Case Study Reaction – Org Learning First Post
All three case studies were interesting, however I must admit the case most interested me was Chaparral Steel. This case seems to reside closer to home as one of their locations was located in Petersburg, Virginia. I also have a past relationship with the Petersburg’s Human Resource Manager as she was hired as a new Human Resource Manager for my previous employer.
My pervious employer was relatively small in size and was rapidly growing in numbers of employees. It was her task to give the organization a new Human Resource face. The organization was a German based company with very little focus on organizational learning. Now knowing the history of Chaparral Steel it is probably safe to assume she was hired because she was coming from a successful organization with a culture focused on learning.
My organization at that time was very similar in structure as all operators had rotating shifts, employees were salaried with no time clocks, and the organization’s hierarchy was flat. The only person standing in between the CEO and myself as a Training Specialists was my immediate manager. This may sound to most as giving employees an environment for owning problems and the autonomy to solve it. However, contrary to belief this was not the case for my position. I owned many problems as a Training Specialist however; the autonomy to solve it was not easily given. Due to budget constraints there was little an individual at my level was able to do own their own with limited resources.
It was my task as a one man show to train all existing and new employees on the companywide enterprise operating system. Each employee was given a certain amount of time to develop a working knowledge of the system’s intricacies. This working knowledge was left up to my ability to reach each learner’s learning style. Without any formal education on how to best handle each learner’s learning style this task became increasingly harder. My frustration grew into resentment of the position in which led me to seek other employment that enabled me to grow both professional and academic. It was my hope to find an employer with an established training department from which I could learn from as well as them to learn from my past experience of running a one man department.
Because of my past experience I can appreciate larger well established organizations versus smaller organizations with lots of autonomy. In some situations autonomy with limited resources can bring about frustration and resentment.
