Understanding and Application of Knowledge in the Field of Employee Training - Essay Example

Describing your understanding and application of knowledge in the field of employee training through the analysis of a scenario related to the creation of a training course

Employee training is vital if a company wants to succeed. Today, many organizations have engaged in globalization making the cultural diversity within the organization quite challenging. Training employees throughout the global sector present new methods for the managers to take charge of the ethical issues within the workforce. Recognizing diversity is mandatory for any company to maintain successful business operations. Employee training has many advantages, but the trainer can experience resistance or issues related to policies or cultural diversity of the staff. In employee training, the topics might be such as technical skills, literacy, orientation about the organization, and courses designed to put a stop to lawsuits, appraisals, and fines such as sexual aggravation. Training involves a variety of programs and methods. Managers in organizations have to create a corporate culture that supports learning in the training course. The training courses usually have specific goals. Employees ought to understand a specific process and perform particular procedures with great accuracy. There are legal implications that might occur in creating a training course that discusses culture. One of the laws that require employee training is the Occupational Safety and Health Act. The responsibility of an employer is to exercise reasonable care to ensure that the supervisors and trainers comprehend the organization’s policy and complaint procedure. Additionally, when considering employee training, the demographic diversity of employees is important because it affects the cultural diversity. An effective training program addresses undetectable and restrained differences between individuals of different cultures. More to the point, training programs should teach employees how to react in cultural situations that may make them uneasy. This paper focuses on my understanding and application of knowledge in the field of employee training through the scrutiny of a state related to the establishment of a training course. Having an efficient training program in place will help the employees to understand the benefits of having a diverse environment thus promote a positive culture.

Cultural differences always interfere with the outcomes of training. The demand for cultural diversity training has increased because globalization has lead to internal markets. Diversity training is about accepting other employees based on their contributions to the workforce and their capacity as individuals. Diversity training ensures that employees from different cultures are in all the levels of the organization. Before designing a cultural training program, HR managers must look into the workforce and assess its needs. However, the cultural training programs may land companies into trouble because they tend to label employees. Therefore, managers should consider the cultural diversities when creating a training course that might affect the performance of the employee within the association. The upper management has to ensure that the company stays up to date with the federal laws that ensure equal treatment of employees. When managers create a training course that involves culture, they have to be keen on the legal issues that may arise during the process. Trainers together with the management have to conduct extensive research on the laws and regulations before commencing on the training program. Federal laws require that employees should not encounter discrimination by race, religion, physical disability, or ethnicity. The management should ensure that the trainers train the employees while considering the cultural and diversity issues to avoid having lawsuits. For example, the managers have to keep in mind that holidays are not just during Christmas. There are employees from different parts of the world who have holidays during specific times of the year. An example of a body that prevents employees from being discriminated for any reason is the U.S Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. If any employee reports any case of discrimination, the company always encounters massive financial losses due to fines. The management has to ensure that its staff has access to career advancement training by providing equal and fair treatment. In general, cultural training ought to encompass cultural differentiation to teach employees to maintain their culture and recognize the value that other cultures bring to the company. Any workforce will succeed if employers combine the two types of training.

There are federal laws that require managers to conduct training only if it is necessary. One example is the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). The regulation requires training suitable and obligatory for the employees to carry out their function with the covered unit (Society for Human Resource Management, 2013). The other regulation is Federal Acquisition Regulations. The statute requires that federal contractors have to train the employees on ethics awareness and compliance periodically (Society for Human Resource Management, 2013). Employers have to establish an affirmative defense concerning non-discrimination training. As the Society for Human Resource Management (2013) explains, a directive from the US Supreme Court states the importance of such training programs. Additionally, Employers have to establish effective compliance programs (Society for Human Resource Management, 2013). Examples of the compliance programs include ethics in business training obligations such as Sarbanes-Oxley Act and requirements that relate to the government contractors such as Drug-Free Workplace Act, and the contractor training requirements (Society for Human Resource Management, 2013). Society for Human Resource Management (2013) articulates that managers have to evaluate the training needs from legal counsel to be in clear terms with precautionary measures. Primarily, leaders have to treat their employees with respect, neither using nor racial terms and in a language familiar to every employee within the organization.

