Training is all the more critical in todays fast-changing environment, best practices are always evolving, and technology keeps on changing. The main objectives of staff training and development are to improve the qualities of the trainee, formulation of objectives for different needs and ways of achieving it. Development of the employees involves changes in an organisation that are systematic, organized and successive in the way they do their jobs. The changes may be quantitative or qualitative but it is always progressive.
The survival of a business enterprise depend to which extent development exist as it will affect its competitive advantage while training makes the organisation more effective and efficient in its day to day operations. Developing and maintaining a successful business organisation is accomplishes through trained, competent and confident people, which are position in the organisation that is they are able to do what they are best at.
Definition of Training and Development
Training can be defined as the acquisition of knowledge, skills, and competencies as a result of the teaching of vocational or practical skills and knowledge that relate to specific useful competencies. Training has specific goals of improving one's capability, capacity, and performance. It forms the core of apprenticeships in addition to the basic training required for a trade, occupation or profession. It has been observed that the need to continue training beyond initial qualifications is to maintain, upgrade and update skills throughout working life. People within many professions and occupations may refer to this sort of training as professional development.
On the other hand, Human Resource development can be defined the process whereby the employees are continuously helped in a planned way to acquire or sharpen capabilities requires to perform various tasks associated with their present and future expected roles. Development of employees is known to be a continuous process by which can take the form of new challenges and opportunities, additional training courses to learn new skills, promotion with additional delegate authority and chances for job enrichment. Development is a process that aids people to grow as they are able to discover their own inner potential for themselves and also for the organisational development purpose. Continual Staff Development is defined as an ongoing process which helps the workforce to achieve their full potential and this process is linked to the motivational theories.
Importance of Training and Development
The significance and value of training has long been recognized. An organization needs to train effectively so that the investment results in growth and success. Training and development is crucial for organizational development and success. It is fruitful to both employers and employees of an organization. An employee will become more efficient and productive if he is trained well. Training and development presents a prime opportunity to expand the knowledge base of all employees, but many employers find the development opportunities expensive. Training and development provides benefits that make the cost and time a worthwhile investment.
An employee who receives the necessary training is better able to perform her job. She becomes more aware of safety practices and proper procedures for basic tasks. The training may also build the employee's confidence because she has a stronger understanding of the industry and the responsibilities of her job. Continuous training also keeps your employees on the cutting edge of industry developments. Employees who are competent and on top of changing industry standards help your company hold a position as a leader and strong competitor within the industry.
Training is a necessity
Advantages of Training and Development
Training is said to be indispensable as it generate many positive outcomes for the enterprise and also for the workers.
ADVANTAGES TO THE COMPANY:
Training and development provides many benefits in a workplace. Training can teach employees new skills and help to implement a new internal process or software system or remind employees of important business policies. It enables new candidates who join an organization to familiarize with the organizational mission, vision, rules and regulations and the working conditions.
It allows the existing employees to refresh and enhance their knowledge. Moreover if any improvement and amendments take place in technology, training will aid to cope up with those changes. For instance in case of purchase of new equipment, changes in technique of production, computer implementation. The employees are trained about use of new equipments and work methods.
Moreover effective training and development programs help to take advantage of new business opportunities. They will give the business the competitive edge by: increasing productivity and standards in production, therefore boosting your business reputation, being able to undertake a greater variety of work and therefore allow the management to expand or open up new markets and they will aid to take advantage of new technologies.
Furthermore, training improves morale of employees as it helps the employee to get job security and job satisfaction. The more satisfied the employee is and the greater is his morale, the more he will contribute to organizational success and the lesser will be employee absenteeism and turnover. In addition when the workforce are given training this will lead to less supervision to be required as a well trained employee will be well acquainted with the job without high level of supervision. Thus, there will be less wastage of time and efforts.
Training increases staff retention which is a significant cost saving, as the loss of one competent person can be the equivalent of one year's pay and benefits. In some companies, training programs have reduced staff turnover by 70 per cent and led to a return on investment of 7,000 per cent. This implies that if proper training is given it will improve the chances of obtaining promotions and employees are happy because they have better opportunities. Therefore leading to less chances of leaving their current job is greatly reduced.
In addition effective training and development reduces the organisation cost and increases profits. More than 60% of IT managers believe that the skill of their teams is the most important success criterion for critical IT functions. Companies in the top quarter in training expenditure per employee per year ($1,500 or more) average 24% higher profit margins than companies that spend less per year, according to HR Magazine.
Another illustration can be in Mauritius, where the government take note of a need that the traditional subjects, the students in our schools and training institutions must be exposed to techniques and tools that have become indispensable in the emerging sectors. The present project will be one of the ways to ensure that there is connectivity between the school and the world of work from an early stage. It will definitely help to reduce the mismatch between the demand for and supply of labour while strengthening the linkage between the schooling system (both secondary and vocational) and the world of work. This is being done by the HRDC. This institution is doing much more by giving training programmes to existing worker in different sector and also to new women entrepreneur or those who desire to start up a business
In Mauritius Small and Medium Enterprises Development Authority SMEDA organizes training programs and seminars, workshops and conferences of short duration in regional centers across the country for raising awareness and capacity building of SMEs. These need-based training programs are affordable, appropriate and innovative. These programs are aimed at improving knowledge, skills and competencies in the technical, marketing, financial, compliance, policy, regulatory, legal, commercial and other important functions.
Moreover, an IBM training assessment found out that a company can save significantly on labor costs with minimal investments in employee skills development. The study concluded with 1,000 employees can save at least $240,000 per year as a result of an average productivity gain of just three minutes per day.
Finally, the labour - management relations are very essential for any organization. Training and development is said to contribute to a better labour -management relations. When companies introduce training programmes and prepare employees for future jobs and promotions they send out a message to the unions that they are interested in employee welfare. Due to this the unions also adopt a positive attitude and labour- management relations improve.
