Training and Development in a Nutshell

A simple formula illustrates how training can be made effective:

In this formula, the A stands for antecedent. In order for there to be a change in behaviour in an intended direction, the trainee needs to understand what behaviour is expected. A common scenario is for a manager to send an employee off to a seminar to improve his or her skills. An employee who seems disorganized might be sent to a “Time Management” course. To be effective, the manager should sit down with the employee and discuss what the current behaviour is, what it should be and how the gap will be closed. In most cases, this does not happen because the manager assumes the instructor will take care of it. This discussion is vital in forming the shared expectation between manager and employee regarding what changes will take place. Without it, the employee may be unsure of where to direct his or her energy. 

Following the training, some observable behaviour (the B in the equation) will take place. If the training is effective, the behaviour will match expectations; if not, the behaviour may be the same as prior to the training, or may be in an unintended direction. Either way, the manager can watch the employee's actions to determine if the training achieved its objective. 

The C stands for consequences. In order for changes in behaviour to become ingrained, they should be reinforced. When the employee returns from training, the manager should sit down and discuss what has been learned. This will show the employee that the manager believes the activity was important and that changes are expected. The two should also periodically meet to discuss the ongoing effectiveness of the training. When the manager sees changes in behaviour in the right direction, he or she should reinforce these by recognizing the changes and praising the individual. If the change was required in the context of performance goals, the reward system can also be used to reinforce the improvements. If the behaviour is not in the intended direction, the manager must act quickly to eradicate the behaviour. In extreme cases, the consequences of not changing might be punishment, as in “A failure to make immediate and sustained improvements in your performance could lead to the termination of your employment”. Without consequences, there is no motive for change. However, it should be stressed that positive means of reinforcement are much more powerful than negative as motivators.

Training takes many forms and has many purposes. The following are examples of typical and varied types of training organizations engage in:

                •             specific skills training (using a given software package);

                •             on-the-job training;

                •             supervisory skills (performance management, grievance handling);

                •             interpersonal skills (conflict resolution);

                •             leadership (motivational theory);

                •             team training (bonding as a group);

                •             professional development (continuing education programs, graduate degree programs);

                •             executive development (executive M.B.A.);

                •             personal development (time management);

                •             health and safety (Joint Health and Safety Committee effectiveness);

                •             emergency response (First Aid/CPR);

                •             requalification (as applicable to licensing regulations);

                •             remedial training (skills upgrades);

                •             employee orientation;

                •             special needs training (English as a second language); and

                •             specific needs training (company policies on human rights and harassment).

You are the training and development manager. Your president calls you in and tells you that the employee development budget has to be cut because of the company's financial situation. What arguments can you use to persuade your boss that development money is well spent?

Human Resource Career Planning

Inseparably linked with employee development is career planning and career management. A successful career needs to be managed through careful planning.

An increasing number of human resource departments see career planning as a way to meet their internal staffing needs. When employers encourage career planning, employees are more likely to set goals. In turn, these goals may motivate employees to pursue further education, training, or other career development activities. These activities then improve the value of employees to the organization and give the human resource department a larger pool of qualified applicants from which to fill internal job openings.

The involvement of human resource managers in career planning has grown during recent years because of its benefits. Here is a partial list of those benefits:

Develops Promotable Employees: Career planning helps to develop internal supplies of promotable talent.

Lowers Turnover: The increased attention to and concern for individual careers generates more organizational loyalty and therefore lower employee turnover.

Taps Employee Potential: Career planning encourages employees to tap more of their potential abilities, because they have specific career goals.

Furthers Growth: Career plans and goals motivate employees to grow and develop.

Reduces Hoarding: Without career planning, it is easier for managers to hoard key subordinates. Career planning causes employees, managers, and the human resource department to become aware of employee qualifications.

Satisfies Employee Needs: With less hoarding and improved growth opportunities for employees, individual needs for recognition and accomplishment are more readily satisfied, and self-esteem is boosted.

Assists Employment Equity Plans: Career planning can help members of protected groups prepare for more important jobs.