The demographics of the employee can affect the discussions of cultural diversity. Some companies have fewer employees while others have a large number of up to 200. A company, which has many employees, has a variety of staff from different races and ethnic backgrounds. The company that has broad demographics has a challenge of capitalizing on the mixtures of genders, cultural backgrounds, ages, and lifestyles to react to the opportunities of the business rapidly. Managing a diverse workforce is hectic since it involves connectedness, relatedness, and communications where lines cross. As Baumuller (2007) asserts, a team that has greater tenure diversity tends to experience more conflict that teams that have a less tenure diversity. Managers in a workplace should manage diversity by creating a wide-ranging environment that makes use of people’s contribution from different backgrounds, experiences, and lifestyles. The demographic diversification of a workplace will become challenging if leaders do not set a tone that addresses and accommodates diversity practices. Training employees from different backgrounds, age, ethnicity, and lifestyles are always hectic. The trainers have to conduct more research on diversity within an organization and make the employees engage in teamwork. Since average tenure affects the organization’s socialization of others, managers have to look into the structure of the tenure distribution (Baumuller, 2007). The demographics of an organization may either bring a greater or less diversity of perspectives and exposure to more sources of information. Demographic diversity increases the availability of resources, values, beliefs, insights, and point of views. Therefore, during the training courses, managers should combine all employees from different backgrounds to learn together.

There are ethical implications to consider in a case where employee demographics affect the discussions of cultural diversity. Rahim (2013) indicates that when a company decides on the type of diversity training to offer to employees, they should foster an inclusive environment. The author states that it is ethical for managers and supervisors to make the employees feel included. Different cultures have different perspectives. What one culture perceives as right might be wrong in another culture. Therefore, organizational leaders have to adapt to diverse cultural differences (Rahim, 2013). The author points out that an individual ethical approach is practicing empathy. Besides that, Rahim (2013) denotes that leaders should create a collaborative space that allows employees to practice teamwork. As he indicates, managers ought to set opportunities for members to discover new things and share their experiences in an open environment. Moreover, Rahim (2013) mentions that managers have to explain the benefits of diversity to their employees to shape culture, attitude, and behavior in the company. Most importantly, he writes that leaders have to get involved in the training just like everybody else because some employees see their leaders as the problem to diversity issues. The author states that leaders should train employees on diversity management and ethical decision-making. Evidently, lapsed ethics may create major failures in the training programs. When companies understand the important relationships of ethics, managing demographics during the training courses will run smoothly. In any organization, knowing the elements that need consideration, help to develop insights on the type of decisions to make and the methods of training to employ.

Employers can standardize training for all locations in a global organization. One way to achieve the objective of global competitive advantage is by standardization. Global process standardization is necessary as it has positive impacts on visibility, collaboration, and communication. Companies should incorporate standardization if they have a variety of IT resources. Additionally, standardization is significant where the organization has the same business drivers between divisions and the business units. More to the point, an organization has to have a stable power structure that upholds global quality. The markets are becoming more and more similar and if the companies want to survive, then should be able to standardize. Companies sought to put their focus on what everyone wants rather than thinking of what everyone thinks to achieve long-term success. More to the point, standardization efforts such as product offering, promotional mix, price, and the structure of channels increase faster opportunities for such as the transfer of goods, brands, and other ideas across subordinates and aid in addressing the materialization of global customers. Skerlavaj, Ceme, Dysvic, & Carlsen (2016) articulate that when companies practice standardized training, standardization enhances across all sites. The authors state that the global training partner ought to be able to rise competencies by delivering training efficiently in the right place, and at the best time, amount, and the best quality available. According to the authors, the community is responsible for updating training standards, developing standardized training and materials, aligning training procedures, and looking for solutions to improve the effectiveness of training. The training partners who work in different locations make up the core of the community and have weekly meetings to identify the methods of standard training (Skerlavaj, Ceme, Dysvic, & Carlsen 2016). Standardizing training allows for easy time and reductions in variability.

