ABSTRACT
Systematic training plays a paramount role in equipping employees with the required knowledge, and skills in order to remain competitive in the dynamic society whether in developing or in developed world. The main objective of this paper was to investigate current practices and challenges of the training and development system of Electronic Work Enterprise. The study used survey data obtained through questionnaires, interview and secondary information sources to supplement the primary data. One hundred twentyfour (124) questionnaires were distributed for the collection of data. Descriptive statistics was applied to analyze the questionnaire. Results show that the major challenges facing effective employees training included the lack of staff training policy in Electronic Work Enterprise, loopholes in selecting trainees and insignificant support to training by the Electronic Work Enterprise managers. Based on the findings, the author recommended that a regular formal need assessment of the employees should be done in order to identify employees’ need in terms of skills and knowledge. There is also a need for a training policy guiding EWE and a formal structure clearly outlining the criteria based on which trainees are identified and selected for training as this will eliminate bias in selection of trainees.
Keywords: Training, Development, Employee Development, Employee performance and Electronic Work Enterprise.
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background of the study
The survival of any organization in the competitive society lies in its ability to train its human resource to be creative, innovative, which will always enhance performance and increase competitive advantage.
Nowadays, organizations operate in a complex and changing environment that greatly enhances and influences their growth and expansion. To cope up with this changing environment and technological advancement, organizations need to develop and train their employees. In addition, the survival of any organization depends on the quality of human resources of the company. An organization can also use training to try to overcome deficiencies in employees. Often effective training can produce productivity gains that offset the cost of training. Training is especially important in industries with rapidly changing technologies. Training of human resource involves changes in skills, knowledge, attitude and or social behavior (Ahmad & Din, 2009).
It is undeniable that an organization, whether a production oriented or service rendering one, requires a well-trained employee in order to attain its specific and general objectives within rapidly changing environment. It is the trained people that mobilize and make use of both the human as well as the non-human resources of the organization to achieve its goals (Brum, 2007).
Employee training and development is one of the crucial human resource practices and is the process whereby people acquire capabilities to aid in the achievement of organizational goals. It involves planned learned activities designed to improve an employee’s performance at his/her current job. Training refers to the methods used to give new or present employees the knowledge, skill and ability they need to perform their job (McCracken and Wallace, 2000).
Although training is often used with development, the terms are not synonymous. Training typically focuses on providing employees with specific skills or helping them to correct deficiencies in their performance.
Organizational leaders are often not clear about what they want from training and therefore fail to connect training with the overall organizational goals and strategy (Neitzel, 2006). Training should not be regarded as a luxury to be undertaken when time and budgets allow. The management should recognize that the training function has valuable intelligence to employees’ core skills. The training unit, in a successful program, should understand the organizations strategic direction and then it can design and implement a creative way of moving people in that direction.
In contrast, development is an effort to provide employees with the abilities the organizations will need in the future. Employee development is therefore, training people to acquire horizons, technology or viewpoints. This enables leaders to guide their organizations to new expectations by being proactive rather than reactive. (Isiaka, 2011). To ensure that training goals are achieved, care must be taken when designing the training process model. Even though different models are proposed by different authors the training process model to be followed by the researcher was developed by Randy .et at (2002). According to this author the training process model has four stages: training need assessment (TNA), design, and implementation and evaluation stages.
Training improves the knowledge, skill and attitude of the workforce and develops their services (Bell.et al., 2003). Training prepares employees for the new and specific jobs and it is often non- managerial employees oriented while development is managerial oriented and essential for future assignments. Global competition has made training and development a viable tool for all kinds of organizations (Ahmad & Din, 2009).
According to Ahmad and Din (2009), employee training and development are based on the premise that staff skills need to be improved for organizations to grow. New entrants into organizations have various skills, but not all are relevant to organizational needs. Therefore, training and development are required for employees to enable them work towards taking the organization to its expected destination.
