Benefits of Training and Development

Introduction

Beach(1980) define as the Training as the organized procedure by which people learn knowledge and skills for a definite purpose. Development is a related process. It covers not only those activities, which improve job performance, but also those which bring about growth of the personality, help individuals in the process towards maturity and actualization of their potential capacities so that they become not only good employees but also better men and women. The term development can be defined as the nature and direction of change taking place among personnel through educational and training processes(Flippo,1960, p.240)defines as “Training is the act of increasing the knowledge and skill of an employee for doing a particular job”.

Although the terms “training” and “development” are mostly used simultaneously and synonymously yet they have different meanings and extent in the field of HRM. Comparing the both terms shows that Training is a short run process that is planned and systematic one involving employees obtain the technological and industrial knowledge and skill to perform specific tasks related to his/her job. The training initiative comes from the managers of the organization to meet the present needs required for the job. Whereas, development is an initiative comes from the employee voluntarily and is long run in time period. Employees’ performance is the behavior and attitude of an employee at work. How well employees do their jobs as compared to the set of standards determined by the employer. (Javed, 2014).

• Training:“Training is the formal and systematic modification of behaviour through learning which occurs as a result of education, instruction, development and planned experience.” (Armstrong, 2001, p.543)According to McGhee (1996) training therefore can be explained as a planned and systematic effort by management aimed at altering behavior of employees, in a direction that will achieve organizational goals. A formal training program is an effort by the employer to provide opportunities for the employee to acquire job-related skills, attitudes and knowledge.

• Development:Noe. Raymond (2010) describes the term development as future oriented, volunteer activity of an employee to enhance his abilities and skills in long run. Development is a long run educational procedure emphasizes on a systematic and organized method through which managerial personnel acquire conceptual and theoretical knowledge. It is intended for the in general development of managers to assemble their long run requirements. Thus, development tends to be an initiative that is intentional and comes from the employee himself.

Differences between training and development

There is a big difference between training and development. If you (and your HR team) don’t know the difference between these terms, you are spending money providing training to executives and managers who already have the skills and knowledge they need. This training will not move the needle for your company. What you need is to develop existing skills to their maximum potential. (shore, 2012).

1. Short term vs. Long term

Some human resource experts explain the differences between training and development very simply: the first thinks about the present and the second about the future.In overall, training provide to customize the employee to adopt an immediate challenge and communicate and transform the knowledge or skills needed by company employees in a short period of time (one day, one week, several months). It could be a course to improve the communication skills of employees, a conference to explain the protocol for returning a product or a class to use the Excel program.On the other hand, development concentrated on the long-term achievements. Human resource managers propose a strategy to put in place over several months or years, comprising a set of initiatives that are expected to bear fruit over a long period of time. This will be a continuous process in which you are trying to develop professionals in their next step or their next position of responsibility.

2. Job position vs. Professional career

Due to its precision and commitment to the short term, training is considered to fulfill for a specific job position. It pursues to provide expertise with tools and skills, taking into the work that they will be doing at the company for a specific environment. However, development focuses on the person as a long term human resource to the company: its motive is to gain the best out of each professional individual in the company, recognizing their requirements and interests and the area in which they can more effortlessly and effective advancement. 

3. Specific objectives vs. Open objectives

In training, the objectives are specific and very clear: learning how to an operate and working with the program, accomplishing a certain personal skill using their talents or instructing the new procedures put in place by the company. When considering about development the objectives are always much more comprehensive and can acquire all types of knowledge and skills. Compared to training, development is less tangible and often focuses on ethical issues, changing habits and improving skills. Not only that, but objectives can be transformed over time and finalized according to the new demands of the market or the company.

4. Group vs. Individual

The company pays for the expenses and organizes the courses, decides what sort of tools its employees should use, and sets the guidelines to follow in all the training activities. These initiatives are often taught in a group (a department, people who have recently joined the company). Training programs are always accompanied with tutors to gain the clear picture of the company that they were attended and the responsibilities they are occupy with. However, with development, it always focusses on individuals. Development programs are often personalized and the person who is ultimately responsible is the employee. In this case, the most important focus is not on lessons taught by a tutor, but rather on the self-learning process and progress that must be taken on by the professional.

