Review by: Seufert, Sabine (2007-06-18)

The paper aims to provide a reflection on the CIPD's learning and development survey in 2007. Five commentators, mainly researchers, have been invited to deeper reflect and comment on different aspects of the survey findings and to identify main implications of the findings for practictioners.

Therefore, five chapters focus on different topics identified as main trends and challenges by the CIPD survey 2007:1) Line manager involvement in learning and development within organisation2) Increasing coaching capability3) Learning and Development within wider organisational strategy4) Competency frameworks as vehicle for achieving organisational performance5) General critical reflections on the latest trends in learning and development

To 1)The massage is not new but the article provides some substantial arguments and differentiations. The author quotes some main research studies analysing the role of line managers for learning and development. The biggest obstacle to effective line management involvement seem to be competing work pressures (others are lack of senior management, cost and resource implications, lack of understanding about the impact of learning and development and the view that these responsibilities are perceived as optional rather than essential). Lack of training, a commonly perceived barrier, is only cited by 18% of organisations according to the CIPD survey.

The author concludes that organisations need to encourage line managers' commitment to learning and development by clarifying their responsibilities through job descriptions and performance appraisal and communicating the importance and value of development-related activities.

To 2)The second article starts with an interesting comment: according to the CIPD 2007 survey the amount of coaching activitiy in organisations is beginning to decline from 79% of organisations being involved in coaching activity down to 63% in the last year. What is the reason? The author considers the development as an indicator that the expected benefits haven't been delivered and that tougher questions are starting to be asked about the value of coaching as a driver of business performance. However, the article differentiates acitivities for building coaching capabilities and provides many arguments why the potential impact of investing in developing a cohort of internal coaches is far greater than one-to-one coaching of a small number of executives. The author even goes one step further in hypothesizing that the value of coaching hasn't been fully realised and that organisations could still gain far more from coaching than they have so far. The question on "how to fully realise" remains open in the article.

To 3)The key message in this article is that learning professionals have to built strong partnerships with senior executives and line managers – again, the role of executives is highly emphasized for the success of learning and development. Interesting in that article is the reference of the IBM global CEO Study. According to the research findings CEOs and their senior managers expect their learning and development functions to help them build their strategies and address the organisation's future challenges, and not simply focus on the current needs of the business.

To 4)Competency frameworks are often hated in practice since they are perceived as unpractical. However, The author of this article analyses the findings of the CIPD survey and came to the conclusion that a high number of organisations are pursuing this approach. Furthermore, he concludes that competency frameworks are not only an essential vehicle for achieving organisational performance through reviewing an individual's capability and potential, but even more a key element in any change management process by setting out new organisational requirements.

To 5) The last article critically reflects some latest trends and comments them on how much progress has been made in recent years. The author assumes that there is "little change in the actual means of learning delivery, but there are high hopes that all will change. Ironically, that optimism hasn't changed either." At least, the role of line managers for people development is highlighted again. The author proposes that line managers have people development as part of their job descriptions and are recognised and rewarded for proactively owning responsibility for it.

The paper gives a very comprehensive overview as well as some food for thought to critically think about the latest trends in learning and development. The implications for practitioners can be regarded as a first starting point. However, many of the summarizing statements are far away from practical recommendations. Furthermore, the different articles in the paper are a bit too additional, an overall concept or structure (a red threat) is missing. The reader would rather appreciate if the article follows a cognitive mindmap where the interdependencies between the different aspects could be shown.