Week 10: Human Performance Tech: Concepts & Process Models

Human Performance Technology, also sometimes referred to as Human Performance Improvement (though the two terms are not interchangeable and are in fact discernably different), is on the surface exactly what it sounds like: technology or improvements designed for and applied to humans in order to increase valued performance. The key word here is value. HPI and HPT are value-based, in that they are designed and implemented for the purpose of an outcome that is considered valuable not only to the end user or the person at the top of the corporate food chain, but to everyone involved with or affected by the improvement.

Stakeholders, as they are called (e.g. anyone involved with a process with a defined outcome, like a project or design development), are not unfamiliar roles. Before, however, stakeholders were largely the management or C-level personnel combined with investors, stockholders, and other individuals financially impacted by projects and processes. In academia, they could be the Board of Trustees. Now, stakeholders has begun to take on a more colloquial verbiage, and applies to everyone. Everyone, from the designers to the end users to management to customers to organizations to potentially even society itself. Thus the holistic aspect of HPI and HPT. With so many stakeholders and impacts taken into consideration, it is much more apt to view the project or design or improvement with that broadened mindset. No longer is it merely a focus on improving a business process or an inefficiency. Now, outcomes focus on improving value for all.

I found it very interesting to read about human capital in its relationship with HPI and HPT. When I first encountered the term human capital, it was in my first macroeconomics course in college. My professor drew circles on the board, taking up a large chunk of the white board, and then pointed at the grouping. These, he said, signify people. In this class, in order to look at some of the systems and economic outcomes we'll be discussing, we will no longer refer to them as people. Human capital as a phrase, after that course, makes me wrinkle my nose in distaste for the callousness of certain macroeconomic systems. It is important for discussions of HPI and HPT, however, because interest in human capital led to some of the HPI and HPT work currently being researched accomplished. Fortunately, in this case, the macroeconomic basis that moved HPI and HPT into the limelight was the data showing that the economic success of a country could be tied to knowledge and improvements in its populace. It is a far cry from the industrial labor that drove that last major upheaval in working conditions, and fortunately this one does not involve child labor and unsafe factory conditions.

More to the point, human capital is more important than ever in an ultra connected global economic stage. With changes in business and the need for agility and knowledge sharing worldwide, incorporating HPI and HPT can drive economic success. In the world of business, this translates directly into an increased need for training development and successful implementation: and that is where IST comes in.