For any employee Career Planning consists of five main components:

1. Self-Assessment is a process of clarifying your value through discovering the relationship between various occupations and your personality type and work style, interests, career values, and skills. Even if you have engaged in a self-assessment process early in your career, your interests may have changed over time and you may be eager to learn new skills.  It is helpful to periodically engage in a thorough process of self-assessment throughout your career.
2.  In the Career Awareness phase, your goal is to understand how your value applies to opportunities within your organization and the wider world of work.  Developing your career awareness means gaining knowledge of career paths and job opportunities, and the skills and qualifications necessary to be successful in these positions.
3. Goal-Setting is a process of integrating self-assessment and career awareness information into career goals that reflect your vision of what you want in a career. If you have taken the time to do a thorough self-assessment and have built up your career awareness, then you are ready to focus on taking action.
4. Skill Development means developing yourself and your skill sets to add value for the organization and for your own career development. Fostering an attitude of appreciation for lifelong learning is the key to workplace success.
5. Career Management ensures others know about you and your value. Career management, unlike the other phases, is a continuous process that occurs throughout one's career and not just at discrete times. Successful career management is accomplished through regular habits of building relationships, engaging in career development conversations, updating your career development plan, and setting new goals as life and career needs change.

You are the HR manager and one of your staff members asks you for career advice on this company. She wants to get ahead and is willing to take courses fitting your company's special needs. You have strongly encouraged such moves in the past. You know that the company is doing badly in its market and has probably less than a year to survive. How will you advise her?

Evaluation of HR Training and Development

Training and development serve as transformation processes. Untrained employees are transformed into capable workers, and present workers may be trained to assume new responsibilities. To verify the program's success, human resource managers increasingly demand that training activities be evaluated systematically.

Evaluation Methodology

According to Webster's, a method is an orderly and logical procedure, and methodology is the science of method. An example of a nonscientific method to assess the effectiveness of a training program is the popular post-test design: one test is applied at the end of a training program to test its effectiveness. There are inherent problems with this method. Do we know it was the training that caused a high score? We cannot be sure. Perhaps the participants were already experienced and did not need the training in the first place.

T	O
Training	Observation/Test

A more effective approach is the pre-test post-test design, in which the instructor applies tests at the beginning and at the end of the training program to measure first the precondition (baseline characteristic) of the participants and then the outcome. This allows a more realistic assessment of the outcomes of a training program.

O	T	O
Observation/Test	Training	Observation/Test

There are four types of criteria for the evaluation of training i.e. reaction; knowledge; behaviour; and organizational results. Training objectives determine which of the criteria is the best suited for evaluation purposes. If the objective is to increase the knowledge of the participants, the obvious choice would be the knowledge criterion; if it is behaviour change, the behaviour criterion would be the most appropriate measure. Each criterion has its advantages and disadvantages as described below:

Reaction	Knowledge	Behaviour	Organizational Results
Also known as the happiness or smile sheet, reaction is the most widely used criterion in training evaluation. The usual question asked is, “How satisfied are you with the program?” or “Would you recommend it to a colleague?” This measure evaluates the setup of the program, but not its effectiveness. However, it can provide valuable information for the organizers of programs as to the proper training environment, seating arrangement, satisfaction with training facilities, food, and accommodation.	Very popular in learning institutions (exams), evaluating on the basis of knowledge is legitimate if an increase in knowledge is the intended objective of a training program (e.g., improved product knowledge). However, it can be reliably assessed only if before and after tests are used. Otherwise, it is uncertain whether a high score means the program was effective or whether the students knew the material beforehand.	For the measurement of behaviour change, self-reports and observations by others are used (e.g., neutral observers, superiors, peers, subordinates, or customers). Supervisor observation of behaviour change is more effective, but this approach has an inherent weakness. It is usually the supervisor who sent the employee to the training program and, because of this, is less likely to admit that he or she made an error in judgment.	Organizational results would be ideal measurements were it not for the difficulty in determining the cause–effect relationship between training programs and organizational results. The time difference between a training program and the availability of reports on organizational results can be many months. Who is then to say whether it was the training program or some other event that caused the results?

Oliver Wendell Holmes quotes:

"The greatest tragedy in America is not the destruction of our natural resources, though that tragedy is great. The truly great tragedy is the destruction of our human resources by our failure to fully utilize our abilities, which means that most men and women go to their graves with their music still in them." 

Should employees who are to retire soon have access to development programs, if they so desire? Please comment.

Strategic Human Resource Development

Strategic human resource development is “the identification of essential job skills and the management of employees' learning for the long-range future in relation to explicit corporate and business strategies.” The last part is the most critical in this sentence—namely the linkage between development needs and activities to the organization's mission and strategy.

