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APPLYING THE IDEA OF SELF MANAGED LEARNING:

Groups were set up in different parts of the company, mainly where local personnel or training managers perceived a need and appreciated the potential of the method. "Buy in" was sought from business heads and was generally given, with the proviso that the project would not cost them money.

Groups were also allocated a small budget to use. This was the subject of a great deal of debate in the early days of the project and was discontinued when group members made it plain that their businesses or they themselves would provide any resources, rather than Cable and Wireless Group HR Department.

The project has now been running for three years and has proven extremely successful in terms of the number and location of groups which have been created. Initially, 35 groups were established in locations ranging from Sweden and Eire to the United States. Responsibility has now been devolved to the businesses, with Group HR co-ordinating the training and development of "champions" mainly from the HR and training community. Currently, there are 21 groups in existence with approximately 12 due to be established in the Caribbean shortly.

Two conferences and a champions' workshop have been held (all in Europe) to energise the project and ensure consistency of approach. Finally, evaluation has taken place in the form of presentations of strategic learning contracts completed, or progress made, to Directors of the participating Group companies. Although the involvement of senior managers with the project has not been overly close, much useful coaching and mentoring has taken place, particularly from the Group CEO and Chief Operating Officers from two Group companies.

STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESSES OF THE PROJECT:

From the evaluations that have been carried out over the last three years, we have found the following to be the successes of the project:

• It has involved the participation to date of around 200 employees worldwide, most of whom have acquired additional qualifications or skills as a result of their involvement. These skills have included all aspects of business management and modern office skills. Participants have also included the acquisition or resolution of more personal issues among their learning targets.
• It has created a network of learners in the organisation, who have used each other, their managers and colleagues to draw upon previously untapped or unshared resources available in the organisation. To complement this a 'Resource Guide' was published to guide SML participants to the location of these resources.
• It has stimulated an interest in training and development activity among groups of employees who were not previously targeted for it, e.g. among clerical, secretarial and administrative employees. It has proven especially popular with women.
• It has appealed more strongly outside the UK. in places such as the US., West Indies and Ireland, although this may say something about the commitment of the training professionals who took up the approach and rolled it through in these areas.
• Participants have appreciated the bonding that has taken place with colleagues who are attempting to find solutions to difficult questions connected with personal growth.

• The project has been somewhat outside the mainstream of the business. It needs integrating better with other training and development activity.
• The focus of the SML groups has been on more junior staff - e.g. secretaries, technicians, junior managers. This has meant that more senior managers have not seen it as an approach that is suitable for them.
• It was clear that some participants were resorting to SML as a antidote to limitations in the manager/employee relationship. This highlights a need to tackle this problem.

CONCLUSION

The shortcomings we found through carrying out the project have not in any way invalidated the SML approach. However, we are working at how it can be adapted to the needs of different groups of employees, e.g. providing accelerated learning opportunities to younger managers. The problems raised have alerted the HR function to the need to balance this development approach with other HR strategies.

Jeremy Webster

Following publication of Ian Cunningham's paper on the subject for the NHS Training Division, some managers in the health service have clearly realised the need to shift the NHS's traditionally more tactical piecemeal approach to learning into one that responds strategically to the massive changes being faced by the NHS.

The King's Fund Management College has asked Ian Cunningham to contribute to its 'Sustainable High Performance' programme on both occasions that the programme has so far run. HR Directors attending the programme have had a chance to work on ways in which they can develop their strategies in order to put learning at the core of their activities.

Local authorities have also been looking at integrating strategy and learning. A one-day conference entitled 'Strategic Learning to Perform Effectively' was held on September 28th at Bognor Regis under the auspices of the Policy and Performance Review Network. The morning session was addressed by Chief Executives from East Hampshire, Epsom & Ewell and Reigate & Banstead. Ian Sumnall the Chief Executive of Arun District Council, chaired the day and emphasised in his opening remarks the importance of people learning while they are working. Ian Cunningham made a presentation linking strategic learning to SML and showing how local authorities needed to learn to work in new ways in order to make the fundamental changes required of them.

In the afternoon, Marcia Fellows, Deputy Director of Corporate Resources at Arun, ran an option session on how her organisation had been experimenting with SML for some of its managers.

An impressive feature of the day was not just that busy Chief Executives gave up time to talk about learning, but that they also acknowledged that they needed to model being good learners and that they needed to share their learning more effectively with their staff.