While widely used in public education, portfolios have yet to gain widespread acceptance in enterprise learning and development. Learning practitioners may be missing out on a valuable tool for employee development.
Learning professionals face a number of challenges. The list includes aligning the learning function with organizational goals, developing and retaining staff, linking learning to job performance, measuring learning and performance, and recruiting and hiring quality staff.
These challenges are not new, but using employee portfolios to address these issues may be a novel idea. While portfolios may not be the Swiss Army knife of learning, they can serve as a valuable tool for supervisors and managers.
When most people think of a portfolio, they normally think of photographers, models, musicians or artists. These professionals use their portfolios as a career tool to showcase their work. At a basic level, portfolios provide documentation and evidence of individual performance.
The use of portfolios is not limited to these creative professions. Teachers in the K-12 arena have used portfolios for years, and their use is expanding in workplace learning. Many learning professionals, such as trainers, instructional designers and instructional technology specialists, have begun to use portfolios, as well.
A portfolio is a collection of items that documents and demonstrates an individual’s professional knowledge, skills, abilities and competencies in a tangible way. Items in portfolios are called artifacts. An artifact is concrete evidence of a person’s knowledge, a person’s skill or a demonstration of his or her expertise. Above all, portfolios should demonstrate how the individual helps the organization solve business problems.
Portfolio Contents
Besides basic information, such as a resume, bio, references and performance evaluations, portfolios must include samples of the employee’s work. These items are the heart of the portfolio. Here are some sample categories of documented portfolio items for learning and training professionals:
• Bio (multimedia production).
• Course design plans.
• Courses designed or developed.
• Courses taught.
• E-learning modules designed or developed.
• Evidence of training delivery, such as videos.
• Instructional technology productions.
• Job aids and performance support tools.
• Multimedia productions.
• Online tutorials or Web-based performance tools.
• Reports from projects managed.
• Reports, memos or any other evidence that documents performance.
• Surveys, evaluations or other assessment tools.
• Training needs analysis.
• Writing sample within a professional context (e.g., how training delivers value to organization, role of training in the organization).
Portfolio Organization
Besides solid contents, it is important to organize portfolios for maximum effectiveness. Portfolio items work best when they identify a problem in an organization and then explain how the item helped to solve it using measurable criteria. Ideally, you should briefly explain each item and its significance, the business problem it addressed and what occurred as a measurable result from implementing the item.
This type of portfolio organization helps aligns the learning more clearly to the goals of the company. It also helps employees and units prove their value to the company.
Traditionally, portfolios have been used to get a job, but they now are being used for other reasons. Besides the obvious advantages for recruiters and hiring managers, portfolios can also benefit supervisors and managers. They can be used to:
• Assess employee knowledge, skills and competencies.
• Assess employee strengths and weaknesses.
• Provide a basis for meaningful performance appraisals.
• Differentiate employees for raises, merit pay, promotion or layoffs.
• Select employees for desirable projects.
• Learn about new technologies and trends.
Instead of an employee saying, “I think I did a great job this past year,” with no tangible proof, supervisors could require employees to use portfolios to document their achievements.
Applications for Learning and Development
Using portfolios in the employee learning and professional development function is a natural fit. However, for some learning professionals, especially managers, using portfolios may be fairly new. Many supervisors and managers may know what a portfolio is at a basic level, but few know how to use them as a learning tool in a management capacity.
Standards for Learning and Professional Development
Portfolios can be used to establish standards in an organization for employee performance. This in part helps address the issue of how to measure and evaluate learning. For example, what does a “good” training needs analysis look like? What are the characteristics and criteria for an effective presentation? What are some examples of useful job aids? How does a training manager who has never taught or taken an online class, know what a “good” one looks like?
The answers to these questions may lie in part in using good work samples that can serve as standards, or models, of excellence. Supervisors and managers can use examples of employees’ work to establish initial standards for performance. These items also can be artifacts for the employee’s portfolio.
Individual Assessment
Employees can assess their work by reflecting on their portfolio items. Having something tangible to evaluate is much easier than trying to improve something in the abstract. For example, an employee may look at a video of a presentation he or she made and come up with a variety of specific suggestions to improve the next one. Without having the benefit of the video, assessing performance would be much more difficult. Supervisors and managers can work with the employee in the learning process and provide ideas and feedback on how the employee can improve.
