HARAMBEE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE

HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMEMT

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CHAPTER FOUR
4. TRAINING AND DEVELOPMENT

Chapter objectives:
Dear, learners after completing this chapter you should be able to understand:

 Define training
 Need and Importance of Training
 Methods of Training
 Management Development: Definition and Importance
 Methods of Management Development

4.1. Definition of Training

Training is an organized activity for increasing the knowledge and skills of people for a finite
purpose. It involves systematic Procedures for transferring technical know-how to the employees
so as to increase their knowledge and skills for doing specific jobs with proficiency. In other
words, the trainees acquire technical knowledge, skills and problem solving ability by
undergoing the training programme.

According to Edwin B. Flippo, Training is the act of increasing the knowledge and skills of an
employee for doing a particular job‖. Training involves the development of skills that are usually
necessary to perform a specific job. Its purpose is to achieve a change in the behavior of
those trained and to enable them to do; their jobs better. Training makes newly appointed
workers fully productive in the minimum of time. Training is equally necessary for the old
employees whenever new machines and equipment are introduced and/or there is a
change in the techniques of doing the things. In fact, training is a continuous process. It
does not stop anywhere. The managers are continuously engaged in training their
subordinates. They should ensure that any training programme should attempt to bring
about positive Changes in the (i) Knowledge, (ii) skills, and (iii) attitudes of the workers. The
purpose of training is to bring about improvement in the performance of work. It includes the
learning of such techniques as are required for the better performance of definite tasks.

5.2. Need and Importance of Training

Need for Training: It may be observed that the need for training arises from more than one
reason

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I. An increased use of technology in production;

II. Labour turnover arising from normal separations due to death or physical
incapacity, from accidents, disease, superannuation, voluntary retirement, promotion
within the organization and change of occupation or job.
III. Need for additional hands to cope with an increased production of goods and services;
IV. Employment of inexperienced, new or badly labor requires detailed instruction for an
effective performance of a job;
V. Old employee need refresher training to enable them to keep abreast of the
changing methods, techniques, and use of sophisticated tools and equipment;
VI. Need for enabling employees to do the work in a more effective way, to reduce learning
time, reduce supervision time reduce waste and spoilage of raw material and produce
quality goods, and develop their potential.
VII. Need for reducing grievances and minimizing accident rates;
VIII. Need for maintaining the validity of an organization a whole and raising the moral of its
employees.

4.3. Importance of Training

1. Increasing Productivity: Instruction can help employees increase their level of performance
on their present job assignment. Increased human performance often directly leads to
increased operational productivity and increased company profit. Again, increased
performance and productivity, because of training, are most evident on the part of
new employees who are not yet fully aware of the most efficient and effective ways
of performing their jobs.
2. Improving Quality: Better informed workers are less likely to make operational mistakes.
Quality increases may be in relationship to a company product or service, or in reference to
the intangible organizational employment atmosphere.
3. Helping a Company Fulfill its Future Personnel Needs : Organizations that have a good
internal educational programme will have to make less drastic manpower changes and
adjustments in the event of sudden personnel alternations. When the need arises,
organisational vacancies can more easily be staffed from internal sources if a company
initiates and maintains and adequate instructional programme for both its non-
supervisory and managerial employees.
4. Improving Organizational Climate : An endless chain of positive reactions results
from a well-planned training programme. Production and product quality may improve;
financial incentives may then be increased, internal promotions become stressed, less
supervisory pressures ensue and base pay rate increases result. Increased morale may be

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due to many factors, but one of the most important of these is the current state of an
organisation‘s educational Endeavour.
5. Improving Health and Safety: Proper training can help prevent industrial accidents. A
safer work environment leads, to more stable mental attitudes on the part of employees.
Managerial mental state would also improve if supervisors now that they can better
themselves through company-designed development programmes.
6. Obsolescence Prevention : Training and development programmes foster the initiative
and creativity of employees and help to prevent manpower obsolescence, which may be
due to age, temperament or motivation, or the inability of a person to adapt himself to
technological changes.
7. Personal Growth: Employees on a personal basis gain individually from their exposure to
educational experiences.

4.4. Methods of Training

Training is essential for the smooth, economic, timely and efficient production, work or
service in any organization. To get work accomplished well from a worker or employee, it is
a must that he is given proper training in methods of work. Training is the organized
producer by which people learn knowledge and skill for a definite purpose management can‘t
make a choice as between training‘or no training‘. On the other hand, it is a must. The only
choice lies in the method of training.

