Training And Development Environment Of Bhp Billiton

Introduction and BHP Billiton Overview

Discuss about the Training And Development Environment Of Bhp Billiton.

Incorporate in 1885, BHP Billiton Limited has grown to one of the world’s largest resource company and started operating in Australia since 2001 after its merger with the UK based oil giant mining producer Billiton. BHP Billiton is located in Australia with its headquarters at Melbourne. The company has diversified its operations and is a leading producer of iron ore, copper, metallurgical, and uranium. Other products produced by BHP Billiton are aluminium, potash, silver, copper, nickel, and manganese. BHP Billiton is today among the world’s leading mining and resource producer operating in more than 25 countries with approximately 100,000 employees. The company’s operations are segmented into Base Metals, Petroleum, Carbon Steel Materials, Energy Coal, Diamonds, and Specialty Products.

BHP Billiton is a multinational company where it has formed a strong international brand image in the industry. In terms of innovations, BHP Billiton has been thriving well something which greatly contributes to its competitiveness and sustainable position in the market. The company is dedicated to respect and ethical conduct when it comes to accountability and company values. The strong dedication by BHP Billiton to become the world’s best resources enterprise motivates the management to invest a lot in workforce training and development (Bratton & Gold, 2017). The company has established a unique capabilities combination in order to link technologies and human resources for the benefit of customers and the society at large. The company is committed to employees’ development and consistent delivery of high-quality products and services to customers as well as establishing high standards of care for the human resource environment.

The main mission of BHP is becoming a global leader in the mining and manufacturing sector. In this regard, this report aims at explaining the importance of the training and development needs identified in assessment 2.

Based on the previous assessment, the business environment in which BHP operates has experienced numerous changes due to globalisation. As a result, business processes have changed, new technologies of doing business have advanced, new techniques of training and developing human resource have emerged, and also advanced ways of undertaking daily business operations in the sector have emerged (Cascio, 2018). We are in the era of digital revolution, and the internet is taking hastened pace in the business world. Due to digital disruption and the emergence of the internet of things (IoT), BHP Billiton has faced stiff competition from other global players operating in the mining and manufacturing industry. The main competitors of BHP Billiton are Exxon Mobil, Nippon Steel, Anglo American, BP, and Royal Dutch Shell. Due to the stiff competition in the market, the HRM of BHP Billiton conducted employees training and development needs analysis to understand their weak areas and adopt the right strategies to strengthen them.

Importance of Training and Development Needs Identified

In assessment 2, the management of BHP Billiton used interviews, work samples (sampling), and assessment surveys techniques in assessing training and development employees’ needs in the company in order to improve performance (Lasserre, 2017). There is need by the company to equip employees with up to date skills, talents, and knowledge in order to boost creativity and innovation hence contributing to improved company performance, competitiveness, and productivity in the industry (Chao, 2014). The management of BHP Billiton understands that the training and development need assessment done on employees in assessment two will help the HRM adopt the right measures to train and develop employees appropriately.

The main training and development needs identified in assessment 2 include:

1. Advancing and upgrading workforce skills and capabilities in their areas of specialisation.
2. Enhancing proper planning for human resource needs and areas of weaknesses to facilitate effectiveness and efficiency in execution

• Assisting the management in making the right decision about the key areas to invest in when it comes to training and development of personnel

A proper understanding of the knowledge, talent, and skills possessed by BHP Billiton employees effectively helps the management in understanding weak areas in employees’ areas of weaknesses so as to offer the right training (Hrcouncil, 2018). BHP Billiton employees are less creative and innovative when compared to employees from its competitors. In this regard, the management needs to invest more in the new minerals manufacturing technologies and establish a work environment in which employees get trained and developed (Asfaw, Argaw, & Bayissa, 2015). New technologies enable employees to become creative and thus innovate new ideas that seek to promote, modify, and advance the value and quality of a given product or service for a company. If the management of BHP Billiton train and develop employees according to their areas of specialisation, their skills, talents, and knowledge will be promoted hence enhancing innovation of new products.

The proper identification of training and development needs of employees will enable BHP Billiton to enhance planning and execution hence improved employees performance. In this regard, proper training and development of employees help the management in planning and execution of other workforce-related practices and policies. Properly trained and developed employees can properly plan their work and execute their goals in a more efficient, cost-effective, and safe manner (Schermerhorn et al., 2014). BHP Billiton greatly relies on manufacturing efficiency, and when employees cannot adequately plan and execute their duties- production efficiency is affected adversely. New employees at BHP Billiton need induction and training so as to understand the nature of the company’s work environment before starting their work. On the other hand, in the event BHP Billiton succeeds in employees training and development; the management will find it very easy to plan for the training needs identified on the part of employees and execute the right approaches to addressing the identified need (Wagner & Hollenbeck, 2014).

