management system engage employees and support high-performance work?
- How does your learning and development system address your organization’s core competencies and strategic challenges, action plans, performance improvement, innovation, ethics, employees’ needs,…
Not Ready for Work…and What You Can Do about It
A 2006 report by The Conference Board found new entrants to the workforce unprepared for work.
A 2009 report shows that nothing has changed.
During the second quarter of 2008, The American Society for Training and Development, The Conference Board, Corporate Voices for Working Families, and the Society for Human Resource Management surveyed 217 employers in manufacturing, financial services, non-financial services, education, government, and other nonprofits. The survey examined their training practices for newly-hired graduates from high school, two-year colleges, and four-year colleges.
You can read a summary of the resulting 2009 report here. The most disturbing findings include:
- More than 40% indicated a “high need” for programs in critical thinking
- Nearly 70% indicated a “high need” for programs to foster skills in creativity
- Significant gaps in training programs designed to increase awareness of ethics and social responsibility
- Sizable gaps in basic skills programs to improve reading comprehension, writing, and math
The report exposes the failures at all levels of our education system. Graduates suffer. Because older workers are postponing their retirements, “recent graduates with inadequate workforce skills will be at a disadvantage both during the recession and once the economy improves.”
Some companies are choosing not to hire graduates who are unprepared. For example, American Express screens applicants…
16Oct2009 | Steve George | 0 comments | ContinuedLocking in the Keystones
A “keystone” is the central supporting element of a whole. I believe a high-performing organization has five keystones: (1) mission and vision; (2) core competencies; (3) customer knowledge; (4) organizational learning; and (4) alignment and integration.
I will be posting pages on each of these five keystones. You can look for links to them in the “Pages” column on the home page. As with all posts and pages, I welcome your feedback.
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