Training and Development

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Lecture 4

• Training and Development

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Lecture Outline

• Training defined
• Why is training important?
• Production techniques and training and
  development
• Recent trends in training and development
• Training for organisational growth
• Capturing value from knowledge
• The training process
• Australias training reform agenda

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What is Training?

• Nadler and Nadler (1989) suggest that training is
  learning provided by employers to employees and
  related to jobs. Education relates to future jobs
  and development is not related to jobs at all but
  to an individuals dimensions.
• There is a common view that training consists of
  formal activities that allow people to acquire or
  refine knowledge, skills and attitudes needed for
  their current jobs.
• Smith (1996) defines training as a planned
  process to achieve effective performance in an
  activity or range of activities.
• Laird (1985) defines training as the acquisition
  of technology that permits employees to perform
  to a standard.

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Why is training important?

• Training carried out in an ad hoc way.
• Pressures of globalisation of markets, rapid
  technological change, an ageing workforce and
  changes in social values have been well
  documented. Included in these demands are
  quality assurance, adaptation, flexibility,
  service and innovation.
• International comparisons of employer
  contributions to training have led to a view that
  Australia needs to improve enterprise level
  training.

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Lean production techniques and training (McDuffie
1995)

• Lean production captures the minimisation of
  buffers and the expansion of workforce skill and
  concept knowledge required for problem-solving
  and involvement with production processes.
• Emphasises the relationship between the social
  and technical aspects of production.
• In JIT a bad part draws immediate attention and
  must be dealt with to prevent the production
  system from grinding to a holt.
• Innovative HRM practices are likely to contribute
  to improved economic performance when three
  conditions are met

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Lean production techniques and training (McDuffie
1995)

• When employees possess knowledge and skills that
  management lack.
• When employees are motivated to apply this skill
  and knowledge through discretionary effort.
• When the firms business strategy can only be
  achieved when employees contribute such
  discretionary effort.
• Link to training and HRD more broadly - skilled
  and knowledge workers that are not motivated are
  unlikely to contribute discretionary effort.
• Motivated workers who lack skills or knowledge
  may contribute discretionary effort with little
  impact.

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High performance workplaces and training.

• Whitfield (2000)
• Firms exhibiting high performance work practices
  have higher levels of training and those with a
  comprehensive set of these (or bundles) exhibit
  much higher levels than those which do not.
• There is extensive evidence to suggest that
  bundles of workplace practices are important
  and the adoption of individual practices in
  isolation does not seem to have a significant
  impact on a firm or its performance (Huselid
  1995).
• Link between training and performance.

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Training for skill flexibility

• The aim of skill enhancement is functional
  flexibility whereby workers can shift between
  work activities - enable multi-skilling and
  broad-banding of job classifications.
• Continued opportunity for skill utilisation - a
  skill is only a reality when a person exercises
  it (Schofield 1985).
• Task specific training on the job - its ability
  to increase adaptability for future unknown
  skills has also been challenged.
• Critical elements of the supervisor's approach
  trainees freedom to tackle job themselves
  trainee errors and self evaluation important
  learning tools trainer developed ways of guiding
  rather than telling.

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Recent trends in training

• Performance appraisal training, how to operate
  new equipment, new employee orientation,
  leadership and time management training remain at
  the top of training priorities.
• Creative thinking skills have increased
• Galagan (1986) describes a number of trends that
  will continue in the next 10 years
• Internal organisational courses will replace
  off-the-shelf courses trained in how to learn
  and how to get and use information when they need
  it.
• The amount of training for middle and senior
  executives will increase - link to
  organisational culture. Senior executives will
  attempt to integrate organisational strategy with
  training.

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Training for organisational growth

• Practice of training based on the assumption
  about human nature - McGregor (1960) Theory X and
  Theory Y.
• Rogers (1983) stressed the importance of respect
  for individuals, freedom, self-directedness and
  responsibility.
• Training and the workplace culture of
  empowerment.
• Linking organisational strategy, benchmarking,
  marketing learning programs, championing,
  mentoring and coaching.
• Skilling employees to design, deliver and assess
  workplace learning instead of being the sole
  focus of training.

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Training for growth, cont.

• Transfer of learning is a crucial issue - the
  extent to which what is learned in training
  sessions is applied and maintained on the job to
  increase performance and productivity.
• Garavaglia (1995) suggests a number of activities
  that can increase the transfer of learning - the
  removal of personal and organisational barriers,
  creating sound training programs, fostering
  responsibility by all parties and reminding
  people to maintain changed behaviours.
• Key is mindset change - performance improved.

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Training for organisational growth, cont.

• Continuous improvement - training employees for
  jobs that are new, refining their skills to meet
  new conditions and ensuring attainment of
  superior performance.
• Documentation of training activities to
  demonstrate that training has had a positive
  impact on the desired business goals.
• Recognition of the growth in knowledge workers
  and intellectual property as a source of
  competitive advantage (Teece 1984).