Employee development is the process of enhancing an employee's future value to the enterprise through careful career planning. It means that management has to be willing to commit the financial resources to employee development programs, even if there is no short-term payoff.

Employee development is a long-term process that requires the same attention and concern as capital investment, because it is an investment in human capital.

Developmental Strategies Wexley and Latham propose three basic developmental strategies for organizations
Strategies	Definitions	Instruments/Programs
Cognitive	Being concerned with altering thoughts and ideas (knowledge, new processes).	Articles, lectures, videos, university courses, management seminars
Behavioural	Attempts to change behaviour (e.g., management style).	Role-playing, behaviour modelling, Leadership Grid, sensitivity training, outdoors, team building, mentoring
Environmental	Strategies to change attitudes and values.	Job rotation, organizational development, the learning organization concept, temporary assignments, employee exchange programs, matrix management, project team, internal consulting, cross-cultural management training

The Learning Organization: a concept put forward first by Chris Argyris, then popularized by Peter Senge. According to Senge, a learning organization is where “people continually expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire, where new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, where collective aspiration is set free, and where people are continually learning how to learn together.” Senge contrasts what is done in North American organizations with the Japanese approach:

In North America, the people who spend the most time learning about quality are those on the shop floor. They get the five-day course on statistical process control. Their bosses get the three-day course, and the CEO gets the two-hour briefing. In Japan, by contrast, it is exactly the opposite. This is very significant symbolically. There, the leaders are the learners.

Molson Breweries seems to be a model of a learning organization. In 1997, it opened the Molson Personal Learning and Development Centre in Etobicoke, Ontario. The objective was to help employees sharpen and broaden the skill sets needed for their jobs and beyond. As Lloyd Livingstone, brewing training specialist and coordinator for the development of the Learning Centre put it, “It really is a fun place; to look around and see these guys excited about learning, it really makes you feel excited too.”

In Molson Breweries; employees are offered a combination of mandatory training and personal career development. Training methods include Personal Learning Maps (a competency-based learning plan for each employee), a database of courses sorted by skills, a platform for launching multimedia training, and an administration program that allows managers to track employee progress and add new skills and courses to the system. The system encourages interaction between employees and managers, and even senior executives participate.

According to Senge, teams are vital, because they, not individuals, are the fundamental learning unit in modern organizations. Unless the team can learn, the organization cannot learn. For human resource managers, this approach means delegating a higher responsibility for acquiring new expertise and skills to the managers and employees and, perhaps, providing guidance and counselling.

Can you please go to the website of any large Canadian organizations, and tell us what strategy about employees' training and development it contains.

Human Resource Training Techniques

On-the-Job Training Techniques

On-the-job training (OJT): is received directly on the job and is used primarily to teach workers how to do their present job. A trainer, supervisor, or coworker serves as the instructor. This method includes each of the five learning principles (participation, repetition, relevance, transference, and feedback) in a series of carefully planned steps.

Job Rotation: To cross-train employees in a variety of jobs, some trainers will move the trainee from job to job. Besides giving workers variety in their jobs, cross-training helps the organization when vacations, absences, and resignations occur. Learner participation and high job transferability are the learning advantages to job rotation.

Apprenticeships: involve learning from a more experienced employee or employees. Most tradespeople, such as plumbers and carpenters, are trained through formal apprenticeship programs. Assistantships and internships are similar to apprenticeships. These approaches use high levels of participation by the trainee and have high transferability to the job.

Coaching: is similar to apprenticeship in that the coach attempts to provide a model for the trainee to copy. Most companies use some coaching. It tends to be less formal than an apprenticeship program, because there are few formal classroom sessions, and the coaching is provided when needed rather than being part of a carefully planned program. Participation, feedback, and job transference are likely to be high in this form of learning.

Off-the-Job Training Techniques

Lectures and Video Presentations: are off-the-job techniques tend to rely more heavily on communications rather than modelling  which is used in on-the-job programs. These approaches are applied in both training and development. Presenting a lecture is a popular approach, because it offers relative economy and a meaningful organization of materials. However, participation, feedback, transference, and repetition are often low. Feedback and participation can be improved when discussion is permitted after the lecture.

Television, films, and slide presentations are comparable to lectures. A meaningful organization of materials and initial audience interest are potential strengths of these approaches.

