Learning in theory or in practice?
May 1, 2008
I’m coming to the end of a gruelling HR qualification, summoning what little motivation I have left to finish the last few sections of the final, enormous assignment. When I first started the qualification, I loved it and thought that it was really useful to my job; I tried to put every bit of learning into practice in my work. This last year has been a nightmare though, I think there’s only so far you can go before the experience counts for a lot more than the academic learning, and this has become apparent even more with this assignment that I’m doing. The problem is that everything academic is based in theory, and it’s sometimes hard to relate that to practice when you have to actually carry out the things you’ve been learning about. Another key issue is that some of the tutors have been lecturers for decades, so the last experience of business they had doesn’t relate that well to today’s working environment – in some cases it was before I was even born! I think the best teachers are those who have recently worked in a similar environment – but how can that work in practice? You’d have to keep kicking out the old to bring in the new and that’s hardly feasible!
In many areas of HR, there is a need to carry out formal training to understand the requirements and the theory behind HR practices; such as employment law, the recruitment and selection process, learning and development options, and how to develop a HR strategy from the business strategy. But the responsibility for making this happen in real life is placed on the individual, and you only get good at this through practice and a commitment to trying things out.
So I’m not really sure what I’m saying here. I have definitely benefitted from carrying out a HR related qualification, but a lot of it has been down to me drawing on the information and using it effectively, which is how it should be I suppose. I think now I’m just at the point where having to research theories of practitioners from 1975 and then somehow put that into an action plan for my organisation is making me think ‘what on earth am I doing?’
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