Learning Plan: Employee view

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3.1 Career Development portlet and learning plan prerequisites

This section discusses who can use this portlet (roles and permissions required) and addresses other prerequisites that must be in place prior to creating a Learning Plan.

򐂰 Who can access this portlet?

All users in the LDAP directory who are rostered in the Learning Management System (LMS). Based on the level of access, the user can create, edit, and delete Learning Plans.

򐂰 Who can create the Learning Plan?

This feature is available for users with Manager role in LMS. The Managers of the organization can create and edit Learning Plans for their employees.

򐂰 Who can read the Learning Plan?

An employee has read-only access to his or her Learning Plan.

Figure 3-1 shows the Career Development portlet in IBM Workplace Collaboration Services.

Figure 3-1 Career Development portlet

Features in Career Development portlet V2.5 include:

򐂰 Multiselect/deselect functionality. The default state is all unchecked.

򐂰 Modify Jobs and Skills: Select the check box for an employee name and click this button to change jobs and skills on the Modify Jobs and Skills page. For one employee, the page is unchanged from Lotus Workplace 2.0, but for two or more employees, the page is a modified version of the Modify Jobs and Skills page used for a single employee. (Read more at 3.3, “Adding a job” on page 19 and 3.4, “Assigning additional skills” on page 20.) Note: Two prerequisites must be fulfilled before the manager can create a Learning Plan for an employee:

򐂰 A skills dictionary should be made available on the server. (See 1.1, “Overview of Skills Management” on page 2.)

򐂰 Courses should be associated with skills and jobs. (See 2.1, “View courses associated with a skill” on page 8 and 2.3, “View courses associated with a job” on page 13.)

Chapter 3. Career Development portlet 17

򐂰 Remove from List (known as the Clear list button in Lotus Workplace 2.0): One or more employees can be removed from the list by selecting their check boxes and clicking this button. (The Modify Jobs and Skills and Remove from List columns have been removed and these functions are performed using check boxes and buttons.)

򐂰 A new column, Additional Skills, has been added to the Employees table. The Jobs and Additional Skills columns can hold long details and multiple items, which should be comma delimited and employ text wrapping within the column width.

The following sections outline how to assign jobs and additional skills to employees and create a Learning Plan.

3.2 Finding an employee

To use the Find Employee feature in the portlet:

1. Click Find Employees to open the Find Employees page, where a search for employees can be carried out and the Learning Plan can be created.

Figure 3-2 UI to find an employee

Highlights of this Find Employees page include:

– People search: This page enables the user to select people from the LDAP directory using LDAP attributes.

The search can be carried out based on any of these criteria:

employee’s first name, last name, common name, user ID, e-mail address, department number, organization, or job, or an additional skill. By default, the job and additional skills fields are blank.

– The Results per page field enables a user to designate how many results will be shown per page. The default setting is 10 results per page and the maximum valid value is 100. Invalid entries (that is, greater than 100 or less than 1, or a non-integer) are ignored, and the default value of 10 is used if the value is invalid (0 or less, a non-integer, or blank). If the number is greater than 100, 100 is used.

User-defined entries are valid only for a specific session, and the default value returns for the next session. The default setting here is 10 results per page.

– Find Employees search results are listed in alphabetical order by surname.

2. Type the employee details into the appropriate fields.

3. Select the appropriate user entry.

4. Click Search to search the information that is available on the LDAP server. The search results are shown on the same page, below the initial criteria.

Figure 3-3 Search results appear at the bottom of the page shown in Figure 3-2 on page 17

Note: The People search functionality is similar to the partitioning feature in the User tab in Learning Management System.

Note: It is assumed that the LDAP server has already been set up, as this is a prerequisite for IBM Workplace Collaboration Services.

Chapter 3. Career Development portlet 19 5. Click OK to save the selection, or Cancel to discard the changes. This returns you to the

Career Development portlet page. The selected employee has been added to the view.

Figure 3-4 Employee added to Career Development portlet UI

3.3 Adding a job

New functionality has been introduced in IBM Workplace Collaborative Learning 2.5 that enables you to assign multiple jobs to the same employee using the Modify Jobs and Skills button shown in Figure 3-4. Similarly, many employees can be assigned to a single job by selecting check boxes next to their names and clicking Modify Jobs and Skills.

To add a job to a specific employee, or group of employees, perform the following tasks:

1. Select one or more employees in the list. Click Modify Jobs and Skills.

2. In the window that opens, click Add Job to open the Find Jobs page (Figure 3-5 on page 20).

Important prerequisites and examples:

򐂰 To assign a single job or skill to a group of users (for example, a Line Manager wants to add the job J2EE Developer to all employees in the department), the Line Manager and people in his or her department must be in LDAP, and the J2EE Developer job must be in the IBM Workplace Collaborative Learning system.

򐂰 To add a single skill to a group of employees (for example, the HR Manager wants to add the Export Compliance skill to all permanent regular employees), the HR Manager must be in LDAP, and the Export Compliance skill must be in the system. Set the employee type attribute to Regular.

