TRAINING AND DEVELOPMENT

1. The need to distinguish the differences between training and

development and to point out the similarities of both is critical.
First to mention is the employee orientation, which helps provide
employees the basic background information to perform their jobs
satisfactorily such as company rules; it is also a part of employers new
employee socialization process.

The socialization is a on-going process of installing in all

employees the prevailing attitudes, standards, values, and
patterns of behaviors that are expected by the organization and
the departments.

Training is an organization planned effort to help employees acquire jobs

related to knowledge, skills, abilities and behaviors with the goals of
applying these on the jobs. (Noe et al. 2004).

All training programs are designed to improve employees

Knowledge (K), Skills (S), and Attitudes (A). They are generally
view as Return on Investment ( ROI)
In addition, Training refers to methods and activities designed
used to provide new or present employees the skills and
knowledge they need to perform their jobs to facilitate the
working process later on in the organization (Mondy, 2008). For
example: training means showing the salespersons how to sale
the products or a show a new supervisor how to interview and
appraise employees.
It is applied for all employees.

Development is learning that go beyond todays jobs that has long-term

focus.

And also any attempt to improve managerial performance by

imparting knowledge, increasing skills and changing attitudes.
The aim of development program is to enhance the future
performance of the organization itself.
This is also a strategic plan in preparing selected employees for
promotion, development and succession planning

In addition, it helps ensure that the organization will have the

right managers, leaders to archive and sustain competitive
advantages.
The general development process consists of 3 aspects:
o Assessing the organizations needs, such as future
execute openings, boost competitiveness.
o Appraising managers performance
o Developing managers ( and future managers)
themselves.

In comparison, while training is an event and it focuses on the short-term

goals of organization, development is a process and it focuses on long-term
and employee as a person.

While training results can be measured in terms of benefits for

organization, the advantage of development seems to be more
subtle and sophisticated.
Training is skill focus, development creates learning abilities.
Moreover, training is presumed to have formal education,
development does not depend on education.
Training depends on skills related jobs, development depends on
personal drive and ambition
Training is a narrower concept of skills related jobs. Development
includes training if necessary
Training focuses on the job related efficiency and effectiveness,
development focuses on the overall personal effectiveness
including job efficiencies
Training is for all employee, short-term and current jobs while
development is for selected employee, long-term and future
orientation

2. There are several factors that influence training

The first one is top-management support, which is the topmanagers jobs to convince that training is necessary for the
long-term development of both organization and employees.
The second one is the commitment between trainers and
trainees. Company should choose the right one. It is essential to
make sure that employees are ready for training and the trainers
are good enough to better off the trainees.

Technology advances should be concerned, it is about the

whether the company has necessary and up-to-date equipment
to facilitate the process
Organization complexity, learning principles and other resource
functions is required.

3. Training also brings important benefits as a win-win situation for both

organization and employees.
In terms of employees: it brings motivation, job satisfaction, and
keeps them up-to-date to the jobs as well as employability
security
For the organization, it helps increasing the work productivity
and quality, enhancing the use of tools and machine, reducing
waste, lateness, turnover
Training also not only eliminates obsolesce in skill, technology,
method, products, capital management but also ensure the
survival and growth of the enterprise
4. The effective training program, which is a system approach, is
conducted with 4 phases
The first phase is need assessment to answer who needs what
training.
o The training effectiveness is measured by the training
needs identified by the trainers, not by the relation of their
contribution to the business goals.
o Training program exists when theres a gap between the
jobs requirement and the current capabilities of incumbent.
For example, the poor performance and the challenges
may require the changes in the way organization operates.
The training program must be closely and carefully
identified to avoid waste of money, time and effort for
irrelevant training program, which may lead to result as job
dissatisfaction of employees who are unable to apply what
they are taught to the real workforce. Gibb(2008) suggest
that the opportunity cost for muting short-terms needs for
training cannot satisfy long-term needs, which cause major
problem. Therefore, short-term training is more often
focuded since it is easier to define.
o The need analysis has 3 levels to be identified
The first level is organization analysis, a review of
training needs is necessary establish why specific