Characteristic Topics of Employee Training

Employee performance is normally looked at in terms of outcomes. However, it can also be looked at in terms of behavior (Armstrong, 2000). Kenney et al. (1992) states that employee's performance is measured against the performance standards set by the organization. There are a number of measures that can be taken into consideration when measuring performance for example using of productivity, efficiency, effectiveness, quality and profitability measures (Ahuja, 1992) as briefly explained and is as follows.

• Communications: The increasing variety of today's workforce brings a wide variety of languages and duties.

• Computer skills: Computer skills are becoming a necessity for conducting administrative and office tasks as well as self-learning environment.

• Customer service: Increased competition in today's global marketplace makes it critical that employees understand and meet the needs and wants of customers. If an employee is not well qualified to obtain the customer needs and wants that will fully affect to the company.

• Diversity: Diversity training usually includes explanation about how people have different perspectives and views and includes techniques to value diversity. Day by day the perspectives of human being were fluctuating and the employee must tackle them and provide the adequate service or technique to fulfil the customer needs.

• Ethics: 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. Training helps to understand the moral values and responsibilities of their colleagues to diverse the workforce in an organization.

• Human relations: The increased stresses of today's workplace can include misunderstandings and conflict. Training can people to get along in the workplace. It develops the interpersonal skills between the co-employees as well as the treating customers.

• Quality initiatives: Initiatives such as Total Quality Management, Quality Circles, benchmarking require basic training about quality concepts, guidelines and standards for quality.

• Safety: Safety training is critical where working with heavy equipment, hazardous chemicals, repetitive activities but can also be useful with practical advice for avoiding assaults.

• Sexual harassment: Sexual harassment training usually includes careful description of the organization's policies about sexual harassment, especially about what are inappropriate behaviors among employees.

 Types of Training

1. Orientation

Orientation is the most common type of employee training. This is a onetime event of all the employee who hired as fresh candidate to the company. This training was given to them from the first week on the job. This is not an individual training program where as this will perform as group of candidates who newly hired to the organization. This training tends to be relevant to all company-wide roles and departments(Wallace, 2009).

Orientation trainings are usually prepared by HR on big-picture topics such as:

• Company mission, vision, and values
• Corporate culture
• Organizational structure and leadership team intro
• Mandatory new-hire paperwork
• Overview of benefit plans
• Administrative procedures (computer logins, extension, email setups)
• Key corporate policies

  

2. Onboarding Training

According to Bauer and Erdogan (2011) defines that Onboarding, also known as Organizational Socialization refers to the mechanism through which new employee s acquire the necessary knowledge, skills and behaviours to be effective organizational members and insiders.orientation program delivered the overall outline of the organization and onboard training delivered as the institutional or department specific training over long period of time. It is strategically created with the goal of enabling new employees to be as successful as they can be in their new roles in the shortest period of time. Onboard training usually starts the first day of the employment. This training session will conduct by the training professionals or expertise in the department such as department head or training and development manager. A holistic onboarding training program should focus on more than the technical aspects of a job. It should also offer education on ways to stay engaged and productive at worked. Effective and successful onboarding trainings gradually bring new employees up to speed much quicker than if left to fend for themselves. An effectively executed onboarding training will also free up a lot of leadership time because most answers to questions would be available within the training.

3. Technical Skills Development Training

When an employee hired newly or if a new equipment or machine implemented to the organizational department, the people who are involved with that machine or equipment needs to get trained to operate it more accurately, efficiently and effectively.  Technical skills development programs can be included in the onboard training program or can be delivered to any existing employees who can use a little more development. In some jobs, professional training must be done on an ongoing basis. Professional training is a type of training required to be up to date in one’s own professional field. For example, tax laws change often, and as a result, an accountant for H&R Block must receive yearly professional training on new tax codes (Silkey, 2010).