Figure 3-5 Page illustrating jobs found based on specific criteria

3. Search for a job using one or more of the fields and click OK.

4. Jobs and their descriptions that are available on the IBM Workplace Collaborative Learning server appear. Select a job and click OK.

3.4 Assigning additional skills

After a job is assigned to an employee, all skills associated with the job will be assigned to that employee automatically. Additional skills can also be assigned to the employee.

This task also uses the Modify Jobs and Skills button. Select the job in the pull-down list, search for the desired additional skill for the employee, and click OK. The skill appears in the employee’s listing (Figure 3-6 on page 21). See 3.8.1, “Additional skills” on page 24 for additional information.

Note: Additional skills can not be the same as those assigned to the job.

Chapter 3. Career Development portlet 21 Figure 3-6 Employee added to Career Development UI with jobs and additional skills assigned

3.5 Creating a Learning Plan

Check the box next to an employee in the Employees list shown in Figure 3-6, and click the icon to create the Learning Plan. The window shown in Figure 3-7 pops up.

Figure 3-7 Learning Plan

Select from the jobs that are assigned to an employee, and choose a skill from the Skill Name pull-down list. The required Proficiency Level, as well as the Target Proficiency and Current Proficiency pull-down lists, appear on the page (as shown in Figure 3-8 on page 22). Refer to 2.1, “View courses associated with a skill” on page 8.

3.6 Proficiency gap

Each job is associated to one or more skills, and each skill has a required proficiency level related to that job. (For details, see 1.2.5, “Rating Scales view” on page 6.) A proficiency gap is the gap between the employee’s current proficiency level and the required proficiency level.

To assign the target proficiency and the current proficiency to the skill that was selected in the Skill Name list, select the proficiency level for the target and current proficiencies (Figure 3-8).

Click Add Other Courses, search for one or more courses, and select them. A proficiency gap is displayed along with the courses that the employee needs to attend to fill the proficiency gap.

Figure 3-8 Proficiency Gap

3.7 Add courses

Clicking Add Courses opens the Find Courses window (Figure 3-9 on page 23), where you can search for courses, curricula, and certificates using one or more fields. These courses should already be created and offered in the Learning Management System (LMS).

(LMS is a Web-based learning system designed for both self-paced and instructor-led classes. All work is done through a browser. More details can be found at:

http://www-10.lotus.com/ldd/notesua.nsf/find/lms

Based on the search criteria, the results show details of the courses, curricula, and certificates that are available on the LMS.

Chapter 3. Career Development portlet 23 Figure 3-9 Find courses

Check the box beside each course that you want to add to the Learning Plan of the employee, or can add all of the courses by checking the box beside the Name column.

3.8 Adding activities

Similar to Add Courses, you can add an activity to the employee’s Learning Plan.

Figure 3-10 Learning Activity Details

After the courses and the activity have been added to fill up the proficiency gap, the Learning Plan appears similar to Figure 3-11 on page 24.

Figure 3-11 Learning Plan

3.8.1 Additional skills

Employees might like to develop extra skills to move on to a different job or to the next level of their current role. Additional skills can be gained by completing some courses or doing a special activity. To add an additional skill to the employee’s Learning Plan:

1. Click Find Skills.

2. On the page that appears, search for the skills that have not been added to a job.

3. Click OK. The skills are displayed as shown in Figure 3-12.

Figure 3-12 Additional skill

4. Click OK to add these details to the employee’s Learning Plan.

Chapter 3. Career Development portlet 25 5. Select the appropriate target and current proficiency levels for the additional skills. Click

OK to save the Learning Plan.

Figure 3-13 Assign additional skills

6. The message shown in Figure 3-14 appears. Click OK to save the Learning Plan assignment.

Figure 3-14 Save job and skill assignments

7. You are returned to the Career Development portlet, which shows details of the employee and the job assigned.

Note: Only those skills that are not already associated with the job will be displayed in the Career Development UI page. This page will not display the skill that has been added as an additional skill and also associated with the job.

Note: To delete the Learning plan, click the icon in the Remove from List column.

3.9 Learning Plan: Employee view

After the manager creates a Learning Plan, employees can log on to the Lotus Workplace.

This opens the window shown in Figure 3-15.

Figure 3-15 Career Development UI (Employee view)

1. Click Find Employees.

2. On the Find employee page, an employee can search for her own record, which in turn searches the Employee record on the LDAP server. Click OK after selecting the employee’s entry.

3. This returns you to Career Development UI page, where the Modify Learning Plan button will not be available (Figure 3-16).

Figure 3-16 View the Learning Plan

When multiple employees are returned, the search results look more like Figure 3-17 on page 27. Click the button to preview the Learning Plan.

Note: Employees cannot access editor level on their own Learning Plans.

Chapter 3. Career Development portlet 27 Figure 3-17 Results for multiple employees

Figure 3-18 illustrates a snapshot of a Learning Plan when logged in as an employee with no Manager access level rights.

Figure 3-18 Employee view of a Learning Plan

© Copyright IBM Corp. 2005. All rights reserved. 29