Training & Development - Essay Example

Consequently, there is a need to ensure that the company remains ahead of the competition. Management realised that there is no better way to achieve this rather than through the use of training and development. (Paisley, 1999) Policies at M&S will be measured against the backdrop of ‘best practise’ models. The model is based upon the belief that when organisations adopt certain human resource strategies, they are able to make their employees highly motivated. As a result, those employees will become more efficient and they will help in the realisation of competitive advantage within the organisation.

Best practice applies to various sectors that include retention of employees, performance improvement, enhancing and promoting training and development, enhancing corporate culture, enforcing organisational structure and also in the determination of pay costs. However, for purposes of this report, we shall mainly focus on training and development. The Research primarily focuses on the use of secondary sources of data. This is because secondary data gives an overall picture of the situation at Marks and Spencer.

It allows one to obtain all the relevant information to the research question and compile them to come up with new answers. If primary sources like interviews had been used, it would have been difficult to see the overall picture as results are mostly person centred. (Schutt, 2006) Secondary data allows comparisons between different elements of the research that would otherwise have been too complex to collect using primary sources. Consequently, there are very accurate results that come out of the usage of such a source of data.

(Banta, 2007) However, one must not under look the disadvantages of this method of data collection. First of all, it does not allow the progression from developing a research question, collecting data and formulating a hypothesis