After learning about recruiting and selecting the right employees, we learnt about how to train the employees effectively and how to maintain their development.
Right at the beginning it is important to define the difference between these two terms.
Training focuses on current lack of skills of individual employees and its target is to fix some current problem. Development on the other hand, is much more complex process that focuses on the future of an organization as a whole. Through development a company prepares the workforce for the future.
I will focus on training first. Training might often be viewed as negative by employees as they might feel that they are being punished for performing badly. It is up to the management to highlight the positives of participating at a training.
When setting the training strategy in a company, the HR department has to consider the following:
- Could the problem be solved by a training? Isn't the problem poor material, morale, wrong process, or other factors that cannot be fixed by training?
- Setting realistic goals that will be clearly viewed after finishing the training
- The costs of the training vs. the outcomes. Complex training system can be very costly with unclear outcomes, on the other hand, not conducting any training can cost much more (e.g. if managers are not trained in preventing discrimination, they be legally punished).
- The role of participants- they need to be active in order to gain something from the training.
There are two main areas of skills that need to be trained: Hard skills (operating machines, using new software), where the result can be viewed very quickly and not conducting such training might cause that employees are not able to proceed with they work. Soft skills are much harder to measure but they also improve rapidly employees' efficiency. It is for example team work skills, communication training or cross-cultural management.
The process of managing training has three phases: needs assessment -> development and conduct of training -> evaluation.
The needs assessment is done internally and it considers the needs of a person, organization and task. To evaluate these areas KSAs (knowledge, skills, abilities) are used. Based on these factors, the objectives are clarified and the training type is selected. A special type is training workers, who are sent to an international assignment (so called expatriates). In that case country, job and worker's characteristics must be considered.
The conduct phase is the training itself. There are more aspects that need to be considered, firstly, it is the location: OJT- on-the-job strategy might prove relevant to the job and cheap, but might also result in customer frustration (training employees directly in the cinema while selling tickets) and also it is not standardized so it makes it hard for the employee to prove being trained for some future employee. Off-the-job training on the other hand might struggle with transferability of skills to the job.
The trainer has to also decide, which presentation option to choose, among traditional ones (slides, videotapes, classroom instruction, role-plays) then there are also more innovative ways (simulations, virtual reality), which we saw on the case of McDonald's training and has been proved to be very effective. Generally the most effective is some kind of combination of classroom training supported by other means (as it is in Nando's case).
Finally, there are many different types of trainings depending on which skills are necessary to be practiced. Usually employees are provided with skills training and job aids (additional material that workers get to use after the training whenever needed), other common trainings include retraining (due to changing environment), cross-functional training (job rotation), team training (focus on content tasks- e.g. problem solving, on group processes- how the team performs and finally on virtual teams as well). Commonly, the skills in creativity, literacy, diversity, ethics, crisis or customer service are also trained) .
Finally, the evaluation phase assess effectiveness in both monetary and non-monetary terms. It mostly consider four levels: the reaction of trainees (subjective reactions on satisfaction scale), the skills learnt (through a test or exercise), the behavior of trainees (by observes present at the training), and of course the results as a financial measure (for example by ROI calculation).
The legal issues in the field of training concerns the same areas as the recruiting, so it is mostly about making sure, that everybody has the same access to trainings no matter what gender or nationality.
Very important aspect is also the orientation process, which usually happens at the very start of a new employee and involves an orientation program (information about job and company) and socialization. It is important to set Realistic Job Preview (RJP) and prepare new employee on both- positive and negative aspects of the job.
An effective training program is a key to become innovative company attractive for new employees. As seen in both cases, Nando's and McDonald's, traditional classroom trainings are not enough and investment in innovative ways can pay off numerously while also saving time and providing employees with fun. There is not a single 'recipe' to create the perfect training system but generally, a combination of more ways supported by materials that can be used later might lead to a very effective training process.