training events can contribute to the broader

strategic goals
The most common method is global review
by using the long-term and short-term goals
examined to determine the appropriate
knowledge and skills that meet the objectives.
The employee then will be examined against
this knowledge and skills criteria. However, this
takes time consuming so that its proper for
organization that has rapid changing
Other method uses the job descriptions draw
up competences against which performance is
used.
Another method is prioritizing by determine
what problem within organization require
training
The second level is job-training analysis
According to Harrison ( 2005), job-training
analysis is a process of identifying the purpose
of the job and its component parts, and
specifying what need to be learned in order to
be effective work performance.
Harrison suggested methods that can be used
are job descriptions and job specifications,
competences, role analysis, the use of
questions, group discussion and observation of
on-hand job.
The self-observation is an important method. To
some extent, its the most effective method to
determine precisely what the job entails.
However, one may overemphasis on what they
enjoy and dislike gaining the training.
The third level of training needs is personal needs.
There are many methods can be used like
interviews and questionnaires, work sampling,
and testing the knowledge and skills of in
specific issues.
The point is to identify what employees are
lacking of such as knowledge, skills, languages,
etc. Then, organization can send them to the
training center

For example, a sale person may not act humbly

to customers so he/she will be sent to the
center regarding of session about humble
behaviors.
The second phase in the process is called designing the training
program
o Firstly, specifying the objectives of the training program
whether its narrow or broad is necessary. Specific
objectives are essential to the effective plan. A clear
aim (why the training program takes place) needs to be
determined. For example, the aim could be to improve
the customer service.
In addition, additional behavioral and performance
outcomes to be archived should also be determined.
The objectives are precise and give outcomes in
terms of knowledge, skills and understandings. The
clearer the aims the better chance of success and
ease of evaluation. Following the above example, the
objective could be to handle many types of
customers and treat them excellently so that they
can feel satisfy about the service.
Furthermore, the objectives must be
communicated properly to employees,
especially who participate in the training
program so that they will have self-preparing,
and participate more actively which eventually
results in the even better final outcomes.
The target of the training program is also
important, since it will represent the desired
results of the final outcomes, the target could
be reducing the customers complaints by
10%

o Others factors need to be concerns like the appropriate

training lesson plan
o The material for trainees to use
o And the trainers who will deliver the training program
o Method is also essential to conduct the program and
needed to be carefully selected.

 At the matter of fact, there are multiple methods that

can be used to develop staffs. Raging from informal
and unstructured to carefully programmed and
structured.
It is noticed that there are no methods inherent
better than others, one may be utilized in this
circumstance but may not be suitable in other
circumstances. It is best to combine them in a certain
situation.
For example, e-learning may be effective to improve
basic language skills but it is less towards the
development of team-working and group-problem
solving
o In other to design an effective training program, the
trainees readiness and motivation are also involved.
Trainees readiness is the maturity and
experience factors of employees background.
The trainees motivation is the recognition for
knowledge and skills and the desire to learn as
training progresses in other to get the optimum
learning
o Strategies to creating motivated training environment
for trainees includes:
The positive reinforcement and the elimination of
threats and punishment
In addition, the flexibility, and allowing
participants to set their own personal goals also
contribute to the success of training
Finally, the roles of designing interest instruction
and ability to break down the physical and
psychological obstacles of employees are
significant

The third phase is the implementation of training

o The program or intervention must be delivered or
implemented using the appropriate means or methods
o It presents numerous challenges such as executing
program as planned, creating an environment that
enhances learning and resolving problems hat arise.

o Snape et al (1994) clarified the training method in 4

groups
Pedagogical
Instruction

Lecture

Individual base

Group

base

Self-manage learning
Case study
Andragogical
Top-left hand quadrant: Individual and
pedagogical base, which is useful for the
acquisition of standard programmable skills, for
the transfer of routine information and ways of
thinking, but also require practice and
application in real-life situations. However, it
has little room for discretion an creativity
Top-right hand quadrant: refers to
pedagogical orientation and group base,
methods such as lectures, presentations,
videos
It is suitable for situations when a large
amount of people are given the same job
at the same time and it has costeffectiveness.
However, most trainees have been
subjected to the lecturers and they have
awareness of the limited amount
retained during sessions.
Keeping the trainees interest in a longhour session seems to be sophisticated,
therefore, methods like visual aids,
videos, powerpoint and group discussion
may help.

