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This report contributes to the activities of the [Cooperative Research Centre] CRC for Rail Innovation’s Workforce Development Program by scoping the feasibility of developing and introducing a national tertiary qualification and career pathway for rail incident investigators. The report considers international trends and identifies current practices from a selection of rail organisation and safety agencies. Drawing findings from a review of the literature and a range of expertise in the area of incident investigation, emerging issues and possibilities are identified for further research.

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Purpose - This paper presents research-based insight on the challenges of evaluating training activities in today's complex organizational settings. Design/methodology/approach - The research is taken from three case studies conducted in the New Zealand manufacturing sector, as well as sources of relevant literature. The commentary takes a critical-realist perspective and challenges learning and development professionals to address the poor reputation of training evaluation. Findings - Human resource practitioners recognise the importance of gaining feedback from learning events, but research reports question the thoroughness of evaluation processes, claiming they rarely happen to the satisfaction of management. Consequently, training budgets become an easy target during periods of rationalization. The problem centres on overcoming the complexity of defining a meaningful cause/effect relationship between the training and resultant benefit. This research discovered the presence of an 'evaluation vacuum' and nine thematic areas requiring close attention. The paper offers reasons why the evaluation of training is becoming increasingly difficult. Research limitations - The findings are contextual and may not fit all settings, but they offer a comparative account of training evaluation in both straightforward and complex learning environments. Practical implications - The paper has real and practical implications for human resource professionals. Evaluation of training is not a trivial issue and organizations need to get much better at explaining the beneficial outcomes derived from investments in training. Originality/value - This paper will be of value to human resource professionals and managers, assisting them to think differently about evaluating training. Innovative concepts such as the 'evaluation vacuum' and the term 'learning bleed' clarify priorities and contribute to a new perspective on evaluation.

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Purpose - This paper aims to explore why harmonisation, given its potential, is so difficult to achieve. It analyses the issues and challenges in achieving harmonisation of training and development across an industry. Design/methodology/approach - The approach was a meta-analysis of six research projects undertaken in the Australian rail industry. These projects varied in duration from 12-24 months. Between 2009 and 2013, rail employees in varying roles and levels of seniority, including middle managers, front-line supervisors, rail incident investigators, track workers and drivers, were interviewed (n = 176) and surveyed (n = 341). Findings - The meta-analysis identified a range of characteristics associated with harmonisation. It uncovered three categories of harmonisation, seven types of risk modelled in a layered risk pyramid and analysed key structural, environmental and organisational barriers to harmonisation. The paper concludes that harmonisation struggles to gain strategic significance and is hampered by operational pragmatism.

Research limitations/implications - There are few published papers examining harmonisation across companies or based on meta-analyses, especially qualitatively. Despite limitations of insufficient detail to allow close analysis, potentially variable quality data across projects from which to develop a meta-analysis and the danger of comparing apples with oranges, more attempts using this approach would be helpful in gaining nuanced insights into an industry. Practical implications - Achieving industry harmonisation requires significant change in the mindset of executives. To enhance the chances of harmonisation, there is need for a strong national entity with overview of the entire industry, high-quality training and development resources and activities and cost-benefit analyses and active campaigns. A major outcome of this research is the risk pyramid, which can be used by managers as a strategic evaluation tool. By using such tools based on sound research, leaders can be equipped to make informed decisions and reduce downstream risks. Originality/value - This research has value in extending the literature in two main ways: through examining the notion of harmonisation across an industry as distinct from within organisations that has been the focus of most studies and through using qualitative meta-analysis in a field dominated by quantitative approaches. It analyses the grey areas between rhetoric about its potential and difficulties in its achievement.

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This report contributes to the activities of the CRC for Rail Innovation's Education and Training Program by scoping the potential of skills recognition in the rail industry. The report reviews the recent Australian and international literature on skills recognition (including recognition of prior learning and recognition of current competencies) in industry and informs on current practices and perspectives pertaining to skills recognition in select rail companies. The report concludes that better understanding of and further development in skills recognition can enhance workforce productivity in the rail industry. Drawing on findings from a review of the literature and consultation with rail companies, emerging issues are identified and possibilities for further research proposed.

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In recent years organisations have been compelled to adopt an expanding range of workplace education and training activities in order to remain competitive and survive. Developing people to gain, maintain and obtain new employment, sometimes called employability, has become accepted practice and part of the human resource practitioners' narrative. However, the language we use to describe these learning events has changed from one decade to the next-largely in response to adjustments in vocational education policy, developments in society and evolutions in the nature of work. Workforce development is the latest label in a long line of professional titles given to workplace education and training activities and in this chapter [the authors] attempt to discover whether the current vocabulary reflects a surge in innovation or is simply a case of putting old wine into new bottles. In this final chapter [the authors] identify a selection of important findings from each section and synthesise them into a concept model of 10 topics arranged in three broad themes of environment, place and people. [They] conclude [that] as a consequence of these emerging issues that the strategies and workforce development practices deployed by organisations in the future will become much less predictable than previous generations, more diverse and challenging for upcoming [human resource development] HRD professionals.

