Training and development

Steps to Identify Training Needs
All training activities must be related to the specific needs of the organization and the individual employees. A training programme should be launched only after the training needs are assessed clearly and specifically. The effectiveness of a training programme can be judged only with the help of training needs identified in advance. In order to identify training needs, the gap between the existing and required levels of knowledge, skills performance and aptitudes should be specified. The problem areas that can be resolved through training should also be identified.
Training need can be identified through the following types of analysis :

1. Organizational analysis

It involves a study of the entire organization in terms of its objectives, it resources and the utilization of these resources, in order to achieve stated objectives and its interaction pattern with environment. The important elements that are closely examined in this connection are:

i.Analysis of objectives
This is the study of short term and long term objectives and the strategies followed at various levels to meet these objectives.

ii.Resource utilization
How the various organizational resources (human,physical and financial) are put to use is the main focus of this study. The contributions of various departments are also examined by establishing efficiency indices for each unit. This is done to find out comparative labour costs, whether a unit is undermanned or over-manned.

iii.Environmental scanning
Here the economic, political, socio cultural and technological environment of the organization is examined.

iv.Organisational climate analysis
The climate of an organization speaks about the attitudes of members towards work, company policies, supervisors, etc. Absenteeism, turnover ratios generally reflect the prevailing employee attitudes. These can be used to find out whether training efforts have improved the overall climate within the company or not.

2.Task or role analysis
It is a systemic and detailed analysts of jobs to identify job contents, the knowledge skills and aptitudes required and the work behaviour. On the part of the job holder, particular attention should be paid to the tasks to be performed, the methods to be used, the way employees have learnt these methods and the performance standards required of employees. Also called operations analysis, the purpose is to decide what should be taught. Questionnaire, interviews human resource records, reports, tests, observation and other methods can be used to collect information about jobs in the organisation.

3.Manpower Analysis
Here the focus is on the individual in a given job. There are three issues to be resolved :
i.It is necessary to decide whether performance of individual is sub-standard and training is required.
ii.Whether the employees is capable of being trained .
iii.Whether poor performers on the job need to be replaced by those who can do the job.

Other options to training such as modifications in the job or processes should be looked into. Personal observation, performance reviews, supervisory reports, diagnostic tests help in collecting the required information and select particular training options that try to improve the performance of individual workers.

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