Evaluate training and development methods that may assist organisations in meeting their strategic objectives essay
In the contemporary business environment, training and development play an important part because they become the major drivers of the organisational development. More important, today, training and development are essential for the survival of organisations in the highly competitive business environment because knowledge and learning play the key part in determining the competitive position of organisations. As a result, many organisations invest into their training and development, while the concept of the learning organisation becomes more and more popular today. At the same time, the development of the training process raises the problem of the development of effective methods and strategies of training, the correlation between actual needs of organisations and the training and development process, and many other issues. In actuality, there are different views on the training and development process but there is no homogeneous approach to training and development and each organisation tends to develop its own training and development methods and strategies. Training and development is a complex process that may involve the application of different methods the choice of which depends on the specificity of the organisation, its human resources, marketing goals and objectives, and resources available to the organisation.
The training and development process normally includes several key stages. The first stage is reviewing and consultation which aim at the revelation of current training needs of the organisation and the development of the further training strategy respectively to the training objectives of the organisation. Reviewing and consultation allows determining urgent needs of the organisation on the ground of which the organisation can develop its training methods and strategies. Such reviewing and consultation helps to identify weak points in the organisational development and training and eliminate existing weaknesses or drawbacks.
The second stage of the training and development process is questioning that involves the analysis of possible alternatives to the behaviour, skills and functions required from employees that are going to be involved in the training process. The next stage of the training and development process is agreeing. This stage involves the close interaction of the manager responsible for the training and development of human resources with colleagues and employees of the organisation to receive feedback from them concerning current needs of employees and the organisation at large. Furthermore, the following stage is modelling, which implies the analysis of the available models and methods of learning and training that can be applied to the particular organisation (Reid 2007: 138). The next stage of the training and development process is negotiation, which involves the agreement of key points of the training and development model introduced in the organisation with all key stakeholders, such as employees, managers, coaches, and others. The final stage of the training and development process is the implementation of the developed plan and respective method of training.
Furthermore, training methods should focus on three levels which meet respective training needs of organisations: organisational level; department level and individual level. At each level, the training relies heavily on human resources, who are involved directly in the training and development process. However, the scope of the training and development differs depending on the level. For instance, at the individual level, an employee develops specific skills required for his/her position and specific tasks and functions the employee performs on the regular basis. At the department level, employees should focus on the training and development to work as a team within their department to optimize and enhance the performance of the department that means the improvement of their interaction within the department and better communication within the department. At the organisational level, employees have to focus on the training and development that help them to develop their strategic thinking to understand the vision and mission of their organisation and develop required skills and focus their performance to reach strategic goals of the organisation through their individual performance.
Training and development policies conducted by organisations may differ consistently. Organisations can use training and development policies oriented on the continuous professional development that means that employees keep developing new skills and improving existing ones in the course of their career all the time. In this regard, the life-long learning the preferable scheme for many organisations as well as employees because such learning and training of employees involves the improvement and development of professional skills of employees during their life time. Therefore, employees always keep progressing. Such life-long training and development requires a lot of efforts from the part of organisations but such approach is highly beneficial in a long-run perspective. If the organisation manages to retain the personnel and prevent high turn-over rates, the organisation can enhance its competitive position due to the steady rise of the qualification level of its employees, the improvement of their performance and, therefore, the growth of the customer satisfaction.
However, a substantial drawback of the lifetime learning is the high costs of such training policy and different learning skills and abilities of individuals at the different age. For instance, younger employees are more successful in learning than older ones that means that training will be more effective for young employees than older ones. The high costs of this approach to the training and development process may be aggravated by the risk of the high turn-over rate among employees of organisations that actually makes such strategy useless because well-trained and highly qualified employees will just abandon their organisations and transfer to other organisations.
In addition, there is vocational education training which focuses on the specific training for specific professionals working in their organisation for the development of the required professional skills and abilities. Vocational education training is efficient for the training of required professionals to fill the particular positions in the organisation. At the same time, this approach is not always efficient, if organisations need to have universal employees that can perform multiple functions, although vocational training admits the possibility of training employees for specific jobs but such training needs time and costs.
Moreover, it is worth mentioning the induction training which implies the development of job-specific competences and skills, for instance IT training. This approach to the training and development is quite controversial. On the one hand, this approach allows training employees, who are well-qualified and trained to perform their specific functions perfectly. On the other hand, such approach to the training and development process limits functionality of employees and prevents organisations from employing and training professionals, who can perform different functions and take different positions. The narrow specialisation of training becomes unpopular today because the fast progress of technology, fast change of the business environment and other changes require organisations to train and develop universal employees, who can perform tasks that they face at the moment, regardless of their initial specialisation.
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