January 29th, 2011 
jvremec
Training and Development,an Overview
Author: adiele ndunuju
Training and Development is the framework for helping employees to develop their personal and organizational skills, knowledge, and abilities. The focus of all aspects of Human Resource Development is on developing the most superior workforce so that the organization and individual employees can accomplish their work goals in service to customers.
Trainings in an organization can be mainly of two types; Internal and External training sessions. Internal training involves when training is organized in-house by the Human resources department or training department using either a senior staff or any talented staff in the particular department as a resource person.
On the other hand External training is normally arranged outside the firm and is mostly organized by training institutes or consultants. Whichever training, it is very essential for all staff and helps in building career positioning and preparing staff for greater challenges.
Employers of labour should enable employees to pursue training and development in a direction that they choose and are interested in, not just in company-assigned directions. Companies should support learning, in general, and not just in support of knowledge needed for the employee’s current or next anticipated job. It should be noted that the key factor is keeping the employee interested, attending, engaged, motivated and retained.
For every employee to perform well especially Supervisors and Managers, there is need for constant training and development. The right employee training, development and education provides big payoffs for the employer in increased productivity, knowledge, loyalty, and contribution to general growth of the firm. In most cases external trainings for instance provide participants with the avenue to meet new set of people in the same field and network. The meeting will give them the chance to compare issues and find out what is obtainable in each other’s environment. This for sure will introduce positive changes where necessary.
REASONS FOR EMPLOYEE TRAINING AND DEVELOPMENT:
The reasons behind employee training and development cannot be overemphasized. From our discussions so far, one can easily deduce some reasons behind firms engaging in training and developing their staff. We will summarize some of the reasons thus;
- When needs arise as a result of findings from the outcome of performance appraisal.
- As part of professional development plan.
- As part of succession planning to help an employee be eligible for a planned change in role in the organization.
- To imbibe and inculcate a new technology in the system.
- Because of the dynamic nature of the business world and changing technologies.
SOME TOPICS TREATED IN EMPLOYEE TRAININGS:
- Communications: The increasing diversity of today’s workforce brings a wide variety of languages and customs, thus staff should be able to be very good in both written and verbal communication.
- Computer skills: Computer skills are becoming a necessity for conducting administrative and office tasks. In this era of technological advancement, computer skills are very necessary for almost of departments in an organization.
- Customer service: Increased competition in today’s global marketplace makes it critical that employees understand and meet the needs of customers. The firm that stands out from the crowd is that firm that puts its customers first before every other goal. Then the need to always train staff on customer service.
- Diversity: This includes explanation about people and their different perspectives and views, and how this can be handled.
- Ethics: There are divergent ethics in different firms. Some firms attach more importance to certain issues like moral, work period, latness etc than other issues. Today’s society has increasing expectations about corporate social responsibility. Also, today’s diverse workforce brings a wide variety of values and morals to the workplace. This calls for the need for staff to be reminded of these always through training and development.
- Human relations: The increased stresses of today’s workplace can include misunderstandings and conflict. Training can help people to get along in the workplace with good understanding of each other and the office inter personal relationship to reduce official conflict.
- Quality Management: Initiatives such as Total Quality Management, Quality Circles, benchmarking, etc., require basic training about quality concepts, guidelines and standards for quality, etc.
- Safety: Safety training is critical where working with heavy equipment, hazardous chemicals, repetitive activities etc. Staff should be made to understand that despite the fact that they have a safety department, the safety of each staff is in his /her own hands.
BENEFITS OF EMPLOYEE TRAINING AND DEVELOPMENT:
- Increased job satisfaction and morale among employees.
- Better inter personal relationship and customer satisfaction.
- Increased employee motivation.
- Increased efficiencies in processes, resulting in improved financial gain.
- Increased capacity to adopt new technologies and methods.
- Increased innovation in strategies and products.
- Reduced employee turnover.
- Enhanced company image.
- Better Risk management and staff safety consciousness.
- Increase in productivity.
Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/human-resources-articles/training-and-developmentan-overview-762799.html
About the Author
An experienced HR Practitioner, an Administrator, and a seasoned Marketer with over 8 years cognate post graduation experience mostly in the Telecommunications, Marine and Oil & Gas industries. Functions well as a strategic partner, change agent, administrative expert and employee champion. Fully understands the values and tenets of Human Resources and Administration that drive organizations. An expert in Policy writing and implementation, recruitment and selection, staff orientation and induction, staff training and development, employee talent management, employee retention, succession planning, staff welfare issues, disciplinary matters as well as disengagement related matters. A good administrator with experiences in protocol, logistics and related issues. Have been involved in the formulation and implementation of Human Resources strategies that can move any company forward in the present dynamic and competitive business environment. Involved in career development; reward, compensation systems; and learning & development programmes. A team builder and team player with proven leadership and project management abilities. My background education in Business Administration has equipped me with capabilities to work very well with budgets and achieve target within a given time frame.
Posted in 
Tags: 
Suggest Software Company Name?
Please suggest the name for software company. The company’s nature of work is consulting, training, development and staff outsourcing.
Softech
When a person learns how to develop algorithms using a software development methodology, do they also learn ..
what to do to keep the methodology working.
For example if you learn to use a machine, you might also train to fix the 3 major types of stoppages known for the machine.
Surely the problem with developing software are known.
Do people train to avoid or fix the major problems.
Typical problem : An early version of the software is “released”. It’s only meant to be used to check that it talks with other equipment. A rogue staff member approves it for use at sea.
So there’s been a major malfunction with the software development methodology, the malfunction being that the software development methodology wasn’t obeyed.
This must happen frequenly enough to justify effort in training staff on the likelihood of this happening, and what to do.
In this example, the early version is only supposed to be used to see if it talks with other equipment. The early version is not supposed to be released to sea. The software development system needs to be restarted (with the early …
version and its associated test system, and required functionality added tiil the system is fit to release to sea).
To HappyCamper
Terrific insight. Thanks.
Generally not. A compiler or interpreter re-written in its own language is rare to unheard of. Some Object-Oriented Development Kits may evolve to use components or methods processed by their earlier iterations.
Time pressure to market makes this impossible in an economic sense.
It would be a risk factor to create a development studio that relied on its own error-ridden code to produce replacement modules for itself. Thus programmers of the language are almost always going to be using a different language than programmers in the language.
increasing number of women in labor force?
How would they affect human resource management in terms of staffing and placement, training and development, salary administration, job design, promotions, and career planning?
To be honest, I think we already have a strong force of women who are working. It’s not like the olden days anymore. Women now carry all of the weight on their shoulders. We wear both pants.
Question for Human Resources professionals?
H.R. managers, generalists, etc………
In english, what exactly do you do on a day-to-day basis?
I looked on job descriptions for H.R. managers and it’s like, they do very generic, general things……..
They “remain current with employment laws,” “work on training and development”..”manage staffing performance”…..is it pretty much as easy as it sounds?
How closely do you work with the person you report to?
Do you think that person would notice if you just stopped coming to work?
“employment laws” ok if you where they have a large work force you always have some manage who wants fire someone — you just can not up and fire — you have to advise the manager what steps they must take to build a case so when the day comes to fire you do not have to worry about the company getting a lawsuit — after all in a wrong dismissal it is not the firing managers head on the line but yours!!!
Downsizing or Rightsizing?
CEO of ABC Company has observed inefficiency of staff members. He doesn’t want to fire people from the company and also the objective is to increase the efficiency rather to decrease the cost. Some advisers advise CEO to hire more people to overcome this problem and some are saying that existing staff needs training and development. The matter of fact is that the existing staff is capable enough and has the ability to perform better. But there is a problem that few managers are very influential and put negative impact on other employees. They are politicizing the organization, forbade employees to work hard and create messy situation. On the other hand Jobs are well defined and assigned tasks are specific so removing any person may create problem in running operations. CEO is now thinking to replace these culprits (managers) only with some efficient and professional people to overcome this problem and the best solution to increase the overall productivity of the organization.
My teacher asked me that what CEO is going to do; Downsizing or Rightsizing? Give reason in one sentence only (reason should not exceed more than 30 words to avoid negative marking)….
Does anybody knows?
He is rightsizing by eliminating the management positions and creating the staff an ad hoc steering committee with a preliminary outline due by the next Monday. Good Luck.