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There is a growing interest among senior managers, human resource professionals and business school academics about evaluating the strategic benefits of workplace learning, particularly how organised training and development activities contribute to an organisation's success. Opinion is polarised: one school of thought takes a pro-human resource standpoint and advocates a strong and irrefutable connection, while the other view offers a more critical and independent perspective, arguing the evidence is not convincing. Despite this division, all sides give the impression that the best chance for evaluating the success of training may rest in aligning learning and development activities with business strategy. The term alignment has grown to become a popular expression for directing effort towards organisational success. However, this is not as straightforward as it may first appear, as business strategy can change perpetually - especially in a competitive and globalised marketplace. It has been suggested that the increasing complexity of what organisations have to deal with, makes strategic planning a tenuous activity, if not almost impossible. These assertions present a significant challenge for those wishing to align training activities with strategy and this paper contends the term alignment needs to be understood more fully if is to serve a useful purpose. Drawing on case study evidence collected in the New Zealand manufacturing sector, this paper examines how three organisations responded to global market challenges, and explores how workplace training and human resource development projects concealed a multi-dimensional face of alignment, offering both strengths and limitations to the success of the enterprise. Employees from five different roles within three organisations took part in in-depth interviews. Information from a literature review and documents from the organisations complement the evidence. The findings offer new possibilities for aligning human resource development initiatives successfully with business strategy.

Published abstract.

Available papers from the 11th Australian Vocational Education and Training Research Association (AVETRA) Conference are indexed from TD/TNC 92.459 to TD/TNC 92.499 and from TD/TNC 92.701 to TD/TNC 92.716. Show less

This chapter considers the emerging practice of formal workplace mentoring and reports on how company-initiated mentoring programs have become the latest trend in a long line of communication techniques used by human resource managers to engage employees and potentially resolve a wide range of motivational, developmental or employee-related issues. Using the lenses of critical human resource development and reflective analysis the chapter compares mentoring concepts with three workplace communication strategies that have been widely deployed over the last three decades: team briefing, quality circles and performance coaching. The study uses information from the literature and qualitative research conducted in Australia to examine the present-day practice of formal workplace mentoring and uses 10 characteristics to evaluate these communication techniques. The findings reveal a growing interest in workplace mentoring by employers and employees, but warn that the penalties of getting this method of communication wrong might outweigh the benefits, especially if formal mentoring programs are not planned, resourced, implemented and evaluated correctly.

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Workforce development is a relatively new concept that extends beyond training, and is increasingly used by educationalists, policy-makers and scholars. It draws on human resource development and management, workforce planning and workforce capability development, and is often highlighted in debates on skills shortages where there is a need to increase the pool of skilled workers in critical industries. The literature has claimed that the concept takes us in new directions, and is not merely more of the same. But what does workforce development mean? This chapter opens the book with an analysis of the concept of workforce development, why it has become prominent now and why this book has been written. It then introduces the chapters to follow that serve to illuminate different perspectives and issues that together comprise what we term workforce development.

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The need for building leadership capability and growing leadership talent has become well-recognised. Indications are that Australia is spending more money per capita on leadership training than many other developed countries. In contrast, it is also suggested that Australia lags way behind other major economies when it comes to identifying and engaging the pool of leadership talent. This paper follows the progress of leadership development in the Australian rail industry and focuses on a major research project conducted by the Cooperative Research Centre (CRC) for Rail Innovation between 2009 and 2011. The leadership study was aimed at creating a harmonised and relevant capability framework for future adoption across the rail industry. At the present time, rail organisations are undergoing a period of major transformation, investing in new technologies and at the same time dealing with historical differences in inter-state practices, overcoming skills shortages and managing the loss of tacit knowledge as many baby-boomer generation managers plan for retirement. Leadership capability is situated at the heart of these changes. Research conducted by CRC has found that an effective framework for developing rail leaders can be achieved by blending together three readily accessible bodies of knowledge. Firstly, a portfolio of leadership capabilities is available from a wide range of existing frameworks; secondly, 11 recognised units of management training are available in the Australian Frontline Management Initiative; and finally, survey findings obtained from 200 rail leaders highlight six themes of leadership capability which are most relevant to the current rail environment. Show less

This report is part of the Education and Training Program which focuses on improving the quality and promoting the development of national approaches to training. This report examines current approaches to training in the areas of safety, compliance and common technical areas across a small group of [Cooperative Research Centre] CRC participant organisations. It explores ways in which evaluation practices might be used to enhance quality, promote benchmarking and encourage shared approaches to training and development. The report concludes with suggestions for further research which can inform practices across CRC participant organisations.

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