The following methods are generally used to provide training:

 On the Job Training Methods and

 Off the Job Training Methods

1. On-the-Job Training Methods

This type of training is imparted on the job and at the work place where the employee
is expected to perform his duties. It enables the worker to get training under the same working
conditions and environment and with the same materials, machines and equipments that
he will be using ultimately after completing the training. This follows the most effective
methods of training the operative personnel and generally used in most of the individual
undertaking.

I. On Specific Job: On the job training methods is used to provide training for a specific
job such a electrician moror mechanic pluming etc.
a. Experience: This is the oldest method of on-the-job training. Learning by experience
cannot and should not be eliminated as a method of development, though as a sole

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approach, it is a wasteful, time consuming and inefficient. In some cases, this method bas
proved to be very efficient though it should be followed by other training methods to make it
more meaningful.
b. Coaching : On-the-Job coaching by the superior is an important and potentially
effective approach is superior. The technique involves direct personnel instruction and
guidance, usually with extensive demonstration.
II. Job Rotation: The major objective of job rotation training is the broadening of the
background of trainee in the organization. If trainee is rotated periodically from one job
to another job, he acquires a general background.
The main advantages are : it provides a general background to the trainee, training
take place in actual situation, competition can be stimulated among the rotating
trainees, and it stimulates a more co-operative attitude by exposing a man to other fellow
problem and view-points.
III. Special Projects: This is a very flexible training device. The trainee may be asked to
perform special assignment, thereby he learns the work procedure. Sometime a task-
force is created consisting of a number of trainees representing different functions in
the organization.
IV. Apprenticeship: Under this method, the trainee is placed under a qualified supervisor
or instructor for a long period of time depending upon the job and skill required.
Wages aid to the trainee are much less than those paid to qualified workers. This type
of training is suitable in profession, trades, crafts and technical areas like fitter, turner,
electrician, welders, carpenters etc.
V. Vestibule Training: Under this method, actual work conditions are created in a class
room or a workshop. The machines, materials and tools under this method is same as those
used in actual performance in the factory. This method gives more importance to learning
process rather than production.
VI. Multiple Management: Multiple management emphasizes the use of committees to
increase the flow of ideas from less experience managers and to train them for
positions of greater responsibility. The McCormick & Company of Baltimore, U .S.A.
developed the programme. The company claims that the plan has increased employee
efficiency, reduced labor turnover and absenteeism, and enabled the company to pay higher
wages than those prevailing in the area and industry. In this method; a junior board
authorized to discuss any problem that the senior board may discuss, and its members are
encouraged to put their mind to work on the business a whole, rather than too
concentrate to their specialized areas.

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2. Off-the-job Training Methods

This type of training is given to the trainees away from the work floor and is not the everyday
activity of the organization. Following are the off the job training techniques:

I. Special Courses and Lectures: Lecturing is the most traditional form of formal
training method Special courses and lectures can be established by business organizations
in numerous ways as a part of their development programmes.
First, there are courses, which the organizations themselves establish to be taught by
members of the organizations. Some organizations have regular instructors assigned to their
training and development.
A second approach to special courses and lectures is for organizations to work with
universities or institutes in establishing a course or series of course to be taught by
instructors by these institutes.
A third approach is for the organizations to send personnel to programmes established by
the universities, institutes and other bodies. Such courses are organized for a short period
ranging from 2-3 days to a few weeks.
II. Conferences: This is also an old method, but still a favorite training method. In order to
escape the limitations of straight lecturing many organizations have adopted guided,
discussion type of conferences in their training programmes. In this method, the
participants pools, their ideas and experience in attempting to arrive at improved methods
of dealing with the problems, which are common subject of discussion; Conferences
may include buzz sessions that divide conferences into small groups of four or five
intensive discussion. These small groups then report back to the whole conference
with their conclusions or questions. Conference method allows the trainees to look at
the problem from a prouder angle.
III. Case Studies: This technique, which has been developed, popularized by the Harvard
Business School, U.S.A is one of the most common form of training. A case is a
written account of a trained reporter of analyst seeking to describe an actual situation.
Some causes are merely illustrative; others are detailed and comprehensive demanding
extensive and intensive analytical ability.
IV. Brainstorming: This is the method of stimulating trainees to creative thinking This
approach developed by Alex Osborn seeks to reduce inhibiting forces by providing for a
maximum of group participation and a minimum of criticism. A problem is posed and
ideas are invited. Quantity rather quality is the primary objective. Ideas are encouraged and
criticism of any idea is discouraged. Chain reactions from idea to idea often develop. Later
these ideas are critically examined. .
V. Laboratory Training: Laboratory training adds to conventional training by providing
situations in which the trains themselves experience through their own interaction

