Definit ions of t raining and developm ent

3.2 Definit ions of t raining and developm ent

A willingness to learn at work and acquire new skills and knowledge is a form of discretionary behaviour on the part of employees. The willingness of the employees to learn and the effectiveness of the training and development can make a difference to the effectiveness and profitability of organisations. It would be a useful beginning to distinguish between education, training and learning. Mayo and Lank (1994 as cited in Gold et al. 2010) have given the following definitions:

• Education is the exposure to new knowledge, concepts and ideas in a relatively programmed way. It is normally aimed at increasing knowledge, or modifying attitudes and beliefs.

• Training includes those solutions to a learning need that involve being taught or shown a way of doing things. It is essentially skill related.

• Learning is employee need centred and starts with the individual as beneficiary.

Kolb (1984) argues that learning is a knowledge-creating process through transforming experience and Honey and Mumford (1992) say that you can tell when learning has taken place when people can demonstrate that they know something that they did not know before and/ or when they can do something they could not do before. From the above, therefore, you can see that learning relates to knowledge, skill and attitudes. These three are

MN3075 Human resource management

sometimes referred to as competences. Training and development can take a variety of forms. Below is a flavour

of some different training and development activities: • Induction training is undertaken when a new employee joins an

organisation. It is partly an information giving exercise (explaining how the firm is organised and who works for whom) but it is also part of the socialisation process, so that new staff begin to learn the rules and understand ‘how we do things around here’. In other words people begin to learn the culture of an organisation. The lack of induction training can encourage employees to leave their new job in the first few weeks.

• Remedial skills training: this occurs to fill ‘skill gaps’ when an employee or group of employees lack the skills necessary to perform their current job task effectively. It is especially important as the pace of technological change is increasing. It would be pointless to invest in new machinery and software if the existing workforce could not use it.

• Developmental training: this concerns the acquisition of competencies (skills, knowledge and attitudes) that the company will find necessary in the future. This type of training is designed to meet long-term corporate needs rather than providing training in specific skills required currently. Developmental training also refers to the preparation given to employees for promotion or for managerial succession, in which case it is called management development and is often linked to Talent Management schemes.

It is also important to bear in mind that skills training can be either:

1. ‘firm specific’, referring to training in skills that will only be of value within the employee’s particular organisation (e.g. learning how to drive a train if you work for a mass transit or railway company)

2. ‘transferable’; referring to training in skills that will be of value in

a wide range of employment situations; it might be the case that employers are less willing to train in ‘transferable’ skills, as they may fear that other firms will poach their trained staff from them, and as such, they will then lose investment they have made in their staff (e.g. bookkeeping or accountancy).

Activity

Before reading the next section, write down all the reasons you can think of as to why training and development is important for organisations and their success.