Twenty-first International Conference on Knowledge, Culture, and Change in Organizations

Abstract

Attaining desired job proficiency is an utmost crucial business challenge in today’s organizations. In a study conducted across eighty-five world leaders, across twenty business sectors spread in seven countries, the strategies used by organizations to shorten time to proficiency of the workforce was investigated. The findings suggested that learners and employees at the workplace develop and accelerate their proficiency if an appropriately supportive and enabling “proficiency eco-system” is designed and implemented. It is seen in the study that a proficiency eco-system in organizations consists of six elements: 1) Supportive and enabling environment; 2) manager’s involvement and support; 3) structured informal and social learning; 4) purposeful social connectivity; 5) on-demand performance support systems; and 6) leveraging subject matter experts. This research led to a surprising observation that no amount of training, learning, or other solutions work towards substantially accelerating workforce proficiency, unless and until there is a well-constructed proficiency eco-system that not only nurtures the learning, but also focusses on employees’ entire journey towards proficiency. In this paper, findings focused on how leading organizations used a proficiency eco-system strategically to shorten time to proficiency of the workforce. This paper provides recommendations to academicians, curriculum designers, and performance practitioners on how to design such a proficiency eco-system that ensures accelerated learning and performance.