Module 1: Introduction to Training and Development

Training and Development

Training focusing on the present and Development focusing on the future.

 Training programs have very specific and quantifiable goals, like operating a particular piece of
machinery, understanding a specific process, or performing certain procedures with great
precision.
o Can be defined as the acquisition of knowledge and skills for present task
o A tool to help individuals contribute to the organization and be successful in their current
position
o Training is a means to an end, successful training must result in changed behaviour
o Training must be tied to performance, otherwise it is an event with little payback for the
organization
o Short termed focus, a year or less
 Developmental programs, on the other hand, concentrate on broader skills that are applicable to
a wider variety of situations, such as decision making, leadership skills, and goal setting.
o The acquisition of knowledge and skills that may be of use in the present or future
o The prep of individuals to enrich the organization in the future
o the Act of being involved in many different types of training activities and classes
o Development is long term focus 1-3 years

Training helps companies:

 create pools of qualified replacements for employees who may leave or be promoted to positions
of greater responsibility
 small business to make use of advanced technology and to adapt to a rapidly changing
competitive environment.
 Finally, training can improve employees' efficiency and
motivation, leading to gains in both productivity and job satisfaction. According to the
 Small businesses stand to receive a variety of benefits from effective training and development of
employees, including reduced turnover, a decreased need for supervision, increased efficiency,
and improved employee morale.

The entire training process should be planned:

 In advance with specific company goals in mind

 The next step is to use this information to identify where training is needed by the organization as
a whole or by individual employees
 The objectives of the training should be clearly outlined, specifying what behaviors or skills
will be affected and how they relate to the strategic mission of the company.This decision should
 be based on the ability of the employee to learn the material and the likelihood that they will be
motivated by the training experience.
 The design of training programs is the core activity of the training and development
function.
 ISD (Instructional Design Models) describes the systematic design and development of
instructional methods and materials to facilitate the process of training and development
and ensure that training programs are necessary, valid, and effective.

On-the-job training describes a variety of methods that are applied while employees are actually
performing their jobs. These methods might include orientations, coaching, apprenticeships, internships,
job instruction training, and job

The main advantages of on-the-job techniques is that they are highly practical,
and employees do not lose working time while they are learning.

Off-the-job training, on the other hand, describes a number of training methods that are delivered to
employees outside of the regular work environment, though often during working hours.

COMMON TRAINING METHODS

Orientations

 Training is conducted through an employee handbook, a lecture, or a one-on-one meeting

with a supervisor, newcomers should receive information on the company's history and
strategic position
Lectures
 A verbal method of presenting information, lectures are particularly useful in situations
when the goal is to impart the same information to a large number of people at one time.
 lectures primarily involve one-way communication, they may not provide the most
interesting or effective training.

Case Study

 students are provided with practical case reports to analyze. students can be encouraged to think
independently as opposed to relying upon the direction of an instructor. The main benefit of the
case method is its use of real-life situations

Role Playing

 students assume a role outside of themselves and play out that role within
a group, even though the scenario is fake, relations are genuine. Furthermore, participants receive
immediate feedback from the facilitator and the scenario itself, allowing better understanding of
their own behavior.

Simulations
  The benefits of games and simulations include the improvement of problem-solving and decision-
making skills, a greater understanding of the organizational whole, the ability to study actual
problems, and the power to capture the student's interest.

Computer-Based Training

 Computer-based training programs are designed to structure and present instructional materials
and to facilitate the learning process for the student. The last is of particular importance because
CBT can provide the student with a simulated experience of operating a particular piece of
equipment or machinery while eliminating the risk of damage to costly equipment by a trainee or
even a novice user.
 Costs are reduced through a reduction in travel, training time, downtime for operational
hardware, equipment damage, and instructors.
 Effectiveness is improved through standardization and
individualization.
 Web-based training (WBT) is an increasingly popular form of CBT

Self-Instruction

 Self-instruction describes a training method in which the students assume primary

responsibility for their own learning. Forms of self-instruction include programmed learning,
individualized instruction, personalized systems of instruction, learner-controlled instruction, and
correspondence study

Audiovisual Training

 Audiovisual training methods include television, films, and videotapes. Like case studies,
role playing, and simulations, they can be used to expose employees to "real world"
situations in a time-and cost-effective manner.
 The main drawback of audiovisual training methods is that they cannot be customized for a
particular audience, and they do not allow participants to ask questions or interact during the
presentation

Team-Building Exercises

 Team building is commonly initiated to combat poor group dynamics, labor-management

relations, quality, or productivity. By recognizing the problems and difficulties associated
 Team building may include a broad range of different training methods, from outdoor immersion
exercises to brainstorming sessions.

