Chapter focus:

1. Employee Training
2. Human Resource Development
3. Career Planning and Development
4. Employee Empowerment
 Employee Training:
• Differences between Training, Education &
Development
–Training is short term, task oriented and targeted on
achieving a change of attitude, skills and knowledge in
a specific area. It is usually job related.
–Education is a lifetime investment. It tends to be
initiated by a person in the area of his/her interest
–Development is a long term investment in human
resources.
• What is Training?
– Training is defined as methods used to give employees
skills they need to perform their jobs (Dessler, 2005).
– Therefore, training implies preparing an employee for an
occupation or specific skills. In this case, it has to be
narrow in its focus and be for the job, rather than
personally oriented.
– Training is usually provided to adults and is aimed at
producing an improvement in performance at work, by
addressing weaknesses in knowledge, skills, or attitudes. It
tends to be more practically focused and can take place in a
variety of environments and concerned with the acquisition
of knowledge, skills and attitudes.
• What is Training?
– Training refers to the process of imparting specific skills. An
employee undergoing training is presumed to have had some
formal education. No training program is complete without an
element of education. Hence we can say that Training is
offered to operatives.
• Training Process
– Conducting needs assessment: gap identification
– Planning and carrying out the training
– Evaluating the training
• Training Approaches
1. On-the-Job Techniques
• On-the-job training (OJT) refers to training methods
in which a person with job experience and skill guides
trainees in practicing job skills at the workplace.
• This type of training takes various forms, including
apprenticeships and internships.
– Job Instruction Training
– Job Rotation
– Apprenticeships
– Coaching
 Training Approaches
2. Off-the-Job Techniques
• Off-the-job training takes place usually in a training
school or appropriate facilities away from the
immediate workplace, has the advantage of allowing
the trainee to concentrate on learning the new job
without distraction.
–  Lecture
– Case Study
– Vestibule Training- training programs in
gatherings or in hall.
– Role Playing
– Video Presentation
• Training is required if there is a change in technology,
working conditions, products, inadequate performance,
shortage of staff.
• Training has many advantages for the individual and
the organization because it is expected to provide:
– A skilled pool of human resources,
– Improvement of existing skills,
– An increase in knowledge and experience of employees,
– Improved employees' motivation,
– Improved job performance,
– Improved customer service, and
– Improved personal growth and
– Opportunity for career development.
 Impediments/hurdles to Effective Training
Management Commitment is Lacking and Uneven: Most
companies do not pay attention and spend sufficient budget on
training.
Aggregate Spending on Training is Inadequate: Companies
spend minuscule proportions of their revenues on training.
Educational Institutions Award Degrees but Graduates Lack
Skills: This is the reason why business must spend vast sums of
money to train workers in basic skills.
Large-scale Poaching of Trained Workers: Trained workforce
is in great demand.
Organized Labor Unions can Help: But, unions are busy in
attending to mundane issues such as bonus, wage revision, and
settlement of disputes than training.
Training at the end contribute in responding to:

