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To explain and demonstrate an interactive approach to skill development and knowledge attainment that may serve varied purposes for employee learning and development.

The paper explains in detail and demonstrates the process of skill charting. Skill charting is an interactive, constructivist approach to learning. The process, as a training design, is contrasted with a more traditional training design to demonstrate how performance was improved.

Team leaders trained with skill charting performed more effectively, in general, with regard to several performance behaviors than did a comparable group of team leaders trained with other methods. The findings support the efficacy of skill charting as a process.

The skill charting process as presented in this paper adds to the tool‐box of the professional trainer, the human resources specialist, and managers. The process, as a sequence of events, offers a template for a variety of employee development activities. The process can be used for training purposes, for exploration of new skills, for some change initiative, and for other purposes. The approach involves employees directly in performance improvement as well as increasing the likelihood that changes in work practices will achieve greater employee acceptance.

The skills‐charting process offers a practical tool and multi‐faceted resource. While related to quality improvement tools such as the Affinity Diagram and the Relationship Diagram, the process offers a wide range of training and development possibilities that spring from graphical and representational origins. The grounding of the approach in transformative and constructivist learning concepts establishes strong motivational prompts for participants.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the potential benefits of integrating self-regulated learning with skill charting, a training and development tool. The following areas are examined: manager-as-coach, self-regulated learning, and skill development through skill charting.

This discussion of manager stimulation through the integration of self-regulated learning and skill charting is based on an extensive literature review of recent research as well as that done by the authors.

There are many practical opportunities for managers to enhance self-regulated learning of employees using skill charting. Because self-regulated learners tend to reflect a growth mindset they are more likely to engage in performance improvement, change and innovation. These personal characteristics are highly valued by most managers as they may provide a competitive advantage for organizations. Managers, acting as coaches with individuals or small groups, can be instrumental in helping employees to internalize self-regulating learning practices at the same time the employees participate in learning important job skills. The approach offered here also encourages team-building skills, knowledge acquisition, and employee engagement.

This fresh look at an integration of self-regulated learning with the skill-charting approach offers specific, practical suggestions for manager stimulation of self-regulated learning.

This paper serves several purposes. It provides a brief exposition on the general definitions and features of skills and competence in organizations, presents an overview of skill charting, offers specific methods to demonstrate training for skill development using constructivist approaches (skill charting/competency mapping); and then presents the results of a brief study that encompasses the approaches discussed. The findings of the study indicate that the skill charting methods have value, promise, and that they require further study.

What is Occupational Analysis? Occupational analysis is a rigorous analysis and specification of skills and sub‐skills within an occupation. Various analysis methods have been tried, probably starting with the Swedish Sloyd method for organising manual training. From this system, which concentrated on purely manual skills, a revised form, sometimes called “course construction”, was developed in the US.

This paper aims to complement an earlier article (2010) in Journal of European Industrial Training in which the description and theory bases of scenistic methods were presented. This paper also offers a description of scenistic methods and information on theory bases. However, the main thrust of this paper is to describe, give suggested uses for, and then to examine the empirical research already conducted on three scenistic methods: skill charting, case‐based modeling and performance templates. The thrust of the research review is to examine the efficacy of each of the three methods.

Following the descriptive information regarding scenistic methods in‐general, each of the three specific methods (see above) are explained in detail as they might be used in training practice. Then, for each method, samples of the extant empirical research attendant to the method is examined.

With regard to the empirical research presented in the paper it is found that in most practical applications of the methods, employees trained with scenistic methods out‐perform employees trained with more conventional methods on some if not most of the variables under examination. The findings demonstrate that scenistic methods clearly have promise, although statistical precision is compromised owing to small sample sizes.

Studying the effects of different forms of training in these studies is constrained because the very nature and design of scenistic training approaches limits the number of trainees that can be included in a group. In brief, this means that results of use of conventional statistical tools demonstrate less sensitivity to group‐to‐group differences in performance. It is much easier to demonstrate statistical significance if comparing large groups of 60 or more individuals, each. Regardless, comparisons of groups in the reported studies demonstrate significant differences in performance following training on most variables.

Overall, scenistic methods show much promise for use by training practitioners as the available empirical research, in the field, demonstrates their value.

The paper groups together the findings of use of a variety of scenistic methods of training. There has been practically no research reported in recent years of the efficacy of methods such as these that use cases, incidents, stories, etc. to ground training and practice.

The purpose of this paper is to make clear some of the issues and problems that confront the small to medium‐sized enterprise (SME) when it comes to the training and development of employees. The paper aims to present a training methodology specifically for the small business.

The scenistic method, which involves trainees directly in the creation of strategies to improve performance in some domain, has been introduced in prior literature, and is proposed as particularly appropriate for the small business environment.

