Re: Week 4 Discussion Forum: Benefits of HPT
by Dana Payne - Monday, 21 September 2015, 11:46 PM
Nancy,
It is easy to understand the areas readily identified for organizational performance improvement in the
government agency cited for your HPT assignment:
o Reduce approval times for publication and documents.
o Process improvement for handling social media opportunities for outreach.
o Speed the process of informing Californians on health issues.
In your closing statement, you noted the performance technologist’s role as identifying the cause for gaps (that
needed to be closed) to improve organizational performance by assisting in the selection of beneficial
interventions. As potential up-and-coming Performance Technologist, how might we proceed from here?
From our week 4 course readings, the 5-point summary of Human Performance Improvement (HPI) seemed
relevant to your narrative, especially the citation concerning the importance of Human Capital as “the driving
force of the economy in most societies.”
Summary of Key Principles of HPI:
1. At its core, HPI has a relatively straightforward vision and mission: to achieve, through people,
increasingly successful accomplishments that are valued by all stakeholders. As an HPI
practitioner, first define valued accomplishments and the factors affecting the gap between
desired and current states. Only when you have completed this should you begin the search for
ways to close the gap.
2. A desired end for HPI is “worthy” performance—defined as valued accomplishment derived from
costly behavior—whose cost is considerably lower than the value of the accomplishment. As an
HPI practitioner, demonstrate concretely both the cost and value to the organization of your
proposed interventions.
3. Human capital has been empirically shown to yield higher rates of return than physical
capital. As an HPI practitioner, adopt as your overall goal the maximization of human capital
achievements.
4. Simple solutions for closing human performance gaps are almost always ineffective. As an HPI
practitioner, identify priority performance gaps (urgency, value, magnitude), analyze these
systemically to uncover the range of factors affecting the gaps, and recommend integrated sets of
suitable interventions to rapidly and effectively eliminate the gaps.
5. HPI bears similarities to other fields such as organizational development, human resource
development, and organizational effectiveness. As an HPI practitioner, work in partnership with
professionals from these related fields to increase your resources and obtain support for your HPI
endeavors.
HPI – HPE – HPT?
When researching things a bit further, I found myself asking the question (once again)…
“what is the difference between HPI and HPT? I came across the article “What is the
difference between HPE, HPT and HPI and does it matter?”
http://www.humanperformancetools.com/difference-hpe-hpt-hpi-matter/
Great – now are we not only dealing with learning the distinctions between HPT and
HPI, there is yet another acronym “out there,” HPE, that also appears central for basic
MIST concept understanding
Human Performance Engineering (HPE) as a systematic approach to solving complex problems
experienced by individuals, teams or units.
HPE utilizes Human Performance Technology (HPT), which includes a rigorous analysis of current and
desired levels of performance, to identify the causes for the performance gap, offers a wide range of
interventions, guides the change management process, and provides evaluation and feedback on the
results.
HPE uses HPT in one seamless process for integrating training and non-training solutions in order to
develop and employ human resources wisely so that the actions result in Human Performance
Improvement (HPI).
Some Editorial Comments:
Your opening sentence uses the term “return-in-investment.” Did you mean “return-oninvestment?”
You lead off with benefits of HPE/HPI and ended your opening paragraph
acknowledging you found it refreshing that HPT relies on much more than training to
close the desired performance gap. Like you, I find this refreshing as well.
Your next two paragraphs introduced your organization and clearly identified three
specific areas for organizational performance improvement while simultaneously
incorporating comments pertaining to the likely relevance of HPE/HPI in each of these
areas.
Your closing paragraph concisely amplified your previous comments related to attaining
HPE/HPI intervention to achieve organizational performance improvements “as an
urgent need as this is truly a matter of life and death or health or disease.”
Overall - your narrative is clear, logically organized, easy to follow and compellingly
concluded.
Dana
Re: Week 4 Discussion Forum: Benefits of HPT
by Nancy Palate - Sunday, 20 September 2015, 8:04 PM
Human Performance Technology (HPT) also called Human Performance Improvement (HPI) offers many
benefits to organizations, with return-in-investment in learning and performance being the main one. After all,
human capital is the driving force of the economy of most societies. However, there are other benefits implicit in
HPT and not as obvious: it is systemic and systematic, empirical and flexible enough to allow for any particular
delivery and any audience or any topic needed. At its core, HPT seeks to close the gap between the desired
work performance and the actual state of workforce performance, acknowledging that training is not always the
answer to close this gap (which I found refreshing).
I work for a pretty big government agency with five centers, divided into many divisions, branches, and
programs which total more than 200 programs. It is, like many other government agencies, a bureaucratic
agency full of bureaucratic processes. Human performance technologists could help to change some of the
processes we follow and that are obviously not working, such as the approval time for publications and
documents. I see room for improvement in this area that affects us all because it delays our work and
decreases morale. It ultimately affects the public because information takes a very long time to become public.
Another area where Human performance technologists could help to change is the process we have for
handling social media opportunities for outreach. With the growing need to outreach the public through this
means, the challenges employees face is that clearance and approval are handled by our office of public affairs
which are few and may be disconnected from the community need, lacking the perspective and sense of
urgency.
I see human performance technologists identifying the cause for the gap and helping us to select the
intervention that makes the most sense to help us to speed the process of informing Californians on health
issues. It may sound alarming but I could sell this to upper management as an urgent need as this is truly a
matter of life and death or health and disease.
Reiser, R. A. & Dempsey, J. V. (eds.) (2012). Trends and issues in instructional design and technology, 3rd.
ed. Boston: Pearson.