Decoding Workplace Learning: From Employee Experiences to Skills Development
When:
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Venue:
Birkbeck Central
Join Dr. Ulrike Fasbender, a Visiting Research Fellow for this presentation.
The working world is rapidly changing, which requires employees to continue learning new skills to be successful at work. We investigate how work can be designed to support employees in their efforts to learn and grow on-the-job. Building on the work design growth model, we conceptualize workplace learning as a dynamic process shaped by variations in the complexity of employees’ day-to-day tasks that trigger learning-oriented cognitive, motivational, and behavioral processes which, in turn, shape people’s longer-term skill acquisition. Given that learning does not take place in a vacuum, we also propose learning climate as a boundary condition for the positive effect of daily job complexity on workplace learning. To test our hypotheses, we utilized a longitudinal design consisting of a baseline survey in combination with bi-daily and weekly measurement bursts over a period of four working weeks. We collected a sample of 236 employees, resulting in 769 week-observations and 1,980 day-observations. Results of multilevel analyses demonstrated that morning job complexity was positively linked to afternoon cognitive elaboration as well as enhanced motivation to learn; both of which predicted employees’ afternoon engagement in active exploration. In turn, these daily learning processes predicted weekly skills development. Learning climate, as a between-person variable, moderated the within-person relationship of daily job complexity with motivation to learn (but not cognitive elaboration) and its downstream consequences on daily active exploration and weekly skills development. Implications of the findings for workplace learning and work design literature are discussed.
Contact name:
Krishna Tirbhowan
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Dr. Ulrike Fasbender
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Dr. Ulrike Fasbender is a Full Professor and the Chair of Business and Organizational Psychology at the Institute for Education, Work and Society – University of Hohenheim in Stuttgart, Germany. She is also a Visiting Research Fellow at Oxford Brookes University and Birkbeck College, University of London in the United Kingdom. She received her PhD from Leuphana University of Lüneburg and after, worked at Oxford Brookes University and Justus Liebig University in Giessen. In addition to her academic career, Ulrike has professional experience in the areas of human resources and management consulting.
Next to her research on work and aging, Ulrike studies workplace relationships and diversity management, knowledge transfer and learning, sustainable career development, and organizational behavior, technology and change. Her research is well supported through competitive grants, including the British Academy, the German Research Foundation, the Volkswagen Foundation, and the European Union's COST Action Initiative, and has been published in high-quality journals such as the Journal of Applied Psychology, Personnel Psychology, Human Relations, the European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology. In 2021, Ulrike received the Dr. Herbert Stolzenberg Award for her research. With the population aging in many countries across the world, and the associated societal tensions, the topic of work and aging is a very critical one, and her research is making a substantial contribution to this field.
Ulrike currently serves as an Associate Editor of the Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, and is on the Editorial Boards of Personnel Psychology, Work, Aging and Retirement, the Journal of Vocational Behavior, Management Review Quarterly, and the Journal of Organizational Behavior.