Vestibule Training: Training opportunities that utilize simulated workstations so that new employees can learn about their job without interfering with activities at the actual workstation. Separate areas or vestibules are set up with the same kind of equipment that will be used on the job. This arrangement allows transference, repetition, and participation. The meaningful organization of materials and feedback are also possible.

Role-Playing: A training technique that requires trainees to assume different identities in order to learn how others feel under different circumstances. The experience may create greater empathy and tolerance of individual differences. This technique seeks to change attitudes of trainees, such as improving racial understanding. It also helps to develop interpersonal skills. Although participation and feedback are present, the inclusion of other learning principles depends on the situation.

Case Study: By studying a case, trainees learn about real or hypothetical circumstances and the actions others took under those circumstances. Besides learning from the content of the case, trainees can develop decision-making skills. When cases are meaningful and similar to work-related situations, there is some transference. There also is the advantage of participation through discussion of the case. Feedback and repetition are usually lacking. This technique is most effective for developing problem-solving skills.

Simulation: Simulation exercises are in two forms. One form involves a mechanical simulator that replicates the major features of the work situation. Driving simulators used in driver's education programs are an example. This training method is similar to vestibule training, except that the simulator more often provides instantaneous feedback on performance.

Self-Study: Carefully planned instructional materials can be used to train and develop employees. These are particularly useful when employees are dispersed geographically or when learning requires little interaction. Self-study techniques range from manuals to pre-recorded CDs, DVDs, or podcasts. Unfortunately, few learning principles are included in this type of training.

Programmed Learning: This is another form of self-study. These are online booklets that contain a series of questions and answers. After a question is read, the answer can be uncovered immediately. If the reader was right, he or she proceeds. If wrong, the reader is directed to review accompanying materials. Programmed materials do provide learning participation, repetition, relevance, and feedback. The major advantage appears to be the savings in training time.

Laboratory training: is a form of group training used primarily to enhance interpersonal skills. Participants seek to improve their human relations skills by better understanding themselves and others. It involves sharing their experiences and examining the feelings, behaviour, perceptions, and reactions that result. Usually a trained professional serves as a facilitator. The process relies on participation, feedback, and repetition. One popular form of laboratory training is sensitivity training; also known as T-group, encounter group, or team building; which seeks to improve a person's sensitivity to the feelings of others.

Computer-Based Training (CBT), also known as computer-assisted learning, has been gaining prominence in Canada in recent years. CBT offers the student control over the pace of learning and even other training contents in modular-type training programs. It offers the benefits of interactive learning, participation, and positive reinforcement during training.

Virtual Reality: uses modern computer technology to create a very realistic 3D visual impression of an actual work environment. It allows trainees to respond to job requirements as if they worked on the job, as in a simulation. However, while simulation deals with certain aspects of the job, virtual reality combines all aspects of the job. The trainee works in a three-dimensional space and is able to interact with and manipulate objects in real time.

It allows companies to prepare trainees for job experiences that normally would involve high costs (e.g., flying an airplane); have the risk of costly damage to equipment (e.g., landing a plane on an aircraft carrier); or have the potential for injuries to the trainee (e.g., training in a race car).

Internet or Web-Based Training: The terms Internet training, Web-based training, virtual education, and e-learning all refer to the same concept: training or education delivered via the Internet. This approach allows very specific training to be delivered at any time and any place in the world. Training via the Internet uses two forms of access: asynchronous (accessible anytime), such as email, electronic bulletin boards, and listservs; and synchronous (real-time access), such as chat rooms, instant messaging, Web conferencing, whiteboards, wireless technology, and real-time audio and video.

Internet training is expensive and time-consuming to develop, but the costs are usually recovered quickly through savings in instructor time, travel, less or no time off the job, better retention, and higher general effectiveness. Other media used as training tools are blogs, RSS, podcasts, wiki, and Web 2.0.

Intranet: An internal computer network that is generally accessible only to individuals within an organization. Canadian banks use the concept of the intranet, an intra-organizational computer network, to deliver their corporate training. For example; the Royal Bank has put its training programs on its internal “Personal Learning Network.” that uses video, graphics, sound, text, and animation.

Video-conferencing: is widely used for long-distance education. Such as; Queen's University offers an Executive MBA Program through “multi-point interactive video-conferencing Boardroom Learning Centres” across Canada, allowing students to continue their career while earning a degree.

For any one of the following occupations, which training techniques do you recommend? Why?

1. a cashier in a grocery store
2. a welder
3. an assembly-line worker
4. an inexperienced supervisor