Identifying Training and Development Need, Designing Training Programs

The need for Training and Development

Before we say that technology is responsible for increased need of training inputs to employees, it is important to understand that there are other factors too that contribute to the latter. Training is also necessary for the individual development and progress of the employee, which motivates him to work for a certain organization apart from just money. We also require training update employees of the market trends, the change in the employment policies and other things.

The following are the two biggest factors that contribute to the increased need to training and development in organizations:

(i) Change: The word change encapsulates almost everything. It is one of the biggest factors that contribute to the need of training and development. There is in fact a direct relationship between the two. Change leads to the need for training and development and training and development leads to individual and organisational change, and the cycle goes on and on. More specifically it is the technology that is driving the need; changing the way how businesses function, compete and deliver.

(ii) Development: It is again one the strong reasons for training and development becoming all the more important. Money is not the sole motivator at work and this is especially very true for the 21st century. People who work with organizations seek more than just employment out of their work; they look at holistic development of self. Spirituality and self awareness for example are gaining momentum world over. People seek happiness at jobs which may not be possible unless an individual is aware of the self. At ford, for example, an individual can enroll himself / herself in a course on ‘self awareness’, which apparently seems inconsequential to ones performance at work but contributes to the spiritual well being of an individual which is all the more important.

Designing Training Programs

When developing your training plan, there are a number of considerations. Training is something that should be planned and developed in advance.

Designing a training programme is very important part of human resource management. Let us discuss in this article how to design a training programme: 

1. Identification of training needs: the main cause of identification of training needs is the technological changes that are taking place. For example computers are now days are used in all the offices which require training the employees. Except technological changes poor performance of workers which result in low production requires systematic training. Training needs can be identified through following types of analysis.

(a) Organizational analysis: it is the systematic study of organizational objectives, resources, its utilization, growth potential and climate. It involves following elements:

• Analysis of objectives: All the objectives of the organization whether long-term or short-term should be analyzed properly. It is the responsibility of the management to check which kind of training programme is required to achieve these objectives.
• Climate analysis: Organizational climate shows the attitude of organizational members. It helps in checking whether the environment in different departments is conducive or not and where there is the need of training programme to improve the climate of the organization.
• Resource utilization analysis: It should be checked that whether the physical and human resources have been utilized properly or not otherwise there is the need of training to utilize them properly.

(b) Task analysis: it is analyzing the job systematically. To identify the job contents, knowledge, skill, aptitude required to perform the job. In task analysis focus is on the job. It basically studies the various types of skills and training required to perform the job.

(c) Manpower analysis: the quality or type of manpower the firm required should be checked properly. To achieve the proper quality standards specific training needs should be determined on the basis of capability of present workers to learn the new skills.

2. Setting the training objectives: after identification of training needs the next step is setting the training objectives. The aim of any training programme is to increase the organizational effectiveness. As each training programme must have specific objective like increase productivity, improved quality, higher the morale of employees, growth of employees, better human resource planning etc.

3. Organization of training programme: as every training programme include the trainees, trainers, training period, training material so all these should be organized properly.

(i) Selection of the trainees: it is the first step of organization of training programme. The trainee should be selected properly. They should be trained for the kind of the job they like. Careful selection of the trainees helps in effectiveness of training programme.

(ii) Preparation of instructor: instructor I the important person in the training programme. Qualified instructor may be obtained from inside the organization or from the outside. He must have all the qualities of good trainer because he has to give training to other people.

(iii) Determination of training period: the time duration of training depends upon the type of skill required. For the training of clerk training of a week is enough while for any other position it may require more or less training time.

(iv) Training methods: the on the job training and off the job training has been already discussed. So the choice of training methods depends upon the objective of the training programme.

4. Evaluation of training: at the end it is very important to evaluate the effectiveness of training programme. As how much the employees have learnt from the training programme. It will help in modifying the future training programme.