What Is Employee Training?
On the whole, planes don’t cause airline accidents, people do. Most collisions, crashes, and other airline mishaps—nearly three-quarters of them—result from errors by the pilot or air traffic controller or from inadequate maintenance. Weather and structural failures typically account for the remaining accidents.30 We cite these statistics to illustrate the importance of training in the airline industry. Such maintenance and human errors could be prevented or significantly reduced by better employee training, as shown by the unbelievably amazing “landing” of US Airways Flight 1549 in the Hudson River more than 10 years ago with no loss of life. Pilot Captain Chesley Sullenberger attributed the positive outcome to the extensive and intensive training that all pilots and flight crews undergo.31
Employees at Villa Venture senior living community participate in a perception exercise during the Virtual Dementia Tour, a training tool that helps them understand Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia. The tour is a learning experience designed to improve employees’ ability to care for victims of dementia.
Fred Blocher/Kansas City Star/Tribune News Service/Getty Images
Employee training is a learning experience that seeks a relatively permanent change in employees by improving their ability to perform on the job. Thus, training involves changing skills, knowledge, attitudes, or behavior.32 This change may involve what employees know, how they work, or their attitudes toward their jobs, coworkers, managers, and the organization. It’s been estimated, for instance, that U.S. business firms spend billions each year on formal courses and training programs to develop workers’ skills.33 Managers, of course, are responsible for deciding when employees are in need of training and what form that training should take.
Determining training needs typically involves answering several questions. If some of these questions sound familiar, you’ve been paying close attention. It’s precisely the type of analysis that takes place when managers develop an organizational structure to achieve their strategic goals—only now the focus is on the people.34
The questions in Exhibit 9–6 suggest the kinds of signals that can warn a manager when training may be necessary. The more obvious ones are related directly to productivity. Indications that job performance is declining include decreases in production numbers, lower quality, more accidents, and higher scrap or rejection rates. Any of these outcomes might suggest that worker skills need to be fine-tuned. Of course, we’re assuming that an employee’s performance decline is in no way related to lack of effort. Managers, too, must also recognize that training may be required because the workplace is constantly evolving. Changes imposed on employees as a result of job redesign or a technological breakthrough also require training.
Exhibit 9–6
Determining Whether Training Is Needed
How Are Employees Trained?
Most training takes place on the job. Why? It’s simple and it usually costs less. However, on-the-job training can disrupt the workplace and result in an increase in errors while learning takes place. Also, some skill training is too complex to learn on the job and must take place outside the work setting.
Many different types of training methods are available. For the most part, we can classify them as traditional and technology-based. (See Exhibit 9–7.)
Exhibit 9–7
Training Methods
TRADITIONAL TRAINING METHODS
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TECHNOLOGY-BASED TRAINING METHODS
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Source: Robbins, Stephen P., Coulter, Mary, Management, 13th Ed., © 2016, p. 353. Reprinted and electronically reproduced by permission of Pearson Education, Inc., New York, NY.
How Can Managers Ensure That Training Is Working?
It’s easy to generate a new training program, but if training efforts aren’t evaluated, it may be a waste of resources. It would be nice if all companies could boast the returns on investments in training that Neil Huffman Auto Group executives do; they claim they receive $230 in increased productivity for every dollar spent on training.35 But to make such a claim, training must be properly evaluated.
How can training programs be evaluated? Usually several managers, representatives from HRM, and a group of workers who have recently completed a training program are asked for their opinions. If the comments are generally positive, the program may get a favorable evaluation and it’s continued until someone decides, for whatever reason, that it should be eliminated or replaced.
Such reactions from participants or managers, while easy to acquire, are the least valid. Their opinions are heavily influenced by factors that may have little to do with the training’s effectiveness, such as difficulty, entertainment value, or the personality characteristics of the instructor. However, trainees’ reactions to the training may, in fact, provide feedback on how worthwhile the participants viewed the training to be. Beyond general reactions, however, training must also be evaluated in terms of how much the participants learned, how well they are using their new skills on the job (did their behavior change?), and whether the training program achieved its desired results (reduced turnover, increased customer service, etc.).36