Significance of Learning and Development in Multinet

Multinet Pakistan Pvt. Ltd. values the continuous development of all staff in support of
organizational strategy. We aim to put activities in place to ensure everyone is competent in their
current role and can respond to changing requirements. We aim to provide opportunities for
long-term career development where this meets individual and organizational needs.

This policy is based on three principles:

 Responsibility for learning & development is equal on individuals, line managers and the
Learning & Development Team
 Learning & Development opportunities will be provided on merit and (no need of and
here) basis in a competitive and challenging environment.
 Multinet Pakistan Pvt. Ltd. supports 'lifelong learning' – the concept that all learning is
valuable, regardless of subject, at any stage of an individual’s life and career, however its
relevance to the current field of work and/or upcoming challenges should be kept in mind
as all learning has associated cost and we must evaluate and justify all learning
investment.

LEARNING & DEVELOPMENT RATIONAL

To ensure people have the right competencies to meet current and future business needs as
identified in the Multinet’s strategy.

On a wider scale, changing business strategy and working practices may involve development
for whole groups of staff, while corporate development programs are designed to help staff meet
business requirements and to develop core and role competencies. The aim here is to develop the
potential of staff to meet the longer -term needs of Multinet.

LEARNING NEEDS ANALYSIS (LNA)

Development needs may be identified by the manager or individual and can arise at any time. A
key part of performance management involves identifying development needed to meet learning
objectives and competency expectations arising from:
  New joiner
 Changes in job content, processes or tasks
 Identification of new challenges
 Individual being new to the role, job rotation
 Personal desire to improve performance (e.g. for the purposes of career development).
 Change in industry standards
 Performance in the current job not meeting expectations

Learning Methodologies, Eligibility criteria, and liability

There are many methods of formal/informal development:

Workplace – involves an individual undertaking work that will develop their knowledge, skills
etc. This is formal development because the manager and individual agree that development is
one reason for undertaking the work (though not the only one) and review progress made.

Away from Work – takes place away from the workplace e.g. attending an internal or external
training course, studying for qualifications or attending conferences.

Self-learning – when an individual takes responsibility of his/her learning & development, the
avenues are unlimited

MOOCs – Massive Online Open Content, these include verified paid and free courses,
certificate/degree/diploma awarding

Reading – online/offline: books, articles, newspapers, Ph. D. publications, and many such
material can be utilized to extract learning
Paid Learning Eligibility Criteria

The employee must meet all the below mentioned criteria to qualify for attending paid learning
on company’s account:

Has attended minimum 15% credit hours of offered internal training in present or previous year
OR has attended at least 8 hours of external training (free or paid) in the current year.

Has completed at least 6 credit hours of MOOCs in present year OR has completed at least 10
credit hours of MOOCs in previous year

Minimum employment period at Multinet:

The eligible employee may avail paid learning up to following ratio according to their current
salary

L&D fee annual limit:

Q2: What are the major issues and challenges in Multinet related to its training and
development program?

The success of a training program is evaluated in terms of the end result or the increase in the
work ability, skill or competency in the trainee. For any training program to be successful it is
very essential to follow a certain process.

The basic process as illustrated in the figure below consists of four stages which are
assessment, development, delivery and evaluation.

 The process of training begins with the need’s assessment stage. The aim of the
assessment stage is to understand whether or not training is required. If the answer is yes;
the next step is determining competency or skills gaps and the appropriate training
intervention required. The training intervention is essentially decided in terms of attitude,
knowledge and skill (ASK), the combination of which is called as competency. The
assessment also called as the ‘training needs analysis’ is undertaken at three levels, the
job, the individual and organizational analysis.
 Once the training needs analysis is complete, the next stage is that of Development. This
stage involves the development of content and the training material. Right from designing
the appropriate environment to deciding the various tools, everything is taken care of in
 the development stage. Games, A/V’s, Case Studies, Class room intervention are various
means that may be decided upon apart from the content delivered. For example, in
behavioral training emotional intelligence, teamwork, listening are examples of
competencies that are required to perform superior work. The same may be transferred
into the trainees through any of the above means depending upon various factors like
demographics, job nature etc. which are taken care of in the first stage.
 The most important stage and perhaps the least talked upon from the training process is
the delivery. Once the development stage is over it is time to conduct the training.
Factors like time and venue of delivery are already decided in the earlier stages. There are
various factors that determine the process of delivery like the participant demographics,
the training intervention, the individual style of the trainer etc. This brings in a lot of
diversity to the training programs.
 Evaluation is the last stage in the training process and more important from the
perspective of evaluation of the effectiveness of training. Needless to say, it is aimed at
analyzing whether or not the training has been effective in achieving the objective
(bridging the competency gap, changing the attitude, developing new skills etc.). There
are various ways in which the effectiveness of training programs can be evaluated but not
many are able to answer in terms of ROI. The most effective tool for evaluation of
training is the Kirk Patrick Model of Evaluation.