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some of the conditions they are talking about. In this way, they more or less experiment
on themselves. Laboratory training is more concerned about changing individual behaviour
and attitude. There are two methods of laboratory training: simulation and sensitivity
training.
a. Simulation: An increasing popular technique of management development is
simulation of performance. In this method, instead of taking participants into the field,
the field can be simulated in the training session itself Simulation is the
presentation of real situation of organisation in the training session. It covers situations
of varying complexities and roles for the participants. It creates a whole field
organisation, relates participants, through key roles in it, and has them deal with
specific situations of a kind they encounter in real life. There are two common
simulation methods of training : role-playing is one and business game is the other:
i. Role-playing: Role-playing is a laboratory method, which can be used rather easily
as a supplement of conventional training methods. Its purpose is to increase the trainee‘s
skill in dealing with other people. One of its greatest use, in connection with
human relations training, but it is also used in sales training as well. It is
spontaneous acting of a realistic situation involving two or more persons, under
classroom situations.
ii. Gaming: Gaming has been devised to simulate the problems of running a company
or even a particular department. It has been used for a variety of training objectives
from investment strategy, collective bargaining techniques to the morale of clerical
personnel. It has been used at all the levels, from the executives for the production
supervisors. Gaming is a laboratory method in which role-playing exists but its
difference is that it focuses attention on administrative problems, while role-playing
tend to emphasis mostly feeling and tone between people in interaction.

b. Sensitivity Training: Sensitivity training is the most controversial laboratory

training method. Many of its advocates have an almost religious zeal in their
enhancement with the training group experience. Some of its critics match this
favour in their attacks on the technique. As a result of criticism and experience, a
somewhat revised approach, often described as team development‘ training. has
appeared National Training Laboratories at Bethel U.S.A.

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4.5. Management Development: Definition and Importance

Management development” has become the new mantra of the transforming economies of
different countries. Having rapidly created the basic institutional infrastructure of a market
economy and weathered a post-liberalization recession, the economies now faces new challenges
learning to cope with the requirements of production and managerial efficiency in a modern
economy. Thus, full economic recovery depends not only upon the continued evolution of those
businesses which survived the transition from a command to an open economy, but upon the
establishment of new businesses which operate under the principles of modern management
techniques.

 Definition

Management development is concerned with improving managers’ performance in their present

roles and preparing them for greater responsibilities in the future. It has been described by
Mumford and Gold (2004) as ‘an attempt to improve managerial effectiveness through a learning
process’. Management development contributes to business success by helping the organiza-tion
to grow the managers it requires to meet its present and future needs. It improves managers’
performance, gives them development opportunities, and provides for management succession.
Development processes may be anticipatory (so that managers can contribute to long-term
objectives), reactive (intended to resolve or pre-empt performance difficulties) or motivational
(geared to individual career aspira-tions).

 Importance

Executive development is comparatively new concept. Before the World War II, the common
belief was that the managers are born, not made. Now it has been replaced by the view that
managers can be made by giving them proper opportunities for development. The assumptions
that a man could acquire leadership, skills and management abilities by serving long-term have
gone wrong.

The importance and need of the executive development program can be viewed as below:

1. Managerial Obsolescence: Advancements in the science, human psychology, anthropology

etc. have thrown better light into the pattern of human behavior and motivation and have
developed better mathematical and/or tools for the benefits of managers. Those managers
who have abreast with these advancements are able to update their knowledge and
managerial skill. Such managers are in a position to apply better methods of taking decisions
whose chances of success are more. If we don’t update their managerial knowledge are likely
to become obsolescence in their profession.

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2. Technological Obsolescence: Contemporary period has shown unprecedents progress in

technology. Technology has become a third and the most powerful dimension in industry, the
other two being capital and labour. Technological breakthrough have changed the design of
products, the existing production methods, the prevailing practices of storage and
transportation, age-old methods of testing, servicing and maintains etc.
3. Conservation of Resources: The most important task is the optimum utilization of the re-
sources. Executive should be exposed new techniques to find better methods of utilization of
resources. He should be new techniques to find better methods of utilization, preservation
and conservation of the resources.
4. Competitive Advantages: Globalization and Liberalization has made the competition more
severe. Managers must learn to take action for quality improvement, cost reductions
techniques, better logistic, better after sales and services. The training on innovative
management methods in the entire gamut of managerial activities.
5. Quality of Life: Improvement in quality of the life of the people is the national objectives of
all nations.

4.6. Methods of Management Development

It has often been said that managers learn to manage by managing – in other words, ‘experience
is the best teacher’. This is largely true, but some people learn much better than others. After all,
a manager with 10 years’ experience may have had no more than one year’s experience repeated
10 times.

Some managers are better at developing people than others, and one of the aims of management
development is to get all managers to recognize that developing their staff is an important part of
their job.

