Personnel Learning Behavior in the Workplace: A Study of Workplace Habits

Abstract

Workplace learning is becoming an essential part for an organization to enhance an employee’s knowledge and skill to deliver an enterprise’s business sustainability. To develop a suitable model for workplace learning, this paper aims to investigate learning behavior for personnel in a workplace and to understand the factors that influence learning behavior for technical staff of a plastic packaging company in Bangkok. The data was collected by using a questionnaire that included 3 parts; 1) personal factors 2) learning behavior of personnel in the workplace and 3) factors that influence learning behavior of personnel in the workplace. The target group was 75 technical staff members by a multi-stage sampling. The research findings were that from 3 ways of informal learning behavior in workplace are self-directed learning, networking, and coaching and mentoring, a target group behavior to agree with highest score of self-directed learning at the average score of 3.62, compared with network learning and coaching learning which neither agree nor disagree at average score 3.36 and 3.32, respectively. Moreover, challenges on their job is the most influential factor of their learning behavior in the workplace at average score 3.64 followed by a confidence level and support from the company with an average score 3.53 and 3.38, respectively. Results from the study show that mostly staffs were interested in learning by themselves with encouragement from challenges, confidence level, and support from the organization.