Developing Employee Expertise Through Structured On-the-Job Training

Presenter: Ronald Jacobs

Professor, Human Resource Development

College of Education, University of Illinois

Training continues to be the core focus of most ATD members.  But where does most training occur? 

Paradoxically, most formal training occurs off-the-job, while most employee learning occurs on-the-job, in the actual work setting.  How to ensure that training outcomes are reliable and predictable are issues when employees learn on-the-job? Structured on-the-job training (S-OJT) directly addresses this need. Click here for a brief overview of S-OJT.

This presentation will provide an overview of S-OJT concepts and describe how it has been used in companies across multiple business sectors and levels of employees, both in the US and abroad.  While S-OJT is often associated with technical training, this training approach has been successfully used for managerial training in retail and health-care organizations. 

Finally, the presentation will review return-on-investment results from using S-OJT, particularly in small and medium sized companies.

By the conclusion of the session, participants will be able to:

• Describe what is meant by structured on-the-job training and how it differs from unstructured OJT
• Analyze the characteristics of current training approaches and their potential for improving organizational performance
• Discuss how S-OJT has been used in various organizational settings
• Describe the process used to develop S-OJT programs
• Begin to plan how S-OJT might be used in their own organizations.

Presenter’s  Bio:

Ronald L. Jacobs, Ph.D. is professor of human resource development and director of the Office of International Programs, College of Education, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. 

Ron is reknown for his research and development work related to the training approach known as structured on-the-job training (S-OJT) and has written over 100 journal articles and book chapters, as well as authoring/editing six books that address a range of topics in the human resource development field.

He is the author of Structured On-the-Job Training: Unleashing Employee Expertise in the Workplace (Berrett-Koehler, 2nd edition, 2012), which has become the standard guide to help organization managers, HR and HRD staff, and national policy officials implement more planned learning approaches on the job. Ron’s extensive work on S-OJT has influenced national policy makers in the Netherlands and Singapore, and the Republic of South South Korea.

Honors and awards:

Ron is a 1994 recipient of the ASTD the instructional technology research award and has served on the ASTD advisory board of the Workplace Learning and Performance Certification Institute. In 1995, the Academy of Human Resource Development honored Ron for his scholarly contributions to the human resource development field. In November 2013, Ron was inducted in the International Adult and Continuing Education (IACE) Hall of Fame for his contributions to workplace learning and structured on-the-job training. Additionally Ron is emeritus professor of workforce development and education at The Ohio State University, and currently serves as president of the Academy of Human Resource Development.

Since 1980, Ron has been responsible for the graduate training of over 300 HRD professionals.  More than 30 of his Ph.D. graduates now teach HRD and HRM-related subjects in universities globally.  Ron has been an invited professor at numerous international universities, including the University of Utrecht, National Taiwan Normal University, and he was the Shaw Distinguished Professor of Human Resource Management at Nanyang University, Singapore.  He currently holds an adjunct professorship in human resource development at East China Normal University, Shanghai, and at Peking University.  Ron was nominated as a DeTao Master, a distinction conferred by the DeTao Master Academy, Beijing, and Fudan University, Shanghai.

Ron has extensive consulting experience in global organizations and government agencies, including General Motors, KLM Airlines, Abbott Laboratories, Kenworth Trucks, Seagate, Morton Salt, Rohm and Haas, Kuwait National Petroleum Company, Biomet, and Honda, among others.

Ron enjoys sailing, golfing, and spending time with his wife, Marsha, at their summer home on Lake Erie.

Ron’s full profile:  http://education.illinois.edu/frp/j/rljacobs

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