Employee training leads to competitive advantage to the Business

 

Training and development refer to educational activities within a company created to enhance the knowledge and skills of employees while providing information and instruction on how to better perform specific tasks. (TalentLyft, 2019) In brief training and development can be described as the formal, on-going efforts that are made within organizations to improve the performance and self-fulfillment of their employees through a variety of educational methods and programmes. (Editorial, 2001) 

Training is imparting a specific skill to do a particular job while development deals with general enhancement and growth of individual skill and abilities through conscious and unconscious learning. When describing the main purpose of the training and development it is by improving the employee competencies so that organizations can maximize the efficiency and effectiveness of their human assets. (Sanyal&Hisam, 2015)

Employee training and development refers to the continued efforts of a company to boost the performance of its employees. Companies aim to train and develop employees by using an array of educational methods and programs.

When talk about its advantages in the market, mainly we can mention follow points.

·       Addressing weakness

·       Improved performance of employees

·       Boost company profile and reputation (Branding the company name)

·       Innovation

If a company owner evaluates their workforce closely, the management could have to understand likely two or more of their employees lacking certain skills. A training program presents an opportunity to instill the needed skills in the employees. Similarly, a development program helps to expand the knowledge base of all employees.

In doing so, company owners are able to bridge any gaps and weak links within their organizations. In such a way, every employee will be in a position to fill in for his colleague and handle any task with efficiency.

An employee who receives training from time to time is in a better position to improve his work productivity. Every employee will be well versed with the safety practices and proper procedures to follow when carrying out basic tasks. A training program also helps in building an employee’s confidence since he or she will gain a better understanding of the industry and the responsibilities of the work role.

Conducting frequent training and development programs is one way of developing the organization’s employer brand, thus making it a prime consideration for the top employees working for competitor firms, as well as graduates. A company that trains its employees will be more attractive to potential new employees, particularly those looking to advance their skills.

When employees receive consistent training and up-skilling, it fosters their creativity. The training programs help employees to be more independent and creative when they encounter challenges in their work.

Reference

AG5. (2020). What’s the difference between knowledge and skills? [online] Available at: https://www.ag5.com/whats-the-difference-between-knowledge-and-skills/.

 

 

Health and Safety Process of an organization

 

Occupational health has been defined as “enabling people to undertake their occupation in a way that causes the least harm to their health.” According to the World Health Organization (WHO), this is too narrow, because health means much more: “a state of complete physical, mental and social wellbeing and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.” (Phoenix Blog, 2018)

Occupational health and safety focus on 

• Promotion and maintenance of the highest degree of physical, mental and social wellbeing of workers in all occupations
• Prevention of worker absence due to poor health caused by their working conditions
• Protection of workers in their employment from risks resulting from factors adverse to health
• Assessment of an employee’s occupational environment, and adapting to their physiological and psychological capabilities

Health and Safety of an organization is required to record details of health and safety information for legal reasons, similar to maintaining records about professional qualifications and membership of trade bodies. Health and safety records help keep organizational employees safe at work and ensure that the company is meeting its legal obligations towards both them and the public.

Whenever a health and safety issue arise, HR of organization is called upon to demonstrate that the business has done all that is expected of it. Where proof cannot be shown, the business is at risk of legal ramifications and fines.

Once again, the way to mitigate such problems is through the use of accurate records of courses attended, documents issued, and anything else specific to health and safety legislation that your business does as a matter of course. If an employee attends any course aimed at increasing their personal safety and that of the people around them, the details need to be recorded in case of query or dispute in future.

Because course attendance and training are closely linked to general employee records, the HR department is the best equipped to record this information. And the HR software used throughout your business unifies health and safety data with employee records for quick and easy retrieval and analysis

Strategies to avoid key issues in Health and safety of an organization

When describe the organizational health and safety most of the organization face different challenges. They can avoid key issues by using different strategies. Some of key suggestions to avoided issues relating to health and safety can be identify as below,

Retention strategy should be changed.

l  After the retirement they join with the company again as contract basic.it should change because they are not well in mentally and physically it increases the risk of employees.

