Human Resource Training Class - Assignment Example

Human Resource Training Introduction Friendly Retail Company employs more than 100 employees. This small retail company buys and sells merchandise, food and grocery items through 5 superstores. The company has put in place a Human Resource department, customer service department for online customer service, and retail employees working and providing support service to customers to the stores. Recently, the company’s senior management has experienced a significant decrease of customers along with increased number of customer complaints and queries regarding their purchases. As a result, the senior management has decided to provide training and development session to the batch of 10 customer support service employees. The objective of this exercise is to evaluate the existing performance deficiencies and determining and implementing the subsequent remedial measures for improving performance and productivity so as to enhance the financial and operational performance of the company. In the following parts of this paper, justification for needs assessment has been provided, detailing and explaining the reasons for developing this class training and highlighting causes requiring an immediate attention. It is followed by the implementation plan and training method. Before providing motivating ways to employees for active class participation, rationale for selecting the training method has been included. Before the conclusion part, survey part has been provided. Justification for a needs assessment for highlighting performance deficiencies Performance assessment highlights both deficiencies and strengths as well. For a retail business especially selling products also through the online method, the role of customer support service becomes highly critical and important as well. It is critical in the sense that the most customers use telephone service for registering their complaints or receiving additional required information relating to purchase of specific products. And it is important in the sense that it leads to increase or decrease sales volume. Five essential ways that highlight and justify the needs assessment for evaluating performance of support service are: frequent similar complaints, unfriendly behavior towards customers, no follow-up procedure, no coordination between the relevant departments, and drawing no lessons from previous mistakes. They summarize performance and highlight gap between actual and required level of performance. For these measures, both quantitative and qualitative information provide fundamental support for evaluating the performance of employees working in the support service department. For example, if the number of similar complaints is increasing, this would suggest that the customer support service has not properly addressed and pursued the complaints. Subsequently, this evaluation can be done every month and the collected data can be compared for understanding the trend. If the trend suggests increase in the number of similar complaints, this would conclude the customer support service employees have been negligent for appropriately handling the queries of that type of complaints over the course of last two months. Additionally, for assessing the behavior of customer support department employees, evaluation of independent behavior analyst can be availed for matching actual behavior with the required type of behavior. Selected training method and Implementation plan On-the-job training method refers to learning skills while discharging the duty (Mathew, 2010). This is mostly given to the non-managerial staff (Lee-Ross and Pryce, 2010). The purpose of this training session is to obtain the pre-determined objectives by minimizing the gap between actual and required level of employee performance in the customer support service. For example, the participants will be asked to provide their major hurdles that they encounter during their official hours. In this kind collection, the objective is to collect maximum number of on-the-job problems that they face and what strategies they apply to resolve those challenges. This training session will consist of two weeks in which first two days all on-the-job challenges will be collected and the participants will be encouraged to share their personal experience for tackling the problems. After noting down their challenges, the trainer will match those problems by keeping in view the objectives of organization and department along with their individual job description. In the subsequent session, the trainer will provide his assessment about the issue. Subsequently, the on-the-job training session will be commended in which five main issues mentioned in the foregoing paragraph will be discussed. For this objective, first theoretical demonstration will be provided and it will be followed by the practical handling of the issues. Additionally, the session will also highlight the importance of achieving the required individual and departmental objectives. For this purpose, practical issues and their long term strategic implications will be detailed as well. This will endeavor to improving inter-department and intra-department coordination through enhancing their communication skills. Rationale for selecting the training method On-the-job training is a highly practical method for obtaining the training-related objectives. When compared with off-the-job training methods, the mentioned training method highlights the practical and real issues which are employment and organization specific. Because of its relevance to organization-related issues, the on-the-job training is more practical and beneficial for employees as they directly address and understand those problems that they face in their routine office hours. On-the-job training is affordable for small organizations as well. For small retail organizations, controlling cost besides attaining maximum objectives has been an important aspect of their performance. When compared with lectures method for training purpose, the proposed method is comparatively inexpensive as it includes no additional cost, such as training and development allowance and other attached cost which is given to a substitute employee, is saved. On-the-job training is more productive. When employees are given training during their working hours and in the same workplace environment, this puts positive effect on their performance and productivity as it encourages them to experience change in their strategy for performing their job-related activities. At the same time, on-the-job training is an interactive way as it empowers employees to feel confident while receiving training. For example, in the off-the-job training sessions which are normally conducted in different locations along with highly formal atmosphere, the trainees find it hard to communicate with the trainer. As a result, the purpose of training is lost somewhere whereas the on-the-job training provides training in the same workplace which is comparatively more comfortable and congenial for employees for interacting with the trainers. Two ways for motivating employees Causes of de-motivation will be investigated before working for improving motivation. Fundamentally, this training session has been conducted for empowering them to professionally perform their duties in the customer support department. This will be the best strategy to address the problem of de-motivation. Second, both intrinsic and extrinsic rewards will be offered for top performing trainees in the session. At the end of this training session, three top performing trainees will be selected and they will be rewarded accordingly. The first top performer will receive a reward of $2000, the second will be given $1000 and the third will receive a shield. Additionally, the top performer will also receive the title of “Top Performer” and will receive appreciation from the top senior management of the company. Additionally, both motivation methods are highly important and they have been suggested to cover both aspects of motivation-intrinsic and extrinsic. Some employees are motivated by receiving cash (extrinsic reward) while others are attracted by the intrinsic (appreciation) method (Shaw et al., 2005). . Survey for collecting feedback from class attendees Survey will collect the ultimate feedback from the training attendees. In this survey, a close-ended questionnaire will be developed in which five questions will be mentioned along with options. The respondents will be asked to provide their feedback through selecting the most appropriate response from the provided options. Question no.1. What is the most interesting activity in the on-the-job training session? 1. Interaction 2. Learning 3. Coordination Question no. 2. How do you rate the usefulness of the on-the-job training session? 1. Very good 2. Good 3. Average 4. Don’t Know Question no. 3. What type of change is brought by the on-the-job training session for you? 1. Behavioral 2. Customer-related 3. Organizational 4. Don’t know Question no. 4. What are the main deficiencies that were addressed by the training session? 1. Customer-related 2. Behavior-related 3. Department-related 4. Don’t know Question no. 5. Should such training programs be held regularly? 1. Yes 2. No 3. Don’t Know Conclusion On-the-job training session has become highly productive for small firms. This training method is not only practical but also inexpensive as well. And it is the benefit of these two features that attract many small firms to use this method for improving their departmental performance besides eliminating the loopholes that cause under-performance. Keeping this view in mind, the firm faces frequent similar complaints, unfriendly behavior towards customers, no follow-up procedure, no coordination between the relevant departments, and drawing no lessons from previous mistakes. These are the fundamental issues. In order to resolve these problems, the trainer will first focus on the self-evaluation in which initial feedback from the participants will be noted down. This will enable the trainer to understand their issues along with knowing the organizational expectations from them. When on-the-job training method is compared with the other training methods, it can be easily deduced that this method is highly interactive as it utilizes the workplace environment for conducting the training session. After completing this training session, the final feedback will be collected through distributing close-ended questionnaire. References Lee-Ross, D., & Pryce, J. (2010). Human Resources and Tourism: Skills, Culture and Industry. New York, NY: Channel View Publications. Mathew, E. (2010). Methodology of Business Studies. New Delhi: Pearson. Shaw, D., Gorley, T., & Corban, R. (2005). Instant Notes in Sport and Exercise Psychology. New York, NY: Garland Science. Read More