According to Vemic (2007), training should not be undertaken for its own sake. It must be geared to the objectives of the particular organization. It is essential to know what the present skills are and based on the agreed objectives, what training is required to meet the objectives. Training also lead the employee to the right mix of knowledge, skills and attitudes, help a job holder to perform tasks successfully (Kumpikaitė, 2008). Often effective training can produce productivity gains that offset the cost of training. Training is especially important in industries with rapidly changing technologies.
Organizations are surrounded by different political, social, economic and technological changes which create challenges to which they need to pay attention regardless of their size, location and industry (McCracken and Wallace, 2000). These changes have challenged the organizations to learn how to manage or confront the changes quickly and successfully. Organizations are relying on their human assets, the knowledge, competence and capabilities of their workforce as source of success. It is therefore, essential for the organizations to develop effective HRM practices and policies that will enable them to attract, retain and motivate competent employees who will, in turn contribute to the successful achievement of organizational objectives.
Helping employees to become effective in their jobs is one of the most fundamentally important tasks in human resource management that organization has to undertake (Tyson, 2006). Because in most cases, there may be gap between employee knowledge, skill, and ability (KSA) and what the job demands. Thus, training is one of the major techniques that organizations undertake to fill this gap and improve the skill and competency levels of their employees.
Electronic Work Enterprise has emphasized on the importance of training and development for its employees. However, giving emphasis by itself doesn’t assure the effectiveness of the training program unless it is supported by a systematic training process.
TNA is subject to the views, assessment and experiences of bosses. Unless the core framework of needs assessment consists of at least three levels of analysis namely: organization analysis, task analysis, and individual analysis its effectiveness is under question. Likewise, training evaluation is an important stage of the training process, but the most ignored one. As per Santos & Stuart (2003), organization devotes little attention to the evaluation of training programs. Similarly, organizations evaluate training rarely because training is being seen as an overhead cost not an investment to be evaluated (Ikhlas 2005). According to Kirkpatrick (1998) training efforts are evaluated using four criteria: reaction (level 1), learning (level 2), job behavior (level 3), and results (level 4). However, as per the researcher’s observation EWE rely on level one that is, trainee’s reaction of Kirk Patrick’s evaluation model when evaluating their training programs.
In order to accomplish its objectives and the same time to meet the ever growing demand of Electronic products which is used for the development of the country, the enterprise imports the refined Electronic products via Djibouti port from middle east and gets it distributed all over the country through Electronic distributing companies. It is also to forecast, maintain, and administer the required national Electronic reserve and, based on the instructions of the government, supply Electronic products from the reserve.
The government sets prices and control of all Electronic products, because Electronic is one of the most strategic commodities in our country. Electronic is vital to all economic activities and also tools of transport, industry, agriculture and communication touching every aspect of our daily life activities. Huge industries, small scale industries, cement factories; textile industries, etc. use Electronic and Electronic products.
The government is highly participating and assisting the organization in the form of financing and bilateral agreement made between Nigeria and other countries to import Electronic such as Sudan to supply benzene.
This vast and newly redefined mission could be successfully accomplished by attracting qualified staffs from the market and retaining and developing the existing staffs.
1.2 Statement of the problem
Most research findings indicate that training has a positive impact on business outcome through increased productivity, improved management skill, reduced production cost easy access to profitability, and expanded market resulted from new idea from the training. Organizations are surrounded by different political, social, economic and technological changes which create challenges to which they need to pay attention regardless of their size, location and industry (McCracken and Wallace, 2000; Nolan, 2002). These changes have challenged the organizations to learn how to manage or confront the changes quickly and successfully.
Organizations should invest more in systematic T&D activities as the way to increase human capital, which is considered an important base for the success of any organization (DTI et al., 2000).
Considering the reality mentioned above, over the years, EWE has been allocating huge sums of money in its budgetary allocation towards training of staff to build the capacity of staff to perform their job functions effectively. But its implementation lacks appropriate systems and hence not cost effective. The lack of clear T&D policy and plan, inadequate need assessment and less attention to prioritizing needs, non-configuration of training and development program with the organization objectives, ineffective implementation and improper evaluation of enterprise based training skills all are the possible problems in Electronic Work Enterprise, as per the preliminary interview undertaken by the researcher, such variables are not investigated in Nigerian context adequately.