ADVANTAGES TO THE EMPLOYEE:
From another viewpoint, training and development provides advantage not only for the company but also to the employees.
It has been observed that training leads to increase self-confidence in employee. The person is able to adjust to his work environment and doesn't feel humiliated in front of his seniors. This confidence leads to chances of better efforts in the future from the employees. This is because they are being given a chance to learn and develop their skills and talents. This attitude will make them feel trusted by the management and as a result they will be more committed and more devoted to the organisation.
In addition, training programmes give rise to an increased motivation levels that is training brings positive attitude among employees and increases the motivation levels of the employees in the organization, thereby improving the results of the organization. Moreover, it has been noted that an effective training programme helps an employee to take the benefit of the rewards systems and incentives available in the company. Thus the employee is able to get these rewards, which in turn increases his motivation levels.
Furthermore, training and development programmes increase performance and increase the chances of obtaining promotions. Many employees even opt for certain programmes so that they can help the employee to improve his chances of promotions and obtaining higher positions in the organization.
Ultimately, it can be said that an effective training programme not only teaches an employee how to do his work but also trains him to work as a part of the group so training programmes improve group efforts.
Training is just a waste of time and money
Disadvantages of Training and Development
Despite the potential advantages there are also some drawbacks of giving training sessions to employees. As training is not always the answer to performance problems, the management should carefully analyse the need of giving training to employees and if the investment in the workforce is worthwhile. Training is indeed a waste of money when the desired behaviour does not occur.
Most importantly it has been noted that employees tend to miss out on work time while attending training sessions, which may delay the completion of project that is work time is lost when staff are being trained. Although the core objective of training is to improve long-term performance, companies may take a short-term hit in terms of schedules and customer service.
One of the biggest potential problems with employee training is the cost of the process. If you handle the training internally, it costs money because you have to pay one of your employees for training instead of doing productive work. Not anyone can train a person even if an employee is very talented at her job, he will not necessarily be a good trainer for new employees. When it comes to using an employee to train other employees, you might move someone out of her comfort zone and she may be unable to train the new employees expected.
Another potential problem with training employees is that you may not have enough time to do so adequately. For positive effect training need to be of high quality, however, many companies only devote a small amount time to training new employees, and it could result in the employees not knowing everything they need to know to be successful. The trainer may have to rush through the important parts of the job and skip over some of the other tasks that also need to be understood by the employee. Without the right training, employees can be the organization's biggest liability. Trained effectively, however, they can become your biggest asset (Bartram and Gibson, 2000).
Some other disadvantages of providing training to employees are that very often once fully trained, staff may leave for better paid jobs and it is a fact that the financial cost of training is high as represent an expensive investment which is not always fruitful when the rate of labour turnover is high.
Traditional vs. Modern view of Training and Development
Traditional training emphasizes on development of basic and advanced skills, traditionally it refers as a process of increasing knowledge and skills for doing particular job, and it is a set of organized process by which people gain knowledge and skills for a definite purpose. On the other hand, the modern perspective of training emphasizes that training of employees will be required not only to understand the service or product development system but also to share knowledge and to creatively use that knowledge to modify a product or serve the customer. The new perspective to training in present scenario has emerged as leverage training.
Some managers adopts relatively an autocratic style of leadership, they view workers as just a factors of production. They believe that if employees need to be given training they would represent just a waste of time and waste of resources for the organisation. For them they would prefer to hire someone who is already skilful and who require no additional training for the job to be done as far as they are getting a good and fair wage.
These leaders believe in the theory X of Douglas McGregor. According to this theory, managers believe that people willingness to work is based on the external factors, such as financial reward and fringe benefits in order to work effectively. This also the view of F.W Taylor, he said that man was driven or motivated by money alone in order to work efficiently.
The traditional manager prefers to promote high level of supervision to ensure that quality is maintained. For this to be done the supervisor are allowed to put pressure on the workforce and to punish them if needed. For example if any defect or error occurred they might frighten to cut the cost of the damage in the worker's wages, or if the employee repeatedly do errors he might receive a warning letter that he may be fired if error continues. The workers are intend to do what it is told to or face the consequences. The employee is not allowed to have an opinion and if it does, it is often considered to be stubborn or difficult and may risk his job.
On the other hand, managers tend to empower the workforce and give them continuous training as they believe that this is a worthwhile investment in the long run. They delegate work to them and allow them to take care if the quality if good produced, this done in form of Total Quality Management or through Quality Circle. Moreover, the workers are motivated in a different way that is they are given non financial rewards like Job enlargement, Job enrichment, Delegation and Empowerment. In this way, the employees will feel more responsible and will thus be more efficient, effective and productive in doing their job.
It is to be noted that, in traditional training methods problems and errors in the training process tend to be blamed on the workers. In more modern training the trainer takes full responsibility for any problems or difficulties that arise during training. Blame is negative and unproductive, responsibility is constructive. By taking responsibility for a problem the modern trainer remains in control of the situation and can change the outcome by changing their behaviour. When the worker is blamed for the problem then the trainer can do little but wait for the employee to do something different.
Conclusion
To conclude it can be said that even though training might be costly and that it does not answers the performance problem, management needs to provide a training and development programs to the employees as it is considered to be a worthwhile investment in the long run. In addition, an organization needs to train effectively so that the investment results in growth and success. Training and development is crucial for organizational development and success. It is fruitful to both employers and employees of an organization. An employee will become more efficient and productive if he is trained well. Training and development presents a prime opportunity to expand the knowledge base of all employees, even if many employers find the development opportunities expensive. Training and development provides benefits that make the cost and time a worthwhile investment.