In my previous job, we had a very complex training system. Before starting, we had to participate at 8 compulsory workshops conducted in classrooms, where we were taught basics aspects of teaching as well as organization's core values. After that we could participate at workshops about various topics that took place every Friday. We were always provided a lot of materials we could then use. Also we all had a mentor (called a senior teacher), who was supposed to be there as a help for us. I didn't really like this concept because the senior teacher only visited my lessons and then gave feedback so it all felt more like a ways to control our job rather than helping us. After each feedback session, we worked on my individual development plan, where I wrote what I want to work on. I am happy that I was given so many opportunities to grow at my past job.
Further, I am going to focus on the second part of this week's study, Developing careers. as I mentioned above, development is a long process that help people be ready for the future and remain a vital part of an organization. In today's changing world, the careers are not predictable and often don't take linear progress. Development and grow of employees is important for both, employees and employers.
An active participation from workers is much more needed in the case of development.
Also in this field, there are challenges an organization has to be ready for. The most important are: The balance between the role of the manager in helping employees to progress vs. the role of employees themselves in implementing their career plans. It is up to the managers to set realistic expectations, give precise description of the jab tasks and assess realistically the work of their subordinates. Other aspect is how much emphasis should be given on employees progressing with their careers. After all, the main thing is to fulfill the core tasks and building a career is a secondary thing. And finally, the company again has to make sure that everybody is given the equal chance and that career decisions are made purely based on skills and knowledge.
The process of meeting the challenges is following: the assessment phase, direction phase and development phase.
In the first phase, a self-assessment has to be done as well as an assessment of the organization. Both sides have to decide who they are right now, what they want to be in the future and what can they do to reach it. The ways to do this are especially skills assessment exercises , interest inventory and values clarification. Managers continuously make decisions about the advancement of potential employees to be ready for unexpected situations. This process is called promotability forecasts. A company should also always work on preparing people to fill executive positions, which is called succession planning. Usually small businesses struggle with this action and then may face unexpected interruption of work.
After assessing, the second phase, the direction phase takes place. In this phase, three key competences are important: understanding the business environment, making it happen and leading others. Big companies provide employees with either individual career counseling, which is usually done by HR stuff or by managers under HR supervision. Companies also prepare information services to let the employees know about open positions, or possible career paths. There might also be career resource center, where employees can find a lot of helpful information.
And lastly, the development phase. In modern companies, employees have some kind of support that helps them with their career progress. This might be a mentoring program, where there is a mentor (usually an older, more skilled employee) and a mentee. These two meet on a regular basis to discuss career options. Less formal and also less common support program is coaching. The problem is that in today's flatter organizations, managers have usually way too many subordinates and no time for some informal meetings. I have already mentioned in the last week's topic job rotation, which is also used to give employees another view and provide them with a wide range of skills.
In this chapter the importance of self-development is highlighted. Even if a company provides the best career development systems, it is always mainly up to the individual people to plan, evaluate effectively and to be proactive to reach what they aim for.
It is important to differentiate between a development, which relates mostly to enhancing skills and advancement, which directly corresponds to moving up on the career ladder.
Everybody should evaluate, what are the key indicators of success, whether it is money, work or family and plan career and progressing according to that.
I believe that nowadays the possibility to progress is one of the key factors when deciding on a job and that's why a company should invest and focus on giving enough options to proceed with one's career. I found an article on the Monster website (a job search website popular in the USA) that shows the 10 companies that put the great effort in the training and development process. I was surprised to see Amazon on the third place since I have read numerous articles, where former employees complained about working for this company.
Sources:
Diginomica. Super-sized gamification for training- McDonald's is lovin' it. Available from: https://diginomica.com/2016/06/08/super-sized-gamification-for-training-mcdonalds-is-lovin-it/. Accessed: 28.1.2018.
Gómez-Mejia, L. & Balkin, D. & Cardy, R. Managing Human Resources. Pearson Global Edition. 8th edition.
Human Resource Management Interantional Digest. Nando's tastes success through training. Available from: http://ezproxy.haaga-helia.fi:2104/doi/pdfplus/10.1108/09670730610656879. Accessed: 28.1.2018.
Monster. 10 Companies with awesome training and development programs. Available from: https://www.monster.com/career-advice/article/companies-with-awesome-training-development-programs. Accessed 30.1.2018.
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