4. Soft skills development training

Technical skills Development is called Hard Skill development where as the employee personal attitudes and attribute development is called Soft Skill development. Soft skills trainings are useful for new and existing employees of all levels and are an extremely effective way to build an efficient, respectful and collaborative culture – ultimately affecting the bottom line(Hoffman, 2007).

according to a Computerworld magazine survey, executives say there is an increasing need for people who have not only the skills and technical skills to do a job but also the necessary soft skills, such as strong listening and communication abilities (Hoffman, 2007) some topics to consider covering in your soft skills training include:

• Communication skills
• Presentation skills
• Problem-solving skills
• Conflict resolution
• Leadership skills
• Emotional Intelligence
• Time management
• Ethics
• Teamwork
• Adaptability

5. Products and services training

Product trainings can either be a part of onboarding for new comers or can be available for any employees who need refreshers on the products and services the organization offers. This type of training can also be used to educate staff on newly introduced products, services or features so they are always up to date(Vines,2015).

6. Mandatory training

Mandatory training is another type of training to an organization where the certain employee preparedness and training regulations may apply. When an employee employs in the same department they have to follow the primarily operational training to work in the environment to keep them in a track. For example, if a person who wants to work or stay in a production floor they have to gain the primary knowledge and mandatory knowledge of how to operate the production equipment (NHS, 2016).

Benefits from Employee Training and Development

·          The main purpose of training is to acquire and improve knowledge, skills and attitudes towards work related tasks. It is one of the most important potential motivators which can lead to both short-term and long-term benefits for individuals and organizations (Nassazi, 2013).There so many benefits associated with training. Cole (2001) summarizes these benefits as below:

• The organization needs to recruit new or existing employees for their newly implemented departments or existing departments to increase the productivity. Well trained employees show both quantity and quality performance. There is less wastage of time, money and resources when employees are properly trained.

• Employee turnaround costs time and money. Training creates a feeling of confidence in the minds of the employees. It gives them a security at the workplace. As a result, labor turnover and absenteeism rates are reduced. 

• If a person is trained, the supervisory ability is reduced and the employee is skillful to do their tasks independently. In other words, a well-trained employee will be well acquainted with the job and hence they need less of supervision.

• This may help them to increase their ethical behavior to the organization after training.

• Training and development reduced the defects of the work force and the productivity which help the organization to create quality output with better quality of work.

• Training and Development helps in instilling the sense of team work, team spirit, and inter-team collaborations. It helps in inculcating the zeal to learn within the employees.

• Organization always looking forward to increase the productivity by reducing the cost of operations. Training gains the ability to reduce cost of operation by reducing defects of the production.

• Training and development makes the employees feel more satisfied with the role they play in the company or organization. This is driven by the great ability they gain to execute their duties. They feel they belong to the company or the organization that they work for and the only way to reward it is giving the best services they can.

• When training provides the knowledge to face different situations and reduction of faults or accidents to the employee and to the organization. Continuous Training and development ensures that employees get the right skills at right time. The more trained an employee is, the less are the chances of committing errors in job. 

• A well-organized training and development program gives employees constant knowledge and experience. Access to regular training ensures that all employees have a consistent experience and consistent knowledge of tasks and procedures, something which is particularly important when it comes to basic company policies and procedures.

• Overall employees are benefit to the company. But to perform a specific task the employee should cope with the environment by gaining specific job training.

• Training and development helps in increasing the job knowledge and skills of employees at each level. It helps to expand the horizons of human intellect and an overall personality of the employees.

• Training and Development significantly helps to provide an opportunity and broad structure for the development of human resources' technical and behavioral skills in an organization which ultimately results in optimum resource utilization, moreover it also helps the employees in attaining personal growth.

