Placing employees in their jobs does not ensure their success or the success of the organization. The management must remember that new employees are always apprehensive and uncertain about their roles and responsibilities. The job tasks and employees’ capabilities must always be balanced through orientation and developing programs. Training and development efforts enable the employees to assume expanded duties and greater responsibilities. It must be remembered that training only helps the employees with their current job and develop the employee for the future whereas development helps the employees to handle their future responsibilities. The management must also remember that training and development programs are no universal solutions to every need of the company. Effective job designs, selection, placement, and other activities of the HR department are also very important. (Werther & Davis, 1996).
Issues with Training and Development
If a company is faced with issues like biases and outdated materials, the reputation of the company will be tarnished and it would become impossible for the management to replace the reputation of the company.
Let’s take up the issue of biases, biases occur when the trainer does not remain emotionally unattached while training and evaluating an employee’s performance. This problem can cause severe problems for the company. The most common kind of biases would include:
- The halo effect: when the trainer’s personal opinion of the employee influences the measurement of an employee’s performance. This problem occurs when the trainer is evaluating a friend or a person they dislike the most.
- Cross-cultural biases: every trainer holds expectations about human behaviors that are based upon his or her own culture. This bias occurs because when the trainers are told to evaluate their trainees, they may apply their cultural expectations to someone who has a different set of behaviors and beliefs.
- Personal prejudice: this kind of bias occurs when a trainer dislikes a group or class of people. For example, some HR departments have noticed that male supervisors give undeserved low evaluations to women who traditionally hold male jobs like the position of a managing director or the position of a department’s head, etc. (Issues in Training Programme, 1994).
The second issue that concerns the training and development program is the use of outdated materials when training the employees. For example, if the company needs to provide vestibule training to the employees they build separate areas so that the normal operations of the organizations are not disturbed. But if the equipment that is needed for learning is outdated then it would become hard for the employee to learn how to handle the new equipment. The employee would not be fully prepared for his or her work activities and would be able to handle any sort of responsibility. Another example would be pilots are usually trained in flight simulators because the simulators are similar to the cockpit and flight characteristics. Now if the simulators were equipped with old technology the pilot who learns the basics for flying but or will not be equipped to fly a new technology-based airplane.
Issues Affect HR Departments
If issues like biases and outdated materials or equipment keep on occurring regularly, it will have a serious effect on the human resource department of the company. The HR department will be faced with challenges like employee obsolescence, international and domestic workforce diversity, technical challenges, and employee turnover.
Employee obsolescence occurs because the employee no longer has the knowledge or the skills needed to perform successfully on the job. Obsolescence may occur because of an employee’s failure to adapt to new technology or new procedures. What happens is that the productivity of those employees reduces and their motivation level also drops.
The trend towards global businesses and the diversity of the workforce also challenges the HR department. For example, cultural attitudes about women in the workforce have caused many companies to redesign their development programs because if they hadn’t then the women would have left those jobs and the company would no longer be able to call itself an EEO organization. The company would not be able to salvage its name and reputation and would start to lose customers and clienteles. (Werther & Davis, 1996).
Technological change is also one of the major challenges that are being faced by an HR department. If the company is not able to update itself quickly it would start to lose employees. It would decrease the developmental requirements of current and future managers, professionals, and technical people.
Employee turnover can be defined as the willingness of an employee, who is willing to leave the company for another. People leave the organization when they are not satisfied with their work or due to different kinds of biases or because they are not motivated enough or even because their complaints are not being communicated to the management.
References
Naukri Hub (2007), ‘Importance of Training and Development’, Web.
UNFPA (1994), ‘Issues in Training Programme’, Web.
Werther, W B. & Davis, K. (1996), ‘Human Resource & Personnel Management’. New York: McGraw-Hill.