Browsing by Author "Nevalainen, Juho"

The aim of this Master's thesis is to describe and analyze the processes supporting learning new work tasks and to study employees wishes of how to support their learning. The research is located in the context of organizational change and studies the importance of social learning, communities of practice and legitimate peripheral participation in learning new work tasks. The communities of practice theory has been utilized to study learning of new work tasks in previous studies as well. The research is based on the assumption that more experienced colleagues and work practice will support learning new work tasks. For the study, 14 individuals were interviewed from three different units of a particular organization. All the interviewees had had to learn new work tasks during organizational change. In the data collection a theme interview was used with a semi-structured structure. The interviews were conducted as individual interviews. The analysis of the data was done using theoretically directed content analysis. The results of the research were classified into these key categories: help gained from a more experienced person, asking from a more experienced person, learning by working with a more experienced person and learner's own influence on learning. Also, the results showed that learning in guidance training and training programs organized by sales representatives had supported learning, along with learning through practice. Internet was also found to be a source of information for some. Employees hoped for more guidance training, especially targeted training was hoped for and both time and investment were desired for learning new work tasks. Working with a more experienced colleague and learning through practice support the underlying assumptions and theories used in this study. Based on the results of the research, organizations could benefit from employees working with a more experienced colleague and by arranging different kind of training programs.