Benefits of Employee Training - Essay Example

? An Effective Training Evaluation Plan An Effective Training Evaluation Plan Executive Summary Most organizations have realized the importance of employee training and have created specific departments to deal with enhancing skills of the workforce. A lot of investment goes in to employee training in terms of both time and money. During the training period, the employees under the program will need to be away most of the time and may not contribute to the production process. The training process is also very expensive in the short term (Montana, and Bruce, 2000). The benefits of employee training often come in the long run after the employees have fully gained the skills needed. During hard economic times when companies consider cutting on costs, some managers may like to do away with the department of training and development as it is a n expense in the short term. This however is not a good move since the benefits of having the department are far much greater than the short term costs. Scraping off the department implies that the workforce may not be able to enhance their skills and the organization may not therefore be able to cope with the changes in the business environment, including hard economic times. During difficult economic times like recessions, companies and organizations need to have a well informed and skilled workforce that is capable of making the right decisions to keep the organization going. This is not the time to do away with the department. One of the most important resources of any organization is its workforce (Montana, and Bruce, 2000). The more skilled and knowledgeable an organization’s workforce is, the better the organization. An organization can ensure its employees have the best skills and knowledge in their professions by having a good recruitment policy that ensures the best candidates are given opportunities to work for the organization. The other way of ensuring a skilled workforce is through employee training and development. This is very necessary due to the changes that may affect an organization such as the changes in economic conditions, technology, business and organizational structure and legislation among others. These changes require specialized skills and knowledge for the employees to be more productive and continue being successful in the long run. Employee training and development has a direct effect on the overall performance and success of an organization (William, and Kazanas, 2004). Employees and top managers are directly involved in decision making processes that shape the future of the organization and actively contribute to the production of goods and services. Through training the employees are able to advance and improve on their skills and knowledge so as to be better placed to increase their performance levels and improve the organization’s performance. Benefits of Employee Training Employee training and development is beneficial to both the organization and the employees. Among the benefits that employee training has to an organization include having a motivated workforce, increased performance levels, increased profits, increased staff loyalty and retention, and great customer care (Cohn, Khurana, and Reeves, 2005). Investment in employee training helps the organization to have a motivated workforce. The employee will feel that their employer cares for them and their career and therefore be highly motivated to perform their duties. When the employees are motivated to work, there will be a great working environment with minimum confrontations between the management and junior employees or among the employees themselves. This ensures there is harmony in the workplace. This is good for the organization because it ensures the employees concentrate on their main objectives of helping the organization achieve its goals (Cohn, Khurana, and Reeves, 2005). Employee training and development is also beneficial to the organization because it leads to increased performance levels of employees. This ensures that the employees’ potential is maximized for the benefit of the organization. Training ensures that the employees work at their best because they gain more skills and knowledge that can be very useful in the production process of the company. Another great benefit of employee training and development is that it leads to increased profits for the organization. Investment in employee training may be costly for the organization in the short term but after the process, the employees will be able to work at higher rates thereby improving the production process and gradually enabling the organization to make profits (Montana, and Bruce, 2000). This is the main objective of most organization and the employee training process should be geared towards ensuring increased profitability. Employee training and development is also beneficial to the organization because it promotes employee loyalty and employee retention. By investing in skill development, the organization displays its trust in its workforce. The employees feel treasured and loved by the organization and they pay back the trust by becoming loyal to the organization. This is very important because it helps to keep a low employee turnover and ensures there is a sense of continuity in the organization (William, and Kazanas, 2004). Successful employee training leads to improved customer service. Training is likely to boost the sales of the organization by attracting more customers through great customer service. Customer service entails delivering quality products and services to the consumers as well as interacting well with the consumers (Torrington, Hall and Taylor, 2004). Employee training ensures the employees have the necessary skills to handle customers as well as to ensure they produce quality goods and services. Employee training and development also has a lot of benefits to the employees themselves. These include the fact that it helps them climb up the ladder in the organizational chart. When employees get more skills, they are prepared to handle more responsibilities in the organization to reflect their new level of education and skills (William, and Kazanas, 2004). This is very beneficial to employee because it ensures they are able to advance their careers to higher levels. Employee training is also beneficial to the employees because it helps to boost their self esteem. Through training the employees are able to play a bigger role in the organization than they were doing in the past. This helps to build their self esteem and letting them know that they can handle a lot more in the future. Training evaluation tool Employee training is meant to increase the level of skills of the employee in order to enable them improve on their performance. In some cases, employees do not display the levels of performance that the training was intended for. It is therefore important to have in place great mechanisms in the organization to assess and evaluate the performance levels of the employees to ensure they keep on performing (Torrington, Hall and Taylor, 2004). This report proposes a comprehensive employee appraisal program that will be able to evaluate both knowledge retention and performance of the employees and provide useful feedback. This report proposes the use of graphic scales to evaluate the performance of the employees. This employee appraisal method is very effective and has been used successfully by other businesses and organization over the years. The organization can customize the system and make it appropriate and relevant to the current situation. How the Tool Works The graphical scale employee evaluation tool is very simple to use. It entails grading the duties of the employees based on various scales using either letters, numbers or percentages. The values are then entered in the graphical system that enables the management to assess development in employees’ performances over specified durations, including daily, weekly or monthly. He values are scaled from the poorest to the most excellent and judge the employees based on how they complete their duties and how best they complete their duties. The graphs show how the employee has been performing over a period of time. The managers can be able to determine if the employee has been able to improve, maintain or reduce their levels of performance. The managers can also compare the values of more than one employee in their department to find out who are performing the best. The new tool can be used to evaluate the levels of knowledge transfer among employees. After a training session, the employees performance will be assessed to determine how much of the knowledge gained is actually retained and used in their work. When the performance levels go up after training, then the level of knowledge transfers is considered to be high. The system will continue to monitor the performance of employees and provide great feedback that can be used by the management in further training processes in future. Summary and Conclusion Organizations continue to face challenging times that need proper skills and knowledge to enable the organizations keep performing at higher levels and maintaining higher profitability. Employee training entails enhancing the levels of skills and knowledge among employees in order to prepare them to take on further challenges in their careers and in the organization. The training process ensures that employees perform at higher levels and maximize their potential. This has a lot of benefits to both the company and the individual employees. Tough economic times require careful decision making in order to cut costs. The organization can find other alternative ways of cutting down on costs and still maintain the employee training department as it has proven and will still continue to prove to be an important part of the entire organization. References Cohn J. M, Khurana R, and Reeves L. (2005). "Growing talent as if your business depended on it". Harvard Business Review 83 (10): 62–70. Montana P. J and Bruce H. C. (2000). "Training and Development". Management. Barron's Educational Series. Torrington D., Hall L and Taylor S. (2004). Human Resource Management. Pearson Education. William J. R and Kazanas H. C. (2004). The Strategic Development of Talent. Human Resource Development Press. Read More