Employee Training Goals, Relevance and Process
Training Employees for Their Roles is one of the Best Investments
Mar 7, 2009
It is individual employees who execute the plans, policies and procedures of an organization. If they do not know how to execute these, or are not committed to a successful execution, even the best of strategies cannot help an organization.
Do Experienced Employees Need Training?
Organizations typically recruit experienced employees for all positions that are not entry level. The question now arises: Do these experienced employees need training? The answer is 'Yes'.
Organizational culture and standard practices determine how employees go about their roles. When an employee moves from one organization to another, she or he takes along the style the person has become accustomed to.
If the new organization has a different culture and way of doing things, the new employee's style can cause conflict, or even ridicule. Such negative feedback can soon result in the employee losing all the enthusiasm that the person brought in. Without motivation, performance suffers.
Induction training, making new employees familiar with the culture and practices of the organization, is as important for experienced employees as for entry level employees.
Goals of Employee Training Programs
Developing competence and positive attitudes are the key goals of employee training programs.
Competence is the ability to perform well in a specific role. This ability comes from knowledge, skills and behavior. Knowledge provides the expertise and information. Skill is the capacity to bring about desired results. And the employee's behavior can help or hinder achievement of the results.
For example, a person in a managerial role needs the ability to see things in a systems perspective, emotional intelligence to cope with all kinds of situations, leadership to identify what needs to be done and then exert influence to get it done, and negotiation skills to strike a compromise when it becomes necessary.
The importance of attitude training would have begun to be apparent by now. Wherever people gather together, there is the chance of conflict, particularly between employees and their bosses. By training employees to get along well with authority, and also with people of different viewpoints, their own careers benefit as well as organizational performance.
Employee Training Process
Meaningful training is possible only if the roles of all employees have been clearly defined. With the roles clear, it becomes possible to identify the knowledge and skills required to perform these.
Training programs are then developed to impart the required knowledge and develop the required skills. Such training can be on-the-job or off-the-job.
On-the-job training takes place at workplaces, using the tools, equipment and other things that trained workers use. Trainees obtain procedural knowledge from experienced trainers. They learn how to obtain desired outcomes with minimal input of effort and resources.
Off-the-job training is provided away from the workplaces. This has the advantage that trainees can concentrate on the training itself. This option is best for teaching concepts and ideas.
Employee training programs range from trade apprenticeships to years-long professional courses in engineering and medicine. New employees also require a course of induction training to make them fit into their new teams, and learn the culture and ways of doing things in their new organization. All training programs seek to develop competence and the right attitudes for performing defined roles.