 Bottom-left hand quadrant refers to the

andragogical oriented and individual base, is
the self-direct method, which is suitable for elearning or language laboratories
It can be undertaken at the pace, time,
location that are suitable for self-concern
It is appropriate for development and
reinforcement the basic language skill,
acquisition of impersonal techniques and
for report information gathering.
However, it has the disadvantages like
lacing of face-to-face contact to improve
interpersonal skills, therefore; role
playing, which is acting out anothers
position, will improve the abilities to
understand and cope with others.
Bottom-right hand quadrant refers to
andragogical oriented an group base. It has
methods like
Case study: which is most useful when
analytical skills, problem solving, and
critical thinking are important
Projects
Group role-playing exercises
Business games
It allows the group to propose their
solutions with minimum intervention of
trainers. The trainers jobs are to support
the groups and help them to arrive at the
conclusion and facilitate the process
through sharing ideas
The advantages include providing reallife problem solving, working out
solution in teams and giving
recommendations to other people.
However, it should be well-managed in
terms of learning outcomes, relevant
information given to trainees and the
abilities of trainers.

It also may happen that there is a person

dominates in the discussion the way that
excludes others which cause other
trainees dissatisfaction and stresses.

o There are also on-the-job and off-the-job training

methods that are concerned
On the job are mostly used by many
organizations: in reality, public banks and
consultant companies use this approach by
letting the seniors help the new employees so
that they can learn more quickly how the jobs
are done. This has cost-saving but the
effectiveness depends on the seniors in terms
of how they teach and what they teach
Off-the-job training: the company will give out
internship or scholarship to send the employee
elsewhere to learn techniques. The merit is
that the employees need to do only 1 job,
which is learning. However, it depends on the
attitudes and awareness of employees towards
the learning.
The best remedy seems to be the
combination of 2 methods. Management
should depend on the specific
circumstances that the organization will be
facing to decide whether to use them
separately or combine them together.
For instance, in a restaurant, the training for
waiter/waitress should be on-the-job training
so that they can learn more quickly how to
serve customers best. But for the
accountant, it should be best by both offthe-job sending them to accounting session
and on-the-job observing how they do their
jobs. In the kitchen, the staffs should be
sent to training session related to hygiene
improvement according to the new
regulation of the authorities.

The fourth phase is evaluation. Whatever the method, evaluation

is critical to establish strategic alignment and to ensure that
training and development is relevant, integrated and
continuous. Often, the evaluation is systematic and
comprehensive due to the difficulties in effectively and efficiently
conducting. The extent of formal and systematic evaluation is
limited despite its worth known (Marchington and Wilkinson,
2008)
o According to Kirpatrick (1995) the effectiveness of
training program ca be measured by
Reaction: the reaction of participant can give a
quick indication of trouble spot and provide an
idea of participants attitude towards the
trainings value. However, there are concerns
about the actual quality of this approach,
trainees may not towards the actual learning
but the abilities of trainers to maintain surface
interest such as jokes. Researchers found that
there is a poor relationship between the
reaction and level assessment, changes and
learning in job performances and transfers of
learning into workplace.
Learning: the skills and knowledge that are
tested before training to give a baseline
measurement can be tested again after that,
using pre-test, post-test to compare whether
the level of knowledge increases or not. Reid et
al (2004) suggested other methods like
projects, examinations, structured exercises,
case study, and discussions.
Behavior: participants changes in work related
to behaviors after training. For instance, before
training session, employees often come to
office late but after that, they come to work on
time.
Result: increase in performance and
productivity. For example, after training about
to sell car s to customers, sale figures increase
20%, it could be measured by quality. Turnover,
morale , profits and costs

Training and development will continuously

appears to be crucial for any organization survival
and growth. New entrants to organizations may
possess skills and capabilities that may not
relevant to organizational context. Thus, to save
time and effort, as to fully utilize the employees
ability, training must be put in place at the
beginning so that employees will know how to
apply their knowledge in organizations works.
Accordingly, productivity will be enhanced.
Although income is very important, it is not the
only option that people would like to have. People
also expect for development (Olaniyan and Ojo,
2008). Generally, people tend to have
expectations to learn more at a new workplace to
gain knowledge and skills but also social
relationships and soft skills. Training is a process
of creating organizations conditions that drive the
people to strive for better off. Indeed, through
various approaches of implementing a training
session and individual can be significantly
beneficial from the activities given such as
group/team work, presentations, and discussions.
Among the 4 steps of training, TNAs is the most
important phase since it decides who needs what
training. To give a wrong education to people
results in bad consequences. Employees carry
misunderstanding beliefs about the organization
cultures. They may find its a mistake to join the
company and about to leave, which is a waste of
talents. Organizations must consider this step
clearly to avoid long-term negative results.