What is: HPT - Human Performance Technology

From: The Final Report to the ISPI Board of Directors from an ISPI Presidential Task Force.

Human Performance Technology – An integrated systems approach to improving human performance.

Criteria to Judge applications of HPT:
1. Is focused on valuable, measured results;
2. Considers the larger system context of people’s performance;
3. Provides valid and reliable measures of the effectiveness of those applications

Clearly describes applications grounded in prior research or empirical evidence (or are not discouraged by either one) so that they may be replicated under the conditions and by the means for which they were recommended*

*When stated this way, intuition and respected practice are permitted and encouraged (provided they meet the first three criteria) without scientific evidence provided that there is no research evidence that it may not work under the conditions or by the means where it is being recommended.

Our definition of human performance is: “those valued results produced by people working within a system.”

Assumptions:
▪ A technology is a set of empirical and scientific principles and their application
▪ Human performance technology is the technology concerned with all variables which impact human performance
▪ All organizational processes and practices impact the production of valued results, whether positively or negatively and whether those results go measured or unmeasured, acknowledged or not. (Everything that an organization does affects what it accomplishes, whether or not the results are acknowledged or desirable.)
▪ The purpose of all organizations is the same: to create value for their stakeholders; this is accomplished by aligning all processes, practices, and resources to maximize the production of that value.

We collaborate with and value the expertise of other disciplines; human performance technology becomes the integrator and multiplier.

- Submitted by Guy W. Wallace, CPT on behalf of the ISPI Presidential Task Force chartered by the ISPI Board of Directors in 2003 to refine our definition and framework for Human Performance Technology (HPT), which included the following participants: Roger Addison, John Amarant, Rick Battaglia, Carl Binder, Dale Brethower, Michael Cassidy, Richard Clark, Timm Esque, Jeanne Farrington, Ingrid Guerra, Ruhe Hao, Roger Kaufman, Doug Leigh, Karen Medsker, Margo Murray, Jim Pershing, Geary Rummler, Marilyn Spatz, Ray Svenson, John Swinney, Don Tosti, Guy Wallace, Charline Wells, and Klaus Wittkuhn.





www.ispi.org
# # #