Fire protection and safety equipment

l  Fix the technologically improved fire protections and safe equipment’s for betterment of the employees.

 Life insurance.

l  Introduce insurance facilities for risky workers.

 

 Reference

Phoenix Blog. (2018). Phoenix Health and Safety. [online] Available at: https://www.phoenixhsc.co.uk/blog/meant-health-safety-workplace.html.

 

Importance of Employee job satisfaction

 

The Maslow‘s work (Maslow 1954) was very influential in shaping and also developing different concepts related to organizational behavior for example job satisfaction. According to this theory, some experts have worked on job satisfaction from a view of desire fulfillment (Kuhlen 1963; Worf 1970).

But anyways, during the past twenty years, this method is not popular anymore and most of the experts are focusing on the cognition process instead of the needs which are underlain. So, in opposite to traditional perspective, the job satisfaction is known as all of the affection of a person about his or her related job. (Gruneberg 1976).

This perspective was mainly developed according to process of cognition that during the years have led to attitudinal view and now is the leader in the job satisfaction study. (Spector 1997). The other traditional though was defined according to factor theory from the job satisfaction (Herzberg 1959) and stated that both dissatisfaction and satisfaction are two totally separated aspects.

The motivators which are the intrinsic elements (i.e. elements that are from nature and also the job experience) were known as satisfiers and contained achievement, recognition, the nature of work and the responsibility level. On the other side the hygiene factors or extrinsic elements were known as the dissatisfactory of job which are rules of firm, policies, regulations, supervision, hierarchy, workplace context, salary and also interpersonal relation. Herzberg and Mausner‘s Motivation – hygiene theory was a very important factor for influencing the research of job satisfaction nature and was a key factor in measures development in order to evaluate the job satisfaction.

Importance

High job satisfaction effectively leads to the improved organizational productivity, decreased employee turnover, and reduced job stress in modern organizations. Job satisfaction leads to a positive ambience at the workplace and is essential to ensure the higher revenues for the organization. As below can be identified importance of job satisfaction.

• Lower Turnover – Turnover can be one of the highest costs attributed to the HR department. Retaining workers helps create a better environment and makes it easier to recruit quality talent and save money. The bottom line: satisfied employees are typically much less likely to leave.
• Higher Productivity – Irrespective of job title and pay grade, employees who report high job satisfaction tend to achieve higher productivity.
• Increased Profits – Keeping employees safe and satisfied can lead to higher sales, lower costs and a stronger bottom line.
• Loyalty – When employees feel the company has their best interests at heart, they often support its mission and work hard to help achieve its objectives. And, they may be more likely to tell their friends, which helps spread goodwill.

 Reference

Gerhart, B., & Milkovich, G. T. (1990). Organizational differences in managerial compensation and financial performance. Academy of Management Journal,33(4), 663-691.

 

How to do training evaluation within the organization

 

When describe the training evaluation by it can measure the satisfaction of the participant, and reaction, knowledge acquisition, behavioral application, measurable business improvement and return on investment. Most of the organization doing training evaluations but someone is effective someone is failing. There are many reasons to importance of evaluations and fail to evaluations.  

After we have completed the training, we want to make sure our training objectives were met. One model to measure the effectiveness of training is the Kirkpatrick model, Donald Kirkpatrick, Evaluating Training Programs, 3rd ed. (San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 2006). Developed in the 1950s. His model has four levels:

1. Reaction: Reactions of the participants of the team
2. Learning: How participants improve knowledge and skills
3. Behavior: behavior change as a result of the training
4. Results: benefits to the organization resulted from the training

(Github.io, 2011)

To do this evaluation organization can use different methods according to their needs and wants. Some of the methods are effective than some methods. There are few identified methods can be identify as below,

·       Questionnaires – These are a set of questions delivered to individuals for obtaining useful statistical information on a particular topic

·       Interviews – Those data collection methods aimed at gathering both facts and options by asking open-ended questions where the respondent can answer the questions in as many details as she or she wishes to

·       Focus group – This is a facilitated discussion with a group of individual who share similar characteristics common interests intended to collect information or obtain an option on a specific issue

·       Observation –This is the method of gathering data by watching an individual's behaviour in their natural setting. Here most of the time manager or supervisor or immediate boss can do this.

