Project management education in a lean environment

Organisations are becoming leaner—reducing waste, trimming budgets and heightening efficiencies—in a bid to cope with global economic stress. Global training organisation ESI International set out to discover how public and private leaders were adapting their human capital initiatives to this lean environment via a survey. Below is an overview of the results.

Lean workforce: According to respondents, the recession has forever changed the makeup of their employee base. Commercial and government organisations now operate with a lean workforce, where employees, regardless of level, must have the capability to lead and execute work across cross-functional teams.

New approaches to learning: Best-in-class organisations expect to continue their investments in innovative, multi-modal learning, but will also devote further resources towards the development of leadership skills and business capabilities within communities of technical professionals.

Further, survey respondents reported that targeted and highly-relevant learning programs are essential to support the achievement of organisational priorities, maximise resources and enhance workforce effectiveness.

Measurable impact: To invest in their people, companies are focusing their training dollars on programs that produce measurable results and lead to demonstrated business improvement.

The ability to transfer learning in the classroom to changed performance in the workplace is essential in the achievement of enhanced productivity. Organisations must develop a supportive and complementary on-the-job environment, where management, business processes and supporting tools all permit the learner to apply new knowledge and skills immediately upon return to work.

This is a summary of ESI’s findings. For a more detailed report see ESI International > Innovation in Learning Drives Workforce Productivity: 2011 ESI Learning Trends Report