IMPORTANCE OF TRAINING AND DEVELOPMENT IN AN ORGANIZATION

1.  IMPORTANCE OF TRAINING AND DEVELOPMENT IN AN ORGANISATION

What is Training?

According to Wayne Cascio Training consists of planned progress undertaken to improve employee knowledge, skills, attitudes and social behaviour so that the performance of the organisation improves considerably.

What is Training and Development?

According to Tysa, (1995), Training and Development serves a social function, helping workers to form friendship and distracting them from alienating work.

As we all know Training and Development is a key element of Human Resource Management.  Training helps the organisations to adopt to the changes in the business environment, specially in the introduction of new technology.  Further, the training helps the employees to expand their knowledge and provides the company well as the employees with benefits that makes the cost and time worthwhile. And also, training enhances the company reputation.  It helps to develop the employee brand. The companies that provide systematic training programmes have now become more attractive to the new recruits. Most of the organisations are now showing a considerable amount of interest in Training and Development and they provide the necessary learning opportunities to the employees in various methods. Some of them are on the job training, Mentoring schemes, In house training and Individual strategies. However, the surveys have found out specially the millennial have great expectations of Training and Development which they are provides by their current employer.  Therefore, it is of vital importance to the companies to invest in training and development to ensure a sustainable work force.

2.  BENEFITS OF TRAINING AND DEVELOPMENT

There are many mutual benefits of Training and Development to the company and to the employee.  They can be discussed as follows:

a.  Improve Employee Performance

The employees who get a proper training display a higher performance in the career.  They build the confidence to take any challenging task as they are armed with the necessary skills.  Training gives them a better understanding of their job responsibilities.  The confidence they build from training enhances the overall performance which mutually benefits to the company as well as the employee.

b.  Employee Satisfaction

When a company invests for training programmes, the employees believe that they are valued. It gives them a higher level of satisfaction of their tasks which motivate the employees to perform well. Also, Training and development creates a supportive work place to the employees where they are trained to constant peer learning. Here they feel the strength of team work which leads to their development.

Further, Training and development addresses the individual weaknesses. It strengthens the required skills of the employees and brings them to a high level so that all the employees have similar skills and knowledge. Like wise training and development creates a knowledgeable staff with employees who can take over one another as needed. Thus, the well-trained employees will be able to work as a team or individuals without constant help or supervision with much confidence.  Thus, the training programmes boost the employee’s satisfaction and retention.

c.  Consistency

Training and Development ensures that the employees have the consistent experience and back ground knowledge about the company’s basic policies.  When the employees have a clear knowledge of company policies, the efficiency increases resulting in final gain.

d.  Prevent Obsolescence

With the innovation of modern technology in the work place, most of the employees develop fear of being thrown out from the work place.  But with the systematic training on new technology, employees get updated and the obsolescence will be reduced.  Thus, the employees feel accepted which results a higher level of performance.

e.  Increasing productivity

Productivity is defined in the Oxford Dictionary 2007 is the efficiency with which things are being produced. Training has become a vital importance in increasing productivity in an organisation.   It enhances the employees resourcefully to learn their job and perform more competently.  Therefore, training has a positive impact in employee productivity. Training as a process is one of the most pervasive methods to enhance the productivity of individuals and communicating organisational goals to personnel (Ekaterine and Constoantinos Vasilios, 2009) Hence the training helps the organisations to survive in the current market.

3. TRAINING TRENDS IN THE CURRENT ORGANISATIONS

  By 2020, 50%of global work force will consist of millennial.  They do not seek only financial rewards but the self-development.   Therefore, Training and Development is considered as very important by the young workers.  They do not hesitate to leave the current employer if their training needs are not satisfied.  91% of millennial do not stay in a job for more than 3 years Therefore, the companies need to put more effort on training to attract and retain the talent. And also, the organisations must have an overall knowledge of the latest trends in training and development.

a.  Invest in Employee Engagement

According to survey from PWC the biggest challenge for Human Resource Management is to attract and retain the young employees.  Technology has created a huge gap between young and old work force.  The young work force likes instant access to information, constant feedback, fast job progress and modern corporate management style that links technology into daily work life. They value the chances to learn and develop strong set of competence and transferable skills.  They consider them as a ladder to advance in their present job as well as in the future careers.

The company should identify the needs of the young employees and build up Human Resources Training and Development systems which equally cater to young and senior employees.  This will minimize the risk of losing future talent to the company.  And also, the company should take steps to replace traditional performance management with innovative solutions. To bring the different generations together, the company can implement mentoring programmes and constant feed back for young workers with the help of seniors.

b.  Digitalized Training

The 21^st century workers are fully digitalized.  Mobiles, lap tops and social media have become an important part of their lives.  As the millennials are grown up in the digital world, they expect a higher level of access to technology in their work place.  They are comfortable with digital learning environment.

But according to survey by Deloitte, only 40% of companies are ready to transform their corporate training. Only 6% is excellent at providing mobile training and 5% in utilizing rich media like videos and audio programmes.

In order to meet the modern training needs of the work force, the companies should upgrade the digitalized training programmes.  If the companies fail to do so, the coat they bear for the training programmes will be of no use as the traditional class room leaning is not the requirement of the modern work force.

c.  Make Learning Flexible

According to a Google Research, 87% millennials tend to keep their smart phones by their sides day and night. This means social media has trained them to feel the instant answers and they want information to be available at their fingertips. Utilizing mobile devices, Human Resource Development can make training accessible to employees.  This enables the work force to flexible and constant learning.

d.  Personalized Training Programmes

According to the survey by Bond, 55% millennials likes to access personalized training services and 90% companies agree to deliver personalized training to support the work force in continuous development.  Personalized Training saves employees time and changes the approach to leaning by tying learning directly to business strategies.

The companies should adopt digital training platforms that enable personalize training while innovating traditional training programmes to engage different employee groups.

4.  CONCLUSION

Having a well trained and motivated work force is of vital importance to an organisation.  A company needs to have a confident staff who have up to date skills in order to compete with the modern business world.  Further a skillful and motivated workforce is an asset to the organisation. Employees with modern technology feel that they are of great importance to the organisation.  Training and Development plays a major role in creating a competence, performance-oriented work force to the organisation.  It helps the growth and the survival of the company. Training and Development strengthen the relationship between the work force and the leadership of the organisations. Although Training and Development caters to employee performance, company growth and productivity, it requires proper planning.  The organisations should understand the who is in need of training and what type of training they must provide to cater to the various employee groups.

References

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