Apprenticeships and Internships

 Apprenticeships are a form of on-the-job training in which the trainee works with a more
experienced employee for a period of time.
  Apprenticeships are often used in production-oriented positions. Internships are a form of
apprenticeship that combines on-the-job training under a more experienced employee with
classroom learning.

Job Rotation

 Job rotation may be particularly useful in small businesses, which may feature less
role specialization than is typically seen in larger organizations.

APPLICATIONS OF TRAINING PROGRAMS

Technical training describes a broad range of training programs varying greatly in

application and difficulty. Technical training utilizes common training methods for instruction of technical
concepts, factual information, and procedures, as well as technical processes and principle

Sales training can enhance the employee's knowledge of the organization's products, improve his or her
selling skills, instill positive attitudes, and increase the employee's self-confidence.

Clerical training concentrates on the training of clerical and administrative support staffs,
which have taken on an expanded role in recent years. Clerical training increasingly must instill improved
decision-making skills in these employees as they take on expanded roles and responsibilities

Computer training teaches the effective use of the computer and its software applications,
and often must address the basic fear of technology that most employees face and identify
and minimize any resistance to change that might emerge.

Communications training concentrates on the improvement of interpersonal

communication skills, including writing, oral presentation, listening, and reading.

Organizational development (OD) refers to the use of knowledge and techniques from the
behavioral sciences to analyze an existing organizational structure and implement changes
in order to improve organizational effectiveness

Action research refers to a systematic analysis of an organization to acquire a better understanding of the
nature of problems and forces within it

Career development refers to the formal progression of an employee's position within an

organization by providing a long-term development strategy and designing training
programs to achieve this strategy as well as individual goals.

Management and supervisory development involves the training of managers and

supervisors in basic leadership skills, enabling them to effectively function in their
positions Managers learn to develop their employees effectively by helping employees learn and change,
as well as by identifying and preparing them for future responsibilities.

Training VS Development
How to create a meaningful development Plan
Performance Plans:

 Includes objectives, tasks or project that the employee must accomplish before his next review
 Determination of how performance will be measured and evaluated
 Learning activities that are tied to performance
 A short term focus

Development Plan:
 A list of one to three measureable development objectives
 Long - Term focus (up to three years)
 A focus on the employee's present job or future opportunities
 An action plans

Performance Management
The performance management process is designed to provide employees with the information and
support they need to perform effectively on the-job. Training and development is used as a complement
to this process, with a focus on helping employees develop the skills they need to be
effective.

 Is an ongoing process of communication between a supervisor and an employee that occurs

throughout the year in support of accomplishing strategic objectives of the organization
 The communication process includes: Clarifying expectations, setting objectives, identifying goals,
providing feedback and reviewing results.
 The Cycle
o 1. Planning process: you and employee review all expectations, goals are updated
o 2. Goals and Objectives are discussed throughout the year, during check in meetings
o 3. End of performance period, review the employee's performance against expected
objectives. Together establish new objectives for the next performance period.

Lessons Learned

1. Skill learning requires significant practice: you need more than superficial training
2. Don’t confuse knowledge with skills: Skills activate knowledge
3. Make sure that employees have strong “core skills”: fundamental skills w/o these no foundation
for success
4. Competence is only the beginning of the learning process
5. Teach them to learn
6. Learning out of context is doomed to failure
 7. Learning should be team oriented
8. The purpose of training should be to enable business
9. Effective training is never an event
10. Interpersonal and conceptual skills are as important as technical skills
11. Training needs to reinforce the status quo
12. Timing is crucial to effective training
13. Focus training on the most critical priorities
14. Organizational learning cannot be sustained without management reinforcement
15. Don’t create a training bureaucracy
16. Design and deliver in the least important aspect of training
17. Training must be systemic
18. Measurement is crucial to drive the right kind of learning
19. Effectiveness is the key to e-learning
20. Caveat Emptor

The Benefits of Training and Development

Benefits of Training for Individuals

 Training effects on performance may be subtle (though measurable).

 As a result of informal training, one of the mechanics had a “good feeling of how to hit the metal
at the exact spot so the work progresses in a systematic fashion” (Barber 2004, p. 134). This type
of tacit skill

 training was found to affect changes in worker skills through a change in trainees’ knowledge
structures or mental models

 They ascertained that the largest effects were for declarative and procedural knowledge (ds
around 1.0 resulting from comparing training versus a no-training or pretest condition).
Declarative knowledge is knowledge about “what” (e.g., facts, meaning of terms), whereas
procedural knowledge is knowledge about “how”

 Training not only may affect declarative knowledge or procedural knowledge, but also may
enhance strategic knowledge, defined as knowing when to apply a specific knowledge or skill

 Results showed that training was beneficial in that trainees per- formed well under a novel
stressor and when performing a novel task. Thus, stress training helps maintain performance
consistency

 Performance consistency may also result from enhancing trainees’ self-efficacy or self-
management skills

Teams Benefits of Training for Organizations

  Results indicated that some types of training activities, including on-the-job training and training
inside the organization using in-house trainers, were positively related to most dimensions of
effectiveness and profitability.

