Training & Development

This article is quite long and many grammatically error, hehehee read at your own risk.huhuu

INTRODUCTION

Training and Development is an important part in Human Resource Management. In this assignment, we are going to focus on training. There are many definition of training, but the most important is training is the process of acquiring knowledge, developing competencies and skill, and adopting behaviors that improve performance in current job.

Training also involves sharpening the knowledge, skill and abilities or changing the attitude to enhance the performance. According to Mondy and Noe, training is the heart of a continuous effort designed to improve employee competency and organizational performance.

The objective of training is to plays a central role in nurturing and strengthening the competencies. It also a part of the backbone of strategy implementation in the organization.

Training help in increasing the productivity of the employees that helps the organization further to achieve its long term goal. Training also can create sense of teamwork, team spirit and inter team collaborations and creating learning culture within the organization

There a several method of training such as lectures demonstrations, discussions, Computer Based Training, games and simulation.



Discuss what is the potential employee factor that could be contributing towards training drawback?

There are two most important factors that could be contributing toward training drawback; it is Personal Factor and Environmental Factor. Personal Factor is referring to the problem that occurs in the employees itself or Internal Factor meanwhile the Environmental Factors is a factor from outside / with out the employees or external factors. The environmental / external factors sometime are beyond the control of the employees.

Personal Factors

Firstly is the Knowledge, Skill and Abilities (KSA) of trainee, sometime the training that’s conduct is beyond the trainee KSA. As an example, a clerk has sent to decision making training. She or he have to go this training because her/his supervisor on holiday. This is beyond his or her abilities. The employee will face a lot of new thing and they cannot cope with this situation. This situation also can make an employee will feel to rebel to their organization.

Second is Personal Problem, sometime the employee have their own personal problem such as they are slow learner. Compare to another employee who is fast learner, a slow learner employee will feel unmotivated and embarrassed. This will contribute toward training drawback.

Another factor that affects the training is relation between the training program and personal objective. Sometime the training that’s attended by employee cannot meet or contrast to their objective. As an example, Rosmah is a clerk in one of the firm in Malaysia. She has an interest in Procurement, but her supervisor has sent her to Store Keeping Management. As we can see, Rosmah interest is contravene with the training that’s she attended.

The fourth factor that contributes to training drawback is the benefit that’s expected from training. This situation happens because the trainee expects more from the training program. The training module doing not included certain part of knowledge for employee to perform their job or the training that they are attended does not have relation with their duties and task. As an example is an employee from Information Technology Department have sent to Marketing and Sale Training, there are no relation between employee and the training.

Lastly for Personal Factor are the previous training experiences. If the employees have an experience with previous training, maybe they already know what the content of the training is. The employee also got bored with the training if the same trainer involved. The employees tend to expect more from the previous experiences. If they have a bad experience in the past training, maybe the next training will cause a lot of problem to them, which will demoralized them.


Environmental Factors

There are several environmental factors that contributing toward training drawback. Firstly are the Knowledge, Skill and Abilities (KSA) of the trainer. This is important part when conducting the training; it is to find a suitable and resourcefulness trainer. What will happen if the trainer cannot answer the question? This will lead the trainee to feel bored and lost confidently to the trainer. Unqualified trainer also can tend to make a misleading information or knowledge when they only guessing the solution of the problem.

Training objective also must be clear; the employees must know what is the return or benefit of their training program. When conducting training, the trainer must give an explanation about the training objective. What is required and what should they got from the training must be understand by the trainee. For example, if we are conducting a Sale and Marketing Training please make sure that the objective of training is relevant to the Marketing and Sales.

Third environmental factor is the Content of the Training. The content of the training must be variety but not misleading to the objective of the training. Unattractive content of Training will make a trainee tend to feel bored and sleepy. The content of the training also must be relevant with today technologies and must include a value added skill take the training more fun, knowledgeable, informative, up to date and will improve effectiveness of the training.

The training design itself also plays a big part to determine successfulness of the training. Training design include method, technique and strategies use in the training program. The method of training such as lectures demonstrations, discussions, Computer Based Training, games and simulation can be use to make a training more effective and can enhance employee knowledge, skill and abilities.

The Training Team also can contribute to training drawback, because the compositions of a team are vital in making successful team. If the members of the team are not willing to work together as a teammate, there will be a problem. This problematic team will also affect another team because they tend to disturb the smoothness of training. Sometime, when a talented employee dumps into this team, that employee also can influence by a bad members. So, the organization will lost another talented employee in their organization.

Lastly, the infrastructure of the training program must be ready. Training must be conducted in a convenience place and have a seminar facilities, eating facilities, tea and coffee breaks. Inconvenience place will make the trainee tend to fell not spacious and restless. The eating facilities also must be clean and organize and the food and beverage must be fine and serve on time.



Explain how you would go about assessing whether it is in fact a training problem.

There are many methods available to assess or evaluate the training problem. One of the famous models is from Donald Kirk Patrick Model that there are consist of four basic criteria to evaluate.
1. Reaction
2. Learning
3. Behavior
4. Result

The organization can evaluate the REACTION level of the trainees by conducting an interviews or administering a questionnaire. Assume that 20 clerks have attended a three days Operational Management Training. A reaction level can be done by asking them to complete a survey that asked them to rate the value of the training, style of the instructors and usefulness of the training. Then we can see how the reaction of the trainees

LEARNING level can be evaluate by measuring how well the trainees have learned facts, ideas, concepts, theories and attitudes. Tests are the common method used to evaluate learning level. For example, we can conduct a simple test after finishing certain module in the training. Result of the test gives us a clear view whether the trainees learning level.

To evaluate BEHAVIOUR, usually two type of kind involve, they are,
1. Measuring the effect of training on the job performance through interviews of trainees and theirs co-worker,
2. Observing their job performance

As an example, a behavioral evaluation of the IT executive who participates in Web Site Design Training might be done by observing the actual website that he produces. If he produces the website according to what they learned in the training that means a behavioral indication of the producing website could be obtained. But if they don’t produce the website according to their training, It means there is no behaviors modification.

Employer can evaluate RESULT by measuring the effect of the training on the achievement of organizational objective. Because results such as productivity, turnover, quality, time, sales and cost are relative. So this evaluation can be done by comparing record before and after the training program. For the Sales and Marketing Training, we can measure the result of the training by looking at the result of sale next two or three month after training are conducted. If the organization can achieve more sole on the next two or three month, that means the result are positive and the training program are successful.



CONCLUSION

There several factor that affecting the Training including Personal and Environmental Factors, they are personal problem, relation between the training program and personal objective, benefit expected from training, KSA of the trainees, previous training experiences, KSA of the trainer, content of the training, infrastructure and the training design.

The evaluation of the training program can be done by using Kirk Patrick Model that consists of Reaction, Learning, Behavior and Result.

No matter how good the training program is, in the end it is the participant only who decides whether to change his behavior or not. Trainees do not change their behavior merely because they are telling to do so. They change when they feel there is a need for it.