– Reduce dependence on hiring new employees

– Job openings to be filled internally
– Increase satisfaction
– Employee Obsolescence
– International and Domestic Workforce Diversity
– Technological change
– Employee turnover
 Three Levels of Training Evaluation
– Immediate Feedback
• Survey or interview directly after training
– Post-Training Test
• Trainee applying learned tasks in workplace?
– Post-Training Appraisals
• Conducted by immediate supervisors of trainees
Tips to make training effective:
– Ensure that the management commits itself to allocate major
resources and adequate time to training.
– Ensure that training contributes to competitive strategies of
the firm.
– Make learning one of the fundamental values of the company
– Ensure that there is proper linkage among organizational,
operational and individual training needs.
– Create a system to evaluate the effectiveness of training as
discussed above.
– Ensure that a comprehensive and systematic approach to
training exists, and training and retraining are done at all
levels on a continuous and ongoing basis.
• HR Development
– Development: Development means those learning
opportunities designed to help employees to grow.
– Development is not primarily skills oriented. Instead it provides
the general knowledge and attitudes, which will be helpful to
employers in higher positions.
– Efforts towards development often depend on personal drive
and ambition.
– Development activities such as those supplied by management
development programs are generally voluntary in nature.
– Development provides knowledge about business environment,
management principles and techniques, human relations,
specific industry analysis and the like is useful for better
management of a company.
 Human Resources Development
• HR Development
– It is more career-orientated than job-oriented and is
concerned with the longer term development and potential
of the individual.
– Development occurred during a person’s experience and
growth throughout a career and lifespan.
– HRD is the part of people management that deals with the
process of facilitating, guiding and coordinating work-
related learning and development to ensure that
individuals, teams and organizations can perform as
desired.
 Human Resources Development
• HR Development:
– It revolves in the development and combination of
three elements:
• Cognitive capacities: : the foundations of intelligence,
conceptualized as the processing and possession of
information in the brain and higher-order neurological
abilities
• Capabilities: the practical abilities involved in work roles,
either inherent in the person or developed through
practice.
• Desired Behaviors: from motivation to ‘social skills’,
enabling social interaction, mediated by the affective; can
be conceptualized variously as attitudes, values or
‘emotional intelligence’ (EI)
 Challenges in HRD
– Changing workforce demographics
– Competing in global economy
– Eliminating the skills gap
– Need for lifelong learning
– Need for organizational learning
 Career Planning and Development
• A career is a pattern of work-related experiences that span the
course of a person’s life
– Career goals are the future positions one strives to reach as part of a
career. These goals serve as benchmarks along one’s career path.
• Career has objective events, like jobs and subjective views of
work like attitudes, values, expectations.
• Careers develop over time, have multiple work related paths and
experiences.
• Individuals, organizations and the environment are critical to the
development of a career
– Focus is taken away from the stereotypical idea of the career as
a stable, long-term, predictable, organization driven sequence
of vertical movements.
 Career Planning and Development
• Career development is “an ongoing process by which individuals
progress through a series of stages, each of which is characterized
by a relatively unique set of issues, themes, and tasks.”
• There is a strong relationship between career development and
T&D activities.
• Traditionally, career development programs helped employees
advance within the organization.
• Today, each individual must take responsibility for his or her
career.
• The biggest challenge companies face is how to balance
advancing current employees’ careers with simultaneously
attracting and acquiring employees with new skills.
 Career Planning and Development
• Career Path: lines of advancement in an occupational field
within an organization.
• Career development involves two distinct processes: career
planning and career management
– Career planning involves activities performed by an
individual, often with the assistance of counselors and others,
to assess his or her skills and abilities in order to establish a
realistic career plan.
– Career management involves taking the necessary steps to
achieve that plan, and generally focuses more on what an
organization can do to foster employee career development.
• Career plans can be implemented, at least in part, through an
organization’s training programs.
 Career Planning and Development
• Career Planning can be:
– Organization-Centered Career Planning:
Focuses on jobs and on identifying career paths
that provide for the logical progression of people
between jobs in the organization.
– Individual-Centered Career Planning: Focuses
on individuals’ careers rather than in
organizational needs.
 Career Planning and Development
• Individual Career Development is related with:
– Job Performance
– Exposure
– Networking
– Resignations
– Organizational Loyalty
– Mentors and Sponsors
– Key Subordinates
– Growth Opportunities
– International Experience
 Career Planning and Development
• Multiple career concept model:
Linear – steady movement up the hierarchy
Expert – devotion to expertise within an occupation
Spiral – periodic moves across related occupations
Transitory– frequent moves across different jobs or
fields
 Career Planning and Development
• Creating Favorable Conditions
– Management Participation
• Provide top management support
• Provide collaboration between line managers and HR
managers
• Train management personnel
– Setting Goals
• Plan human resources strategy
– Changing HR Policies
• Provide for job rotation
• Provide outplacement service
– Announcing the Program
• Explain its philosophy
 Career Planning and Development
• Career Planning Process
– Self-Assessment: Examine personal interests, skills, values, and
abilities.
– Opportunity Exploration: Seek information on available job
opportunities from family, friends, online job boards, job fairs. Examine the
skills and abilities required.
– Goal Setting/Reality Checking: Decide which job/occupational
opportunities fit both personal interests and skills/abilities. Set specific
target job objectives for a defined time period.
– Action Planning: Outline all steps needed to reach a specific career
goal—formal training, internships, job search, strategy development,
network building, further career exploration, etc.
– Evaluation: Review progress on steps in the action plan, realism of
goals, and accuracy/currency of self-assessment. Revise career plan
based on new information.
 Career Planning and Development
• The Individual’s Role in career development:
– Knowing what: understanding industry’s occupational transfer
(O/T) and requirements
– Knowing why: Understanding the meaning, motives and
interests
– Knowing where: Understanding boundaries for entering,
training and advancing within a career
– Knowing whom: Forming relationships that will gain access to
opportunities and resources
– Knowing when: Understanding the timing and choices
– Knowing how: Understanding and acquiring the skills needed
 Career Planning and Development
• The Manager’s Responsibility in career development:
Coach: Listens, clarifies, probes and defines career concerns
Appraiser: Gives feedback, clarifies performance standards and
job responsibilities
Advisor: Generates options, helps set goals, makes
recommendations and gives advice
Referral agent: Consults with the employees on action plans and
links employees to other people and resources
 Employee Empowerment
• Empowerment - giving employees authority and
responsibility to make decisions about their work without
traditional managerial approval and control
– Sharing Information and Decision-Making Authority
– Keeping them informed about company’s financial performance
– Giving them broad authority to make workplace decisions
• A primary goal of employee empowerment is to give
workers a greater voice in decisions about work-
related matters.
• Decision-making authority can range from offering
suggestions to exercising veto power over management
decisions.
 Benefits of Empowerment

 All employees view themselves as ‘owners’ of the business

 Improved productivity

 Creativity & Innovation

 Customer-focus

 Faster decision-making

 Organizational learning

 Making full use of Human resources- “Engaging the mind of

every employee”
 Employee Empowerment
• Organizational improvement through employee
empowerment
1. Empowerment can strengthen motivation by providing
employees with the opportunity to attain intrinsic rewards
from their work, such as a greater sense of accomplishment
and a feeling of importance. Intrinsic rewards such as job
satisfaction and a sense of purposeful work can be more
powerful than extrinsic rewards such as higher wages or
bonuses.
2. Employee empowerment can increase productivity is
through better decisions. Especially when decisions require
task-specific knowledge, those on the front line can often
better identify problems.
 Elements of Empowerment:

Employees receive information about company performance

Employees receive knowledge and skills to contribute to the

company goals.

Employees have the power to make substantive decisions.

Employees understand the meaning and impact of their jobs.

Employees are rewarded based on company performance.