Activity 5 - Martin

The summary shows us that all the results are below median especially the learning process. Our organization has spend lots of resources on provide training to colleague but lack of systematic follow up strategy. We only stick into the first step which is only providing materials to our colleague. May be it is the reason that make the mark of learning process composite very low.

On this round all scores are below median. Only analysis part is relatively high compare to the rest four. I think the reason is because we have regularly group together and sharing what we learn from PD programs.

It can be clearly see that the appreciation of differences got the lowest mark. In our organization we still have a portion of colleague which have been working quite a long time in library and resist to change anything. It is not easy to implement any new ideas with them if cooperation is needed. That's why it seems not possible to looking for appreciation from those colleagues. Another thing that surprises me is the score of time for reflection is quite high. I don't have any idea on the reason.



Conclusion
In our organization it is definitely has room to improve. I strongly believe the score can be build up if we can have more solid plan on how to follow up colleague after they learned.

Activity 4 - Martin

I am working in IT department of a university library. Professional Development (PD) is a very important issue in our library. Several Professional Development plans are taking place in my organization.

1. We have a team which dedicates to manage all staff PD progress within our library. They will organize our staffs to take seminar, conference and training course, etc which are related to library business. Also they will generate statistic report to us therefore we can see what kind of program that our staff has joined.

2. We have a regular sharing program which named "Staff Awareness Program". Our professional grade librarian and supervisor level colleague will attain this program. Sometimes colleague will share what they have learnt or experience from the professional development program they joined.

3. In our university, many departments regularly provide knowledge sharing program which are free to join for university staff.


I would like to use Newhouse's model to describe the detail of our PD.

Vision: Our University Librarian has a clear vision: "Learning Hub". We make our library to be more services oriented and I personally think we are really do a good job on that.

Skills: Those PD programs covers different areas like leadership training program, library related seminar and basic skill set training course like IT related and foreign languages course.

Incentives: There is not enough incentive for staff to take PD programs especially when it is involve extra effort from those staffs for example when the hours of PD program is not held within office hours.

Resources: Library is willing to train our colleagues even providing financial support to cover training cost. We can see there are significant effects on those courses that have improved our colleagues’ skills.

Action plan: So far the only action that we will take is to share the knowledge that learns from PD programs among us. But I think a good idea will finally accept by others and consider by library senior management to implement.

Collegiality: The sharing programs make our working atmosphere better because we can know more about each other during sharing process.

Activity 5 - Tammy

Applying an LO online survey in the workplace


Below are the results of applying an LO online survey in my work place.

 

In this part, the score are quite average.  In my organization, the mangers and the college head always pay attention to the actions of the competitors.  In some cases, we may become the follower of how our competitor’s doing.  Besides, we always try to develop new projects to become the leader in the market.

Apart from the competitors, we also pay attention to the economics environment, if it is economic regression, we may launch some discount scheme to our target customers.

Information Collection

The highest score in this part is information collection.  In my organization, managers are open-minded to accept suggestions and advice from the colleagues during the meeting.  We will have a meeting with the college head every three months.  In the meeting, the head will inform us what our college is planning to do so as to give us a few pictures and get ready to accept the new challenge.  Besides, we are welcome to review the difficulties we face and give improvement regards the problems.  Apart from this, in many times, my manager accepts my suggestions and always let me to make decision independently.  Also, when launching new projects, the respective team will hold a few training workshops and welcome to collect information from colleagues regards the new projects.

Education and Training

The lowest score in this part is education and training.  In my organization, every staff in charge of different programmes, some of them in charge short course, certificate level programme and some of them in charge master or degree programme.  A buddy will be assigned to the new colleague, however, the buddy may not familiar with the work of the new colleague and the buddy can only teach the basic knowledge to him/her.  In this result, the new colleague may need to find other colleagues who also in charge of those programmes to teach him/her. Besides, there are no procedures regards how a programme should be launched.  In this case, the staff in charge of the same type of programmes such as short course may have different style of how to launch a short course programmes.

The scores of this part are quite average except openness to new ideas.  In my organization, when launching new ideas, we will be given a period of time to try new project such as three months before launching the idea officially.  Besides, our managers are quite care of our feelings and suggestion towards trying the new projects.

Openness to new ideas

The lowest part of this part is openness to new ideas.  In my organization, most of the staff resists changing, especially the new ideas involve them to learn new things and increase their workloads.  The new ideas require them to learn new knowledge and affect their old practices.  Therefore, I think the manager new to review the new practices before launching.  The new practices should facilitate the work and should not increase the workloads of the front-line staff and only benefit to one of the team of the organization such as the record team.

Acivity 6 - Marco

Storytelling in my organization

My story was happened in an academic library. One day, I went to my office as usual and I sat on my seat. Suddenly, an Indian woman came into office and she asked me why I sit in her seat. I had no idea what she was talking about and told her to ask supervisor. Then, the supervisor came to tell me that the woman was back to work after from holiday.

In my opinion, supervisor should tell me before she back. The reason is that the woman was angry when she was seeing me engaging her seat. I was frightened. She assumed me instead of her position. It caused misunderstanding between staffs. Therefore, communication between staffs and heads are important. From this case we can see, lack of communication brings a lot of problem. It would increase the changes of misunderstanding of each others. For level staffs, they need to have good communication for team-working. As library have many huge size projects, staffs need to working together for it. If staffs lack of communication, it would cause many problems, such as doing wrong things etc. For heads and staffs, good communication could not only help heads assign works to staffs clearly, but also build up and improve their relationship. They could share their different views and problems on works. Heads could know what front line staffs are facing and give them appropriate support. It could avoid problems happened on works. Indirectly, it improves the efficiency of works.

Acivity 5 - Marco

Applying an LO online survey in the workplace

My result of the online learning organization survey would be used to discuss on this week. As the nature of my pervious working experience was placement, the result may be different than other groupmates because they are all full-time employers. 

Regard to the Learning Organization Scores Summary, my results is on the bottom quartile. Nevertheless, their overall percentage is over 50%. In a certain extent, it implied that the learning process and environment of my workplace are still having a room to be improved. As my workplace has an online discussion broad to share knowledge, it is beneficial for improving the learning process and environment. However, only discussion broad is not enough. There is still a lot of way to improve it. For examples, training workshop, programs and exchange programs with related organization could help improve it.

Regarding to Concrete Learning Processes and Practices, the average of this part is 60% and one of this part, information transfer, is 70%. I believe that it is because of the advantages of discussion broad. The discussion broad improved information collection, education and training and information transfer. 

As for Supportive Learning Environment, the average of this part is about 50%. The percentage of appreciation of differences and openness to new ideas are little bit low. The reason is that it may be the culture of organization in Hong Kong. It is conservative and the heavy work pressure. It may affect these kinds of development. Still, long working hour would also affect the time for reflection. The reason is that staffs would not have rest of time other than working.