In a global setting, employers have to choose a media that best suits the practice. In a course that focuses on cultural diversity, the best media to use is e-learning. Companies ought to initiate the e-learning programs with a global distribution in mind. E-learning programs ensure that managers maximize on costs, time, and advance in retention. The trainees have to be attentive especially on the audio-visual elements of the program to get the communicated message. The style guides in e-learning ought to elaborate on the objectives, and demonstrate a preference for literacy either by phrasing, or brand messaging. When managers prepare and organize e-learning with a global distribution, it provides the ease of evaluating the market and desires of the trainees. E-learning provides a global organization with a standardized way to engage in cultural diversity training. As Reva Digital (2015) explains, E-learning provides great diversity training and offers a balance between the financial requirements, quality requirements, and sensitivity of modern workforces. E-learning has an advantage of providing increased adaptability (Reva Digital, 2015). E-learning provides an environment where employees can work at their pace. Additionally, Reva Digital (2015) mentions that when companies use e-learning in their diversity training programs, everyone tends to get the same message. Lessons do not change in e-learning unlike face to face learning (Reva Digital, 2015). E-learning ensures standardization of formats without any alteration of the contents discussed.

The economy of some countries and shaky and workplaces are under immense pressure to stay competitive. Since globalization has come to be a known term in businesses, companies have to train their employees on diversity. To stay competitive, companies have to engage in diversity programs on regular basis within their business. In as much as some companies offer the training programs, they often do not do it right and most businesses do the training to avoid lawsuits. Diversity training may appear like common sense to other organizations but most employees do not seem to realize the effect of their actions or words to other people. The recommendations for implementing the training course on cultural diversity are

• Employers have to allow their staff to explore their abilities to contribute to the growth of the business

• During the training program, employers have to consider what employees feel about the prevailing culture and atmosphere

• Employers ought to design and implement communication method systems for employees to find help in any cases of discrimination.

• Companies should not focus on increasing racial awareness, tolerance, and integration when conducting diversity training because it will be ineffective.

• Companies ought to incorporate diversity-training programs in their company on daily or weekly basis and not something that employees hear once in a year.

In light of these discussions, it is agreeable that having an efficient training program in place will help the employees to be aware of the benefits of having a diverse environment thus promoting a positive culture. Diversity training is always important in an organization because of people’s differences in the workplace. As discussed in the paragraphs above, before implementing on a training course on diversity, managers have to dig deep on the rules and regulations that govern training programs on diversity. Standardization enables a firm to achieve the competitive advantage globally. Besides that, during the training programs, organizations have to incorporate e-learning because it is the best media in global standardization. Every employee has to be sympathetic to other people’s culture than theirs to endorse an active and healthy environment that enables everyone reach their full potential. Diversity is a sensitive matter today and training on the course not only benefits the company but also the entire association as a whole to make people feel comfortable. Diversity training enables an organization to promote better teamwork, diverse corporate culture, and protect against issues related to civil rights. Having a diverse workplace enables the human resource management personnel to hire employees from different lifestyles. Similarly, diversity training is morally right because it respects diversity, and recognizes the values of people. In Overall, diversity training enables employees in an organization to develop awareness, and enables a company to have a substantial competitive advantage to deal with the demands of globalization.

Reference

Baumuller, M. (2007). Managing Cultural Diversity: An Empirical Examination of Cultural Networks and Organizational Structures as Governance Mechanisms in Multinational Corporations. Berlin: Peter Lang.

Rahim, E. (2013). The Dilemma of Ethics and Cultural Diversity. Retrieved from http://www.coloradotech.edu/resources/blogs/march-2013/ethics-cultural-diversity?dheader=new

Reva Digital. (2015). Benefits of E-learning for Diversity Training. Retrieved from https://revadigital.com/2015/09/benefits-e-learning-diversity-training/

Skerlavaj, M., Ceme, M., Dysvic, A., & Carlsen, A. (2016). Capitalizing on Creativity at Work: Fostering the Implementation of Creative Ideas in Organizations. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.

Society for human resource management. (2013). Legal and Regulatory: Training: What training must employers provide to employees. Retrieved from https://www.shrm.org/templatestools/hrqa/pages/whattrainingmustemployersprovidetoemployees.aspx