One of the prominent reasons that motivated the researcher to pick up this point is that in reality there is a problem in the effectiveness of training and development in improving employee’s performance on EWE as the researcher’s observation before conducting the study.
1.3 Research questions
Upgrading employee’s performance and improving their skills through training and development is a necessity in today’s competitive environment. Essentially the research question must answer the questions of whether the training has clear policy and realistic objectives, whether training needs assessment implemented properly and whether the training is transferred.
In order to fulfill the objectives, the study will have the following questions:
1. How is the enterprise’s Training and Development (T&D) need assessment made?
2. What types of T&D are being used in Electronic Work Enterprise?
3. What are the challenges encountered by the organization in its T&D practices?
4. How does the company evaluate the effectiveness of training?
5. How does the company evaluate effectiveness of employee development?
1.4 Objectives of the study
General Objective
The General Objective of the study is to investigate current practices and challenges of the training and development system of Electronic Work Enterprise and show its gap in relation to contemporary approaches and recommend possible solutions that help to optimize the effectiveness of training and development programs.
Specific Objective of the Study
In order to explore the enterprisebased training skills and problems, the research was conducted with the following objectives:
• To determine the T&D need assessment practices of EWE.
• To assess the T&D practices of EWE.
• To identify the challenges those influence the success of T&D program of the Electronic Work Enterprise.
• To investigate the effectiveness of training approaches used in Electronic Work Enterprise.
• To determine the effectiveness of employee development practices of EWE.
1.5 Definition of key terms
Training -is a type of activity which is planned, systematic and it results in enhanced level of skill, knowledge and competency that are necessary to perform work effectively (Gordon 1992).
Development- is a broad ongoing multi-faceted set of activities (training activities among them) aimed at bringing someone or an organization up to another threshold of performance, often to perform some job or a new role in the future (McNamara 2008).
Employee Development: It is a system for assisting employees to develop within their current jobs or advance to fulfill their goals for the future.
Employee performance-is defined as the outcome or contribution of employees to make them attain goals (Herbert, et al 2000) while performance may be used to define what an organization has accomplished with respect to the process, results, relevance and success. Afshan et al. (2012) define performance as the achievement of specific tasks measured against predetermined or identified standards of accuracy, completeness, cost and speed. Employee performance can be manifested in improvement in production, easiness in using the new technology, highly motivated workers.
1.6 Significance of the study
In this dynamic modern business environment where things are continuously changing, in order to improve productivity of employees’ it is very necessary to update training and development system of an organization.
Training and development promotes organizational vitality by providing progressive training and development opportunities that support lifelong learning and assist individuals in working effectively together within their departments and throughout the organizational system.
The study is intended to benefit managers, employees, and other researchers. Managers can utilize the findings to reconsider its current practice and redesign successful T&D program. Successful T&D program has a positive contribution in terms of upgrading knowledge and skills. Finally, other researchers can also use the study as a stepping stone to conduct detailed research on T&D practices of organizations.
1.7 Scope and limitation of the Study
Conceptually, the study is intended to investigate T&D program of an organization, one of the components of human resource management. Specifically, the study addressed issues such as the training need assessments, T&D approaches, T&D evaluation, and the challenges that influence the success of T&D. The method of investigation used in this study is a survey method. This is because survey can measure many variables, test multiple hypotheses, and infer temporal order from questions about past behavior, experiences or characteristics (Neuman, 2007:186). The total population of EWE is 558 but 202 are working in Lagos at the head office. The remaining 356 staffs are working in 15 branch offices. The study was on head office. This is because in branches there are no T&D functions, every three year there is rotation of employees so there is no uniqueness in branches and everything relating to T&D activities is centralized in the head office.
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Item Type: Project Material | Size: 52 pages | Chapters: 1-5
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