Developing Appropriate Training - Case Study Example

Developing Appropriate Training INTRODUCTION We are living in a knowledge economy where the knowledge asset of the human capital is given the supreme importance. The organizations can survive and gain strategic edge over its competitors only when its processes are efficient enough to make the production cost efficient and a quality one. As a result of the growing need to make the business processes efficient, more emphasis is being laid on the knowledge management, an approach to store and disseminate the best practices across the organization. One of the strategies to ensure the dissemination of the best practices within the organization, especially to the new inductees is the process of training and development. The importance of training in modern organizational setup can be realized from the fact that all the organizations, whether small or large, allocate a considerable percentage of their annual budget for the purpose of training and development, realizing its contribution in making their business processes more effective and efficient. BACKGROUND OF THE PROBLEM As the scenario indicates, the staff working in the organization keeps on ignoring the instructions given by Jim Delaney, the president of Apex Doors. They always try to do the task their own way and ignore their president's instructions that aim to make the business processes more effective and efficient. As a result of this, the organization has to face a number of problems. The first one as highlighted by this scenario is the non synchronous working. This also results in the development of the product different from the one desired. Moreover, failing to follow the guidelines of design department, an additional cost on each unit produced is also an additional burden to the organization, reducing their profit margin. The scenario further reveals that there are a number of loopholes in the training process of the organization. For example, the job descriptions are, in most cases, missing, the training manuals simply do not exist, there are no formal procedures of training the new inductees etc. ANALYSIS OF THE PROBLEM After a thorough analysis of the situation, the main problem that is identified is lack of proper training. The proper training processes in the organizations should be organized in order to bridge the gap between what the President wants his staff to do and what the staff currently does. What actually Jim wants in this case is to impart the organizational culture and the best practices of the organization to the staff of the organization, especially the new inductees, so that a consistency can be ensures across all the departments, across different periods of time and regardless of the fact that who is working and who is leaving. The training will therefore help in achieving these objectives. Although, there does exist a so-called 'training' system in the organization, yet it is not very effective on account of its number of weaknesses. First of all: There are no training manuals The process of handing over is not so well No fixed procedure for the training of the new Inductees No Job Description available OVERVIEW OF INTERVENTION The recommended solution to this problem is as follows: Introduce a formal and organized training program for new inductees, which every new inductee should undergo. Develop a training manual for each of the designation Provide separate skill-based training to all the employees, according to their jobs Provide a combined training related to the specific organizational culture of the organization. Develop a job description which also clearly states the relation of their task to other departments Introduce the concepts of knowledge management. This means that the best practices should remain in the organization, even if the practitioner of those best practices leaves the organization. This can be done by storing those best practices and sharing them to other employees of the organization, training would be the major mode of sharing those best practices. Almost all of these recommendations require a proper and organized system of training for the employees. DETAILS OF THE TRAINING PROGRAM AND THE SCHEDULE Since the average rate of newcomers in our organization is 10-15 per month, so the new inductees training should be held each quarter. Thus, the proposed schedule of their training would be the first week of each quarter. This, there would be four training sessions each year for the new inductees, each of the duration of one week. The duration may however change depending on the task the employee need to be trained for. If someone is inducted in between, he would be assigned a mentor, a senior employee of the department, for that period and both, the inductee and the mentor would be evaluated by each other and that evaluation would be a component in their performance appraisal. Initially, four mentors would be selected from each department and they would be trained, before the launch of this system. The existing employees would be given refresher training on the first three working days of every second month. TARGET POPULATION The target population of this set of training programs would be the staff of the organization. The target audience can be divided into two parts: New Inductees Existing Staff RATIONALE AND GOALS OF PROPOSAL TRAINING The main focus of training to the existing staff would be make them used to with the procedures and business processes that the President wants them to follow or we can say that the main objective of the training to the existing staff would be to impart in them the best practices. On the other hand, there would be two purposes for training of the new inductees, to impart the best practices as well as the organizational culture. LEARNING OBJECTIVES Obviously, there can not be a single training for all the jobs, they would definitely differ and so do their learning objectives. However, the learning objectives for the order processing and designer department are listed below: Learning Objectives for Order Processing Departments To let the employees realize the importance of written documentation from organizational, functional as well as legal aspects To explain the employees various terms used in the order form To train the employees to fill the order processing form for variety of customers Learning Objectives for Design Department To let the employees realize the importance of effective information flow (communication) in the organization To let the employees realize the overall impact of ignoring one instruction on the overall performance of the organization To train the employees to comprehend the instructions provided by the architects and develop the doors accordingly To introduce the concepts of quality assurance and total quality management among employees EVALUATION STRATEGIES At the end of the training, the employees would be evaluated for each of the objective of the training. The evaluation strategies depend on the type of objective. Commonly employed one are as follows: Practical Demonstration Group Discussion Written Evaluation On-going evaluation (participation) Furthermore, it is also recommended that this evaluation should be made one of the components of the performance appraisal criteria. RESOURCE REQUIREMENTS Human Capital Appropriate training module developers for each department and one supervisor. The module developers are supposed to have industrial as well as pedagogical skills and exposure A training and development manager, preferably an MBA in HR Trainers for each department, preferable the same persons who developed the modules Material Resources Training rooms, if decided to purchase (with capacity of 40 each). Other relevant classroom requirements (whiteboard, chairs, table etc) Multimedia Projector and OHP Offices for the Training Staff along with necessary office equipments like computers, printers etc ACTION PLAN In brief, the future action plans are listed below: Approval of the plan Acquiring the abovementioned resources Development and approval of training modules Training of the mentors Quarterly training of the inductees Bi-monthly training of existing employees WORK CITED Dessler, G. (2003). "Human resource management", Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice Hall. Read More