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Capturing value from knowledge (Teece 1998)

• While knowledge assets are grounded in the
  experience and expertise of individuals, firms
  provide the physical, social and resource
  allocation structure so that knowledge can be
  shaped into competencies.
• How these competencies and knowledge assets are
  configured and deployed will dramatically shape
  competitive outcomes and the commercial success
  of the enterprise.
• Competitive advantage comes from difficult to
  replicate knowledge assets and the manner in
  which they are deployed.
• Tacit knowledge is difficult to articulate in a
  way that is complete and meaningful.

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Training for organisational growth

• Information that is transferred will be
  considered meaningful by those who receive will
  depend on whether they are familiar with the code
  as well as the different contexts in which it is
  used.
• Tacit knowledge is slow and costly to transmit
  (eg. org. culture).
• Knowledge assets are difficult to replicate. Even
  understanding what all of the relevant routines
  are that support a particular competence may not
  be enough to replicate the competitive adv. Many
  organisational routines are quite tacit in
  nature. Imitation is hindered by the fact that
  routines are often not stand-alone.
• Understanding the overall logic is crucial.

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The training process

• Step 1 - Define objectives
• Step 2 - Gather organisational information
• Step 3 - Establish training needs
• Step 4 - Establish training plan

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Needs assessment

• The model emphasises careful needs assessment,
  controlled learning experiences designed to
  achieve instructional objectives, pre-determined
  performance criteria and collection of evaluation
  information to provide feedback.
• Needs assessment - organisational analysis,
  person analysis, and task and knowledge, skill
  and ability analysis.
• Designing training programs
• Evaluation - selecting evaluating criteria
  training validity, transfer validity,
  intra-organisational validity and
  inter-organisational validity

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Program evaluation

• Based on a survey of more than 100 firms that
  evaluate training, 75 measured reactions to
  training but less than 50 measured learning,
  less than 20 attempted to measure behaviour
  changes and only 15 tried to measure on-the-job
  results of training.
• Why organisations need to evaluate? - diagnostic
  issues, economic and credibility concerns and
  legal considerations.
• Why organisations do not evaluate - neglect of
  top management, lack of research skills among
  training executives, uncertainty regarding what
  to evaluate and misperceptions of evaluation as
  costly and risky.

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Measures of training effectiveness

• Nature of criteria - to serve their purpose,
  criteria must be relevant, reliable, capable of
  discriminating among employees and practical.
• Multiple criteria - evaluation criteria should
  measure several important dimensions of
  performance that are relatively independent of
  each other - single measures fail to capture the
  full range of desired outcomes.
• Types of criteria - reactions criteria learning
  criteria behavioural criteria and results
  criteria.
• Evaluation designs - post-test-only and
  pre-test-post-test designs pre-test-post-test
  with a control group and time series design.

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Australias training reform agenda

• A survey of the national training system in
  Australia suggests in general terms the top-down,
  centrally driven bureaucratic processes are
  generating strong dissatisfaction amongst
  employers. For the training reforms to work
  effectively in the workplace, business needs need
  to have a much greater capacity to influence how
  resources are allocated as well as having a
  greater say in the overall framework.
• Broad range of initiatives heading the national
  training reform agenda since 1990.

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Survey of major users of the training system

• At the end of 1993, while there were 70 sets of
  industry and cross-industry competencies in
  place, there were only 21 competency-based
  training courses registered with the NTB.
• Develop a training culture - a greater role for
  employer associations, employers and trade
  unions.
• Problems with the Australian Standards Framework
  - it needs to be industry driven relationship
  with wage levels too rigid because it does not
  fit industry requirements descriptions are
  imprecise.
• Difficulties in implementing the training reform
  agenda absences of quality assurance procedures.

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Survey of major users of the training system

• The major obstacle to development and
  implementation is the apathy of most employers.
• Coming to terms with the potential diversity in
  approaches to assessment between enterprises,
  industries and providers and the need to
  integrate on and off-the-job training.
• Poor functioning of the training market - central
  planning new connections are needed between the
  national training objectives and local
  initiatives, connections which provide employers
  with the incentives to invest in training and
  remove impediments to the investment.

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Training guarantee levy

• TGL requires employers (with payrolls greater
  than220 000 in 1992-1993) to spend a minimum of
  1.5 per cent of their payroll on training staff.
• Monies not spent by the employer can be donated
  to designated organisations undertaking training
  or forfeited to ATO.
• Employer resistance - had not been successful in
  encouraging small firms to invest in training
  imposed obligation regard expenditure to be
  minimised should have targeted specific
  purposes red tape.
• Disbanded mid-1990s.