 He training unit, goals of the training unit, nature of training, and how training is evaluated) with
four types of organizational-level bene- fits: employee satisfaction, customer satisfaction,
owner/shareholder satisfaction, and work- force productivity (i.e., sales per employee)

 Results suggested that training programs oriented toward human capital development were
directly related to employee, customer, and owner/shareholder satisfaction as well as an objective
measure of business performance

 Suggested that, at a regional level, there were improvements on six of the seven scorecard
components: overall teller errors, teller out of balance, number of deposit slips left in envelopes,
business retention, teller secret shopper ratings, and new account secret shopper surveys.

 Investment in training via tuition reimbursement decreased turnover while employees were still
taking classes. However, turnover increased once employees obtained their degrees if they were
not promoted.

 Similarly, although not empirically documented yet, another possible benefit of training could be
social capital, via relationship building, norm development, and institutional trust (Brown & Van
Buren 2007). In other words, training has the potential to affect important social processes that in
turn are likely to affect organizational-level outcomes.

 In short, training was seen as an important enabler for e-commerce, a key strategic direction for
the success of many of these small and medium-size businesses.

 These benefits include improved organizational performance (e.g., profitability, effectiveness,

productivity, operating revenue per employee) as well as other out- comes that relate directly
(e.g., reduced costs, improved quality and quantity) or indirectly (e.g., employee turnover,
organization’s reputation, social capital) to performance.

Benefits of Training for Society

 In addition to economic growth and other related financial outcomes, training activities have the
potential to produce benefits such as the inclusion of the country in powerful eco- nomic blocks

 In summary, the recognition of the benefits of training activities for society has led many countries
around the world to adopt national policies to encourage the design and delivery of training
programs at the national level. These policies have the goal to improve a nation’s hu- man capital,
which in turn is related to greater economic prosperity.

Investment vs. Expense

Given these findings, we took a closer look at what drove perceptions of support. Employees reported feeling more supported by their supervisor when they were provided with
opportunities to develop the technical, management, and leadership skills they believe they will need in the future and when there was an explicit expectation that they participate in
job-related skills training and career development activities.

t some groups may not be afforded the same growth and development opportunities as others. Clear differences are evident when it comes to how men and women view their
opportunities for training and career development, with women faring worse than men.

Education. The survey results also highlight gaps between employees with and without a college degree. Nearly three-fourths of employees with a college degree said their employer
values training and development, while 64% of those without one said the same. Regarding technical skills needed for the future, 72% of those with college degrees said their employer
provides opportunities for training and development, versus about half of those without a degree.

Set employee expectations. Make ongoing job skills training and career development part of the job. Build it into job descriptions, make it clear to employees that staying on top of their
game and preparing for the future is part of their job, and include it as part of their regular performance evaluations.

Set supervisor expectations. Make developing employees part of every manager’s job description and train them in
how to effectively work with employees to set training and development goals, monitor progress, and provide
feedback. Evaluate supervisors on how well they develop their staff.
Set time aside. Only about half of working Americans say they have adequate time available to participate in career
development activities. Allocate time during regular work hours for training and development, so employees don’t
have to neglect other job duties, put in extra hours or use non-work time to prepare for the future. Align training and
development activities to fit with employees’ workload and workflow, so they don’t place undue demands on
employees during times when they are already stretched thin.

Focus on training and development. Provide both job-specific skills training and development activities that help

employees advance within the organization or relative to their broader career goals. Involve employees in the
process of identifying the knowledge, skills, and abilities they’ll need in the short and long run, and align training and
development efforts with larger organizational goals.

Provide opportunities to practice. For the new knowledge and skills gained during training to stick, employees need
to actually apply them on the job. In our survey, only 58% of U.S. w

Reward and recognize employees for their training and development efforts. Build a learning organization where
people are committed to ongoing learning and development by reinforcing the behaviors you want to see in
employees and managers.
  
Does Canada Lack Innovation and Productivity?

 Just 30% of Canadian employees, aged 25 – 64, felt that they were receiving enough
training to be able to do their job to the best of their abilities.
 The Canadian figure sits far lower than that of the US, where 45% of employees reported
receiving adequate training.
 US businesses spend an average of 50% more on training their employees than Canadian
companies do.

Strategic Training and Development