Very small enterprises provide workplace training in a significantly different manner than do larger organizations. Usually, the owner‐manager conducts whatever training there is and the training provided addresses only what is needed at the moment rather than be part of an overall training strategy. Workplace training correlates with employee satisfaction and lower turnover. However, often the very small enterprise does not have the resources to provide such a training program. This paper proposes an on‐the‐job training model for very small organizations.

The scenistic method provides an inexpensive training opportunity that is tailored to specific needs. It may be conducted on site. It is flexible. Both the owner/manager and the employees play key roles in the training experience. It is experiential and hands on. And, it provides a model that is adaptable across several skill needs.

This paper introduces a training method to SMEs that can be easily adopted and used. Training and development of employees matters. Studies show that competitive advantage is compromised if employees are not adequately trained. Competition is demanding enough but when employees of the SME are less well equipped per knowledge and skills than their counterparts in larger businesses, the small firm is likely further disadvantaged. A trained, knowledgeable employee adds value to the firm and helps the firm to be more competitive. The scenistic method will allow the very small SME to effectively address these critical issues.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the skill mapping process in a manufacturing organization and to examine its relationship with the select performance indicators, such as quality and defects. This paper also explores the role of the supervisor in the whole process of skill mapping of the blue-collar employees.

The study uses a case-based approach and the company selected is Mahindra and Mahindra Ltd, Swaraj Division, located in Phase 4, Industrial Area, Mohali (Punjab). The qualitative aspect of the paper is based on ten semi-structured interviews of the senior-level managers. These interviews are conducted in order to understand the role of the supervisor in skill mapping process and its relationship with the organizational performance. The quantitative aspect is based on the regression analysis to find out the impact of skill index on select performance indicators.

The results of the study indicate that the role of the supervisor in performance appraisal is very important in the whole process of skill mapping. Swaraj is an example where a robust skill mapping process for blue-collar employees have supported the business in improving the skill of employees and consequently supporting the business to perform well on key deliverables, such as better quality and less defects. The select variables are inter-correlated and variations in the select organizational performance indicators (production and defects) are due to variations in the skill index of the blue-collar employees in the manufacturing organization. The performance indicators of the manufacturing organization in terms of manufacturing defects have declined and also the production has increased, which is a good indicator for the organization.

The present study is of interest to researchers who are trying to understand the system for skill mapping and utilization of appraisal inputs in improving organizational performance.

To the authors’ best knowledge, this paper is one of the first to address the skill mapping process in a manufacturing organization especially for the blue-collar employees.

Charting is a method of improving the effectiveness of meetings, by continuously recording the progress of discussion in a form that everyone can read. Typically this means writing with a broad felt‐tipped pen on a large pad of white paper fixed to a wall or blackboard. Some benefits of charting are:

Recently, there has been increasing focus on the development of multi-skilled workforce in project management. The purpose of this paper is to investigate a multi-skill project scheduling problem (MSPSP), which combines project scheduling and multi-skill personnel assignment. The distinct features of skill evolution and cooperation effectiveness are considered in the problem to maximize the total project effectiveness and skill development simultaneously.

The Bi-objective non-linear integer programming (LIP) models are formulated for the problem using three types of skill development objective function: number of experts, total skill increment and “bottleneck” skill increment. Non-linear models are then linearized through several linearization techniques, and the ε-constraint method is used to convert the bi-objective models into single-objective models.

A construction project case is used to validate the proposed models. In comparison with models that do not consider skill evolution and cooperation effectiveness, the models proposed in this paper offer more realistic solutions and show better performance with regard to both project effectiveness and skill development.

This research extends the current MSPSP by considering skill evolution based on the “learning effect” as well as the influence of cooperation in an activity-based team, which are common phenomena in practice but seldom studied. LIP models formulated in this paper can be solved by any off-the-shelf optimization solver, such as CPLEX. Besides, the proposed LIP models can offer better project scheduling and personnel assignment plan, which would be of immense practical value in project management applications.

The purpose of this study was to investigate how pension funds use charts in popular reports. Popular reports communicate a fund’s financial health to non-technical audiences, and often contain charts, tables, and other graphical elements. Do these graphics meet audiences’ information needs and align with chart best practices?

This study focused on the 60 retirement funds receiving a 2021 popular report award from the Government Finance Officers Association. The author analyzed each graphic’s topic and design.

Most funds presented key topics (such as funding rate and portfolio return), but they generally lacked helpful benchmarks or peer comparisons. A total of 30% of reports had one or more broken charts, where their visual elements did not match the underlying data. A total of 70% of the reports contained at least one badly designed chart. These design flaws included non-zero (truncated) axes, hidden non-zero axes and misleading 3D perspectives.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is the first to examine chart quality in pension fund popular reports.