Selecting four of the thirteen identified benefits of training and development is difficult in a general way without knowing the special issue a company, department or employee currently has.
If an employee for example prepares himself for an expatriate job in another country a cross-cultural training that improves expatriate adjustment and performance will help him (and his spouse) much more than a technical training.
Generally I would say benefit number 5. is a very important one. Often companies are offering trainings to employees who get in a new job, but even more important is training, especially practice that helps to maintain consistency in performance.
Also performance consistency results from enhancing the self-efficacy or self-management of trainees. Self-efficacy is a personal belief that one can accomplish a task successfully. Self-management is a strategy that trainees adopt to help them to maintain desired behaviors or to recognize symptoms that indicate variance from a desired path.
A very high value can also be find in benefit number 9. Leadership training seems to enhance the attitudes and performance of followers. Specifically, it seems to have a positive effect on the motivation, values, and self –efficacy of followers. This means, if the managers/leaders in my company are well-trained this will also have a effect on all the team-members and I’ll probably won’t have to train everybody by just training the managers.
Last but not least a training on team-skills will round-up the choice of most-valued training-benefits. Training in team communication and team effectiveness have positive effects on team performance. They also seem to affect nontechnical skills (team building) as well as situation awareness and decision making.
Research shows that a number of factors affect training effectiveness. For example, training success is determined not only by the quality of training but also by an individual’s readiness for training and the degree of organizational support for the training. Characteristics of the individual as well as the work environment are important influences before training (by affecting the motivation to participate), during training (by affecting learning), and after training (by influencing the transfer of learning and skills from the training situation to the job situation).
Admittedly some individual characteristics, such as trainability (i.e., the ability to learn the content of the training) and personality are difficult, if not impossible, for organizations to influence others, however, such as job or career attitudes, a person’s belief that he or she can learn the content of the training successfully, the attractiveness of training outcomes, and the work environment itself.
Surveys of corporate training and development practices consistently have found that four characteristics distinguish companies with the most effective training practices:
Top management is committed to training and development, training is part of the corporate culture.
Training is tied to business strategy and objectives and is linked to bottom-line results.
Organizational environments are feedback rich, they stress continuous improvement, promote risk-taking, offer one-on-one coaching and afford opportunities to learn from the successes and failures of decisions.
There is commitment to invest the necessary resources, to provide sufficient time and money for training.
Some businesses, small and large, shy away from training because they think that by upgrading the skills of the workforce, their employees will be more marketable to competitors. That is true. However, there is also an interesting paradox that affects both employee and employer. That is, if an employee takes charge of her own employability by keeping her skills updated and varied so she can work for anyone, she also builds more security with her currend employer – assuming the company values highly skilled, motivated employees.
At the same time, if a company provides a large number of training and learning opportunities, it is more likely to retain workers because it creates an interesting and challenging environment.
The purpose of needs assessment is to determine if training is necessary. There are four levels of analysis for determining the needs that training can fulfill:
Organization analysis focuses on identifying wehter training supports the company’s strategic direction, whether managers, peers and employees support training activity and what training resources are available.
Demographic analysis is helpful in determining the special needs of a particular group, such as older workers, women or managers at different levels. Those needs may be specified at the organizational level, the business-unit level or at the individual level.
Operations analysis attempts to identify the content of training – what an employee must do in order to perform competently.
Individual analysis focuses on identifying employees who need training and the types of training they need.
At a general level, it is important to analyze training needs against the backdrop of organizational objectives and strategies. Unless you do this, you may waste time and money on training programs that do not advance the cause of the company. Pre-employment training programs are prime examples of close alignment between organizational needs and training curricula.
It s also essential to analyze the organization’s external environment and internal climate. Trends in the strategic priorities of a business, judicial decisions, civil rights laws, union activity, productivity, accidents, turnover, absenteeism and on-the-job employee behavior will provide relevant information at this level. The important question then becomes “Will training produce changes in employee behavior that will contribute to our organization’s goals?”
In summary, the critical first step is to relate training needs to the achievement of key strategic business objectives.