When describing the method of collecting data there is no single best method for collecting data and sometimes you may utilize more than one method. The selection of method will be influenced by time, resource and level of depth needed. (thepeakperformancecenter.com, n.d., LiveseySolar, 2011)

 

Importance of training evaluation

l  Gathering information – Any training programme able to develop time to time and it will do success. But how is that done? Where do we begin from? these are some of the important questions. By training evaluation organization can collect the information, feedbacks from participants, how participants access learning, how they progress like this important information.  

l  Getting concrete answers - Why should we opt for eLearning? How will the training help? What further improvements are required? What needs to be changed? What learner is gaining? Good evaluation gives the answers for all such questions and many more. This data can be used to convince the key stakeholders and in negotiating the training budget too

l  Analyzing training efficiency – Training evaluation is very important to efficiency of training. Even the learning patterns can be predicted with enough data and this, in turn, can assist in creating more intuitive training, and for delivering personalized learning. Training data analyzed properly can help to draw many business conclusions for the future.

List of references

Github.io. (2011). Designing a Training Program. [online] Available at: https://saylordotorg.github.io/text_human-resource-management/s12-04-designing-a-training-program.html [Accessed 25 Nov. 2019]

LiveseySolar (2011). 5 evaluation methods to measure staff training results | LiveseySolar | Healthcare Marketing. [online] LiveseySolar. Available at: https://www.liveseysolar.com/5-ways-to-evaluate-staff-training-results/.

 

Why Employee Fail at work place knowledge sharing

 

When describe the Knowledge management it is one of the most crucial yet overlooked aspects of progress of the workplace. Organizational employees fail to get access to the knowledge organization has to suffer. Knowledge sharing has more benefits to the organization. Some of them are increase productivity, trust among employees, social interaction etc. It's great for nurturing the organization's knowledge bank so everyone can access it even as people come and go (Aiim, 2021).

Reasons to fail knowledge sharing:

·       Poor training and development policies of the organization – As an organization need to give relative training to employees to increase their technical knowledge and other skills of the employees. Once offer the training need to develop those skills. But organization have no proper policies regarding the employee training and development it will lead to poor knowledgeable employees 

·       There are no good platforms to encourage good communication within the relative parties of the organization

·       Not introducing education opportunities to employees to develop their career and knowledge level

·       There is no knowledge sharing culture and activities within the organization

·       Employees not encouraging do a team works and they do not trust each other

·       No time to share knowledge or discuss with others

·       Employees consider as knowledge is the most powerful thing and they feel it will not share with us they can be best among others

(“6 Reasons Employees Fail at Workplace Knowledge Sharing | SkyPrep,” 2017)

Effects of Lack of knowledge sharing among employees

There are some effects can identify when observe the situations of different companies. Some of common effects can be identify as below,

·       Lack of communication leads to misunderstanding and among team members, managers and owners

·       On the other hand, this condition missed more opportunities to employees and also the organization

·       There are unnecessary conflicts

·       It will lead to mistrust each other

·       This will lead to the law of moral of the employees

·       Once employees are not with good knowledge customers are not satisfy with their services especially this is a hotel and customer expect good service from there. (Houlis, 2019)

Example Plan to improve Knowledge provided to the Team:

As a human resource manager author is collected the information regarding this issue by observation and also interviewing the employees and also managers of the organization. Then get the idea current situation then introduce some suggestions to improve the knowledge, skills and communication of the employees.

·       Establish good training and development policy to the organization

When developing the good training and development policy to the organization need to follow below things.