In order for the evaluation to be effective the both the criteria and design for training program is
decided so that there is no discrepancy and the participants are able to evaluate the benefits
effectively for themselves. The evaluation is made on the basis of participant reaction to the
training, their learning and the change in behavior. This feedback is then reused in the first step
‘training needs analysis’ for making future training more effective.

Pitfalls of our Training and Development Program

 Training Needs Assessment Lacks Organizational and Job Analysis: The training
need’s assessment is a very random process being pursued by Multinet. There is no
organizational or job analysis performed to streamline the training processes. The
organizational analysis is aimed at short listing the focus areas for training within the
 organization and the factors that may affect the same. Organizational mission, vision,
goals, people inventories, processes, performance data are all studied. The study gives
cues about the kind of learning environment required for the training. The job analysis of
the need’s assessment survey aims at understanding the ‘what’ of the training
development stage. The kind of intervention needed is what is decided upon in the job
analysis. It is an objective assessment of the job wherein both the worker oriented -
approach as well as the task - oriented approach is taken into consideration. The worker
approach identifies key behaviors and ASK for a certain job and the task - oriented
approach identifies the activities to be performed in a certain job. The former is useful in
deciding the intervention and the latter in content development and program evaluation.
 There is no mechanism defined for individual analysis: The need for training is only
determined when it arises. There is no prior planning done and no analysis is carried out
for the individual who would be undergoing the training program. As evident from the
name itself, the individual analysis is concerned with who in the organization needs the
training and in which particular area. Here performance is taken out from the
performance appraisal data and the same is compared with the expected level or standard
of performance. The individual analysis is also conducted through questionnaires, 360
feedback, personal interviews etc. Likewise, many organizations use competency ratings
to rate their managers; these ratings may come from their subordinates, customers, peers,
bosses etc. Apart from the above-mentioned organizations also make use of attitude
surveys, critical Incidents and Assessment surveys to understand training needs which
will be discussed in detail in other articles.
 Training may prove worthless if it is conducted without studying individual data:
Every member in a team is unique and works as well as performs at a certain level (n).
There may be others who are at (n+1) or (n-1) or more. Thus, the same intervention may
halt the progress of a certain individual and finally the organization. There are therefore
certain tools that help in deciding interventions at the individual level. Performance
appraisal data, questionnaires, attitude surveys, 360-degree feedback, assessment centers,
critical incidents are some techniques that are employed to a good benefit.
 No Concept of Training Manuals: Employee training manuals are small handbooks
which are given to employees by training managers for their future reference. Employee
 training manual should include relevant information which would help employees
enhance their capabilities, eventually increasing their productivity and benefitting the
organization. Individuals have a tendency to forget things after a certain period of time.
Employee training handbooks help them recollect whatever has been taught to them in
various training sessions.
 There are no measures to prevent relapse in training: ‘People often say that
motivation doesn’t last. Well neither does bathing - that is why we recommend it
daily’ said Zig zagler. One of the strong objections to the usefulness of training is that the
impact of training programs doesn’t last longer and that employees get back to older
ways of doing things sooner. This may be true for motivation which is like an injection,
the effect of which soon starts to fade away. Training relapses are experienced in both
technical and behavioral trainings. For example, anger management may have been
one of the interventions for a certain employee training and the trainees may have
actually exhibited a good behavior during the training program. But then when the same
trainee faces trouble handling one of his subordinates or does not get some assigned task
or job finished in time, he or she may get back to the old behavior. Such relapses are
important to prevent because they dilute the impact of the training program. The model of
relapse prevention should be an essential part of the training programs. This model lays
stress on the importance of self-control and prevents relapse by informing the trainees
about situations that may lead them to switch to existing behaviors. For example, in a
certain quality management program, it was decided that the materials in a production
line will be carried by conveyor belts rather than the traditional method of ferrying by
hands. The new method was implemented successfully until the plant faced a problem
and it did not know what to do. The belt stopped suddenly and since material output in
the preceding step acted as input in the next step, all the production activity was
hampered. Panic took over in 10 minutes time before the plant workers began carrying
them with hands which led to chaos.

 There is no proper mechanism for evaluation: Evaluation acts as a check to ensure that
the training is able to fill the competency gaps within the organization in a cost-effective
way. This is specially very important in wake of the fact the organizations are trying to
cut costs and increase globally.

Evaluation ensures accountability - Training evaluation ensures that training

programs comply with the competency gaps and that the deliverables are not
compromised upon.

Check the Cost - Evaluation ensures that the training programs are effective in
improving the work quality, employee behavior, attitude and development of new skills
within the employee within a certain budget. Since globally companies are trying to cut
their costs without compromising upon the quality, evaluation just aims at achieving the
same with training.

Feedback to the Trainer / Training - Evaluation also acts as a feedback to the

trainer or the facilitator and the entire training process. Since evaluation accesses
individuals at the level of their work, it gets easier to understand the loopholes of the
training and the changes required in the training methodology.