Today, Rocell is a fashion icon. Influencing lifestyle and infusing creative thinking; elevating mundane convention into expressions of individualism. With two top-of-the-line tile production facilities, the brand is the quintessential interior market revolutionary, providing aesthetic masterpieces that work flawlessly. The technology, the standards and the artistic maturity that provide for every Rocell tile come from world leaders in their respective fields. Locally 49 showrooms carry Rocell's assortment of designer tiles, while numerous dealerships across 4 continents showcase the products alongside international best brands. An insatiable quest for perfection marks the company's path. Opening up the country's first, and one of Asia's most advance sanitary-ware manufacturing plants, RocellBathware is a fine illustration of this pursuit. Igniting the design kaleidoscope longing within all of us, Rocell is a channel for distinctiveness, artistic fineness and a catalyst in the interior evolution that is shaping our landscape. (Rocell, 2018).

The Group invests a heavilyin training and development on an annual basis. New recruits are taken through a structured induction and orientation programme including visits to factories, sales channels and warehouses.

Table 1.0: Training by Rocell

 (Source :Rocell Annual report, 2016/17)

Table 2.0: Training by Rocell

 (Source :Rocell Annual report, 2016/17)

  

The company offers opportunities to key personnel to travel abroad to study industry trends in foreign markets. During the period under review, 4 staff members were sponsored by the company to attend exhibitions overseas to update their knowledge on international trends in the ceramics industry. Moreover, staff were sent to Japan to undergo Lean Management training and also sent for a Six Sigma training session conducted by the National Institute of Business Management (NIBM). (RocellAnnual Report, 2015-2016).During the year 2014-2015 the company contribute 3.7 Billion values added to the Goventment. Royal Ceramics’ Human Resource development initiatives for 2014/15 combined both professional and personal growth. Our safety training programs for operators saw 24 employees in the kiln department participate in a comprehensive program that covered health and safety information based on the use of a variety of machinery. (Rocell Annual Report, 2014-2015).Due to the training and development of the employees in various departments at Royal Ceramics Lanka Ltd and Royal Ceramics Group of Companies consecutively increase their net Net profit, Sales and contribution to the Government.

Figure 1: Sales (2013-2017)

 (Source :Rocell Annual report, 2016/17)

Figure 2: Net profit (2013-2017)

 (Source :Rocell Annual report, 2016/17)

Figure 3: Contribution (2013-2017)

 (Source :Rocell Annual report, 2016/17)

Conclusion

Training and development is simply defined as ‘the formal, ongoing efforts that are made within an organization to improve the performance of its employees’. Training and development can also be described as ‘an educational process which involves the sharpening of skills, concepts, changing of attitude and gaining more knowledge to enhance the performance of employees. Some notable examples include orientations, class room lectures, case studies, role playing, simulations and computer based training. Training and development programs may be focused on individual performance or team performance. In order to maximize the effectiveness of training and development program, organizations must constantly assess and identify their employees’ current training and development needs to prepare them for their next positions to achieve higher growth.

Organizations have to recognize that different employees will have different needs and these needs will change over the time as these workers continue in their careers. When the organization invests in improving the knowledge and skills of its employees, the investment is returned in the form of more productive and effective employees. In nutshell Training is crucial for organizational development and its success which is indeed fruitful to both employers and employees of an organization. Here are some important benefits of training and development. Increased job satisfaction and morale among employees

The benefits gained by the organization after conducting training and development programs(Shaw).

• Increased employee motivation
• Increased efficiencies in processes, resulting in financial gain
• Increased capacity to adopt new technologies and methods
• Increased innovation in strategies and products
• Reduced employee turnover
• Enhanced company image such as conducting ethics training
• Risk management
• acquire new skills, increasing their contribution to the business and building their self-esteem
• the training they do can take them into other positions within the organisation – positions with better prospects and/or better pay
• they’re upskilled to do new and different tasks, which keeps them motivated and fresh
• because they’re being trained on your time, they see that you value them enough to invest in them. A good company is seen as one that retrains rather than churns.
• In addition to above scenarios training and development leads to improved profitability and more positive attitudes towards profit orientation, it also aids in organizational development. Training and development helps in understanding and carrying out organizational policies thereby developing leadership skills, motivation, loyalty, better attitudes, and other aspects that successful employees and managers usually display. Training and development demonstrates a commitment to keeping employees on the cutting edge of knowledge and practice.

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