ü  Need to identify the training needs of the employees. It will be done by using the survey and also observation the roles of employees

ü  Identify what are the training programmes need to offer the employees (as example orientation programme once recruit the employees, health and safety training, team building training, training to improve the technical knowledge, how to deal with customers and other core-workers etc)

ü  Need to make a time frame to training programmes to a whole year

ü  Need to identify resource person to the programmes

ü  Once deliver the training need to get the feedbacks

ü  Then analysis the feedbacks and need to done necessary changes according to the feedbacks

 

·       Need to establish a good communication system within the organization and develop communication skills of the employees and also told to employees what the importance of the good communication system is.

ü  Able to introduce weekly meeting system within the departments

ü  Encourage to talk with each other not only email culture

·       Develop a knowledge sharing culture within the organization

ü  Arrange knowledge sharing sessions by using resource persons

ü  Offer education programmes to the employees

·       Encourage teamwork and develop a team-building culture within the organization

ü  Give team targets to the employees

ü  Encourage to do teamwork

Reference:

AIIM (2021). Knowledge Sharing: 5 Strategies to Share Knowledge In the Workplace. [online] info.aiim.org. Available at: https://info.aiim.org/aiim-blog/knowledge-sharing-strategies-for-the-workplace.

 

Is there Unionized Environment of the Organization?

 

When describing the unionized workplace, it is the process of togetherness of workers to achieve their rights and needs from the organization and other relevant parties. A union is a middle person to an organization and employees.

How Unionized Environment Benefits to the organization and employees

When describing the advantages of a unionized environment there are some benefits to both employees and the organization. Those are often identified as below,

•                  A unionized workplace may be a stable workplace and it's good for employees, therefore the organization too

•                  Members of the union typically have greater job security than nonunion workers

•                  Union workers have more benefits than nonunion workers

•                  Stability is also higher than other employees. Turnover is reduced and reduce the hiring recruiting and training cost of the organization

•                  Trade unions have members and its strength to employee

•                  Improve employee conditions

•                  Improve workplace environment

•                  Improve benefits to the workers with discussion employers

•                  Improve job satisfaction

•                  Advice and support to the workers

When describe the unions sometimes these are making hostile environment within the organization. It is making conflict within the organization. This is the disadvantage side of the unions within the organization. When describe Sri Lanka most of the time union can be seen in government organizations than privet organizations. As below can be identify how to handle and avoid a hostile environment within the organization. In here human resource department of the organization has big role.

 How to handling and avoiding a hostile environment

When describing the hostile work environment is can describes some of the negative work of one employee it will lead to disturbing work of another employee. This environment leads to prepare a variety of targets or challenges of the organization and employees who are doing their jobs well. (Dinome& Barras, n.d.)

As below can be identifying some issues and how they can be handled and avoiding a hostile environment within the organization.

Identified Issue	How to handle and avoid it
·       Sourcing and retention of labour	To implement a good system to recruit the employees and develop programmes to attract the employees to the organization
·       Conflict among labour groups are significant challenges	Develop programmes to develop the team culture and team works within the organization
·       Absenteeism	Offer some motivational factors to come to employees to work       Ex: Incentives based on the working days of employees
·       Have Different payment methods	Establish common methods based on the employee categories to do the payments
·       Mutual understanding between managers and employee’s poor	Develop a system to develop the employee relationship
·       Retention rate is not healthy	To do a investigate what is the reasons for this issue and get necessary actions based on the results of the investigation
·       Conflict reported during working hours and off working hours	Make arrange a good system to reported working hours
·       Issues of organizational structure	To identify all the problems relating to the organization structure and rearrange the structure based on the culture and system of the organization
·       Poor communication	Develop proper communication method within the organization Ex: Notice board, email system, update all information in company websites, Announcements

 

List of References

Dinome, J., & Barras, J. (n.d.). Union Avoidance Tips & Strategies: Do’s and Don’ts. https://www.reedsmith.com/files/uploads/Documents/Union_Avoidance_Tips__Strategies__Dos_and_Don_ts.pdf