However, to argue that managers learn best ‘on the job’ should not lead to the conclusion that
managers should be left entirely to their own devices or that management development should be
a haphazard process. The organization should try to evolve a philosophy of management
development that ensures that deliberate interventions are made to improve managerial learning.
Revans (1989) wanted to take management development back into the reality of management
and out of the classroom, but even he believed that deliberate attempts to foster the learning
process through ‘action learning’ are necessary.

1. Formal approaches to management development

Management development should be based on the identification of development needs through

performance management or a development centre making use of the following formal
approaches.

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Formal approaches to management development

 Coaching and mentoring.

 The use of performance management processes to provide feedback and satisfy
development needs.
 Planned experience, which includes job rotation, job enlargement, taking part in project
teams or task groups, ‘action learning ‘and outside the organization.
 Formal training by means of internal or external courses.
 Structured self-development following a self-directed learning programme set out in a
personal development plan and agreed as a learning contract with the manager or a
management development adviser.
 Competency frameworks can be used as a means of identifying and expressing
development needs and pointing the way to self-managed learning programmes or the
provision of learning opportunities by the organization.

2. Informal approaches to management development

Informal approaches to management development make use of the learning experiences that
managers come across during the course of their everyday work. Managers are learning every
time they are confronted with an unusual problem, an unfamiliar task or a move to a different
job. They then have to evolve new ways of dealing with the situation. They will learn if they
analyses what they did to determine how and why it contributed to its success or failure. This
retrospective or reflective learning will be effective if managers can apply the lessons success-
fully in the future. Experiential and reflective learning is potentially the most powerful form of
learning. It comes naturally to some managers. They seem to absorb, unconsciously and by some
process of osmosis, the lessons from their experience, although in fact they have probably
developed a capacity for almost instantaneous analysis that they store in their mental databank
and which they can retrieve whenever necessary. Ordinary mortals, however, either find it
difficult to do this sort of analysis or do not recognize the need. This is where informal or at least
semi-formal approaches can be used to encourage and help managers to learn more effectively.

Informal approaches to management development

 Getting managers to understand their own learning styles so that they can make the best
use of their experience and increase the effectiveness of their learning activities – the
manager’s self-development guide by Pedler et al (1994) provides an excellent basis for
this important activity.
 Emphasizing self-assessment and the identification of development needs by getting
managers to assess their own performance against agreed objectives and analyses the

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factors that contributed to effective or less effective performance –this can be provided
through performance management.
 Getting managers to produce their own personal development plans self directed learning
programmes.
 Encouraging managers to discuss their own problems and opportunities with their
manager, colleagues or mentors to establish for themselves what they need to learn or be
able to do.
3. Development centers

Development centers consist of a concentrated (usually one or two days) programme of

exercises, tests and interviews designed to identify managers’ development needs and to provide
counseling on their careers. They offer participants the opportunity to examine and under-stand
the competencies they require now and in the future. Because ‘behaviour predicts behav-iour’,
centers offer opportunities for competencies to be observed in practice. Simulations of various
kinds are therefore important features – these are a combination of case studies and role playing
designed to obtain the maximum amount of realism. Participants are put into the position of
practicing behavior in conditions very similar to those they will meet in the course of their
everyday work. An important part of the centre’s activities will be feedback reviews, counseling
and coaching sessions conducted by the directing staff.

Development centers use similar techniques to assessment centers, but in the latter the
organization ‘owns’ the results for selection or promotion purposes, while in the former the
results are owned by the individual as the basis for self-managed learning

4.7 Chapter summary

Training is an organized activity for increasing the knowledge and skills of people for infinite
purpose. It involves systematic Procedures for transferring technical know-how to the employees
so as to increase their knowledge and skills for doing specific jobs with proficiency. In other
words, the trainees acquire technical knowledge, skills and problem solving ability by
undergoing the training programme.

Training is important to Increasing Productivity, Improving Quality, Increasing Productivity:

Obsolescence Prevention, Improving Health and Safety, Improving Organizational Climate
and Helping a Company fulfill its Future Personnel Needs .

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Generally there are two methods used to provide training which are; On the Job Training
Methods and off the Job Training Methods.

Management development is concerned with improving managers’ performance in their present

roles and preparing them for greater responsibilities in the future. Management development
contributes to business success by helping the organization to grow the managers it requires to
meet its present and future needs. It improves managers’ performance, gives them development
opportunities, and provides for management succession. Development processes may be
anticipatory (so that managers can contribute to long-term objectives), reactive (intended to
resolve or pre-empt performance difficulties) or motivational (geared to individual career
aspirations).

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