Peer Review
Adult learners are self-directed and have a desire for feedback. While getting feedback from supervisors on work samples is important, it is equally important to solicit reactions and opinions from peers. Peer employees may have more technical expertise and fresher content knowledge than managers, and therefore may be able to provide a different level and type of feedback. Additionally, they may be able to speak more freely since it is not a supervisor-employee relationship. Managers should encourage employees to seek out feedback from their peers on their portfolios, as well as other colleagues.
Knowledge Management
Managers can use portfolios to share organizational knowledge with minimal effort by fostering a climate in which people are encouraged and rewarded when they share work samples and portfolio items. Managers also can provide employees with systems and mechanisms to share such items by developing a framework in which departments and individual employees are enabled to share their work. This might include simple forms, job aids, tutorials, project reports, multimedia productions, training videos and course curriculum.
When people hear the term “knowledge management,” they often think of a formal system that requires a great deal of money and time. Simply putting files on an existing shared computer network or creating a wiki are a couple of easy ways to get started. By giving employees the ability to see samples of other people’s work, they can compare their own work. Seeing others’ work may spur ideas for the creation of new products, services and approaches.
Performance Appraisal
Did you ever get a grade on paper in high school or college and had no idea how the teacher arrived at your grade? Many employee performance appraisals are conducted the same way. Employees often don’t know what to expect. When the performance goal is unclear and there are no measurable standards, it makes it difficult for employees to perform well.
In many organizations, there often are no measurable performance standards or examples of good work that managers can show employees as a guide. A portfolio is a good way to address that issue. Supervisors could use samples of a star employee’s work to show a co-worker what a good training needs analysis or a Web-based tutorial looks like.
For example, a team of trainers might have a video that shows it in action. Documenting that performance is easy to do by using a camcorder. Although written evaluations are a good measure of instructional performance, a video in an employee’s portfolio provides far greater impact. When conducting performance appraisals, portfolios can be used as one more data point to help supervisors make informed and objective decisions.
Here are some other ways portfolios can be used in performance appraisals: differentiating employees for raises, bonuses and promotions; providing real data to discuss performance issues or expectations and benchmark employee performance within a team, department or an organization; and educating supervisors on trends and issues occurring in the trenches.
Career Management
Most people want to advance their careers. In many organizations, employees often don’t know what it takes to progress to the next level and move up the career ladder. Portfolios can help. Supervisors can use employee work samples to demonstrate measurable standards they are looking for in promotion. Organizations can post model portfolios for positions to give employees an idea of what they need to accomplish and what they should have in their portfolios to get to the next level.
Pre-Training and Post-Training Tool
Formal classroom training can fall short when it fails to give employees opportunities to practice what they have learned back on the job. Making the connection between training and the job environment greatly increases an employee’s chances of performing well. Using portfolios in this way provides several opportunities.
1. Employees get an opportunity to apply what they learned in real work situations. Once they successfully apply what they have learned, they can document it and add it as an item in their professional portfolios.
2. Supervisors can observe and evaluate how the employee performs after the training. They can provide specific feedback on the employee’s work. This also can be an opportunity to engage the employee in an ongoing performance appraisal.
3. Depending on the quality of the employee’s work, the finished product can be shared with other staff members as an example of good work.
4. The training staff also can benefit from portfolios. In a preferred scenario, the training staff would work with supervisors and managers during the analysis phase to get their input. The manager could use examples of employee portfolios to show the training staff what type and quality of employee work output they need.
Recruitment
Many leaders indicate that selecting the right people for the job may be the one of the most important decisions managers make. It is difficult for managers to stay on top of the latest trends and technical developments, let alone how to incorporate those into the recruitment and selection process. Seeing good portfolio items may help educate supervisors and managers who have hiring responsibilities.
Many people can talk about how good they are or how wonderful their skills are. However, actually having documented evidence of those skills is very different. Hiring decisions are made on at least some objective data rather than subjective opinions of candidates. Having tangible evidence of an applicant’s performance by using a portfolio can make hiring decisions easier.
Supervisors and managers don’t have a lack of problems. On the other hand, they often suffer from a shortage of resources. This contrast can be a difficult situation to face. If used properly, portfolios can be a good tool to assist supervisors in establishing performance standards, conducting performance appraisals, facilitating informal learning and developing employees.
While portfolios are not a cure-all for workplace learning professionals, they do provide managers with documented employee performance that can assist them in a variety of instances. Considering their low cost, ease of use and wide range of applications, the future for portfolios in the learning profession looks promising.