Participants

Further, decision making was another training need identified in assessment 2 and considered effective to BHP Billiton management. The human resource management of BHP Billiton has been finding it difficult when it comes sound decision making about employees training and development (Solomon, Katz, & Lovel, 2008). The management needs to start technologized work analysis, content analysis, and performance analysis in order to make sustainable training analysis decision on the part of employees. Doing the job and task analysis by the management will help the BHP in making the right choices about the weak area of an individual employee that require either training or development. Also, analysis the performance gap of an employee based on the expected performance can help BHP get the performance gap hence gaining the ability to make the right decision on the area that an employee needs development. In this perspective, the company will avoid investing in uncertain training and development needs of employees since budget allocation will be done regarding the nature of the need and its relevance to the company. As a result, the company will reap maximum benefits regarding team morale and creativity.

The training and development programs will take place across all branches of BHP Billiton in over 25 countries, supervised by different managers of the locations. The aim of this training and development program is enhancing sustainable performance improvement through acquiring new, predetermined, knowledge, skills, and cooperation opportunities.

The main participants in the training and development program include senior staff, front-line employees, subordinates staff, and all other in-house employees at BHP Billiton and its subsidiaries. Also, casual labourers in the mining and manufacturing sites will be trained on the preventive measures and personal security approaches when undertaking their duties in the mining site. Other participants in this training and development program are IT employees whose creative and innovative ideas enable the company to thrive in such a diversified metals and mining sector (Ford, 2014). Additionally, BHP Billiton will contract external training and development officers to come and train the employees on the new skills to do their duties, and other planning and execution need to be required of them. On the same note, the external contractors will work hand in hand with the immediate supervisors of an employee together with the internal training and development officers of BHP Billiton in a given segment.

Employees’ participation: The main cohorts to the training and development programs are all BHP Billiton company employees. Different employees have different competencies and qualifications. BHP Billiton goes beyond just mining and manufacturing and spreads to other internal fields such as the Finance, internal audit, sales and marketing, and procurement among others (Kum, Cowden, & Karodia, 2014). All these fields are operated by employees, and these employees require motivation which comes through skills enhancement and growth.

Casual labourers: Casual labourers operate/ work in the mining and manufacturing site of BHP Billiton. In the site, most accidents occur and harm the casual workers. There is a need to train them on personal safety measures and risk avoidance strategies in order to prevent such instances from occurring (Imran & Tanveer, 2015).

Training officers: BHP needs to go beyond internal training and development officers and contract outside training and development companies to come and train their employees as per the needs assessed by their supervisors and documented in their KPI forms (Keep, 2014).

Top management and supervisors: Without engaging and involving immediate supervisors of the employees, BHP Billiton will find it difficult in identifying training and development needs (Chaudhary & Bhaskar, 2016). Due to this, the top management in liaison with supervisors contributes to decision making when it comes to employees training and development through job evaluation and performance appraisal techniques.

This Training and development of employees program will offer numerous benefits to the employees themselves and BHP Billiton Company at large.

To employees, the training and development program will help them in;

1. Gaining new and up to date skills, knowledge, talents, and expertise that leads to enhanced creativity and innovation of new products and services to the company.
2. Increasing employees’ morale, dedication, commitment, and cooperation to work for the company hence building their personal and company strengths in the industry

On the part of BHP Billiton, the training and development programs will contribute to:

1. Increased company productivity: When employees are highly skilled, they will commit fewer mistakes hence leading to increased productivity.
2. Meet the set goals and objectives appropriately: Meeting the set goals by a company results from the quality of the workforce. When employees of BHP Billiton are appropriately trained and developed, they will become more productive and competitive; this will significantly contribute to its achieving of the set goals (Franks et al., 2010).

The training and development program will be conducted by both in-house trainers and external training and development contractor (Yadavn & Kumar, 2015). The plan for BHP Billiton in Australia is detailed in the table below:

Training Needs	Trainees will be able to?	Trainer	Time Line	Number of Employees to be Trained	Budget
Introduction to work environment	Hire twenty (20) new machine operators in the mining site	In-house	4 months	50 machine operators 32 supervisors	$6000
Machine cross training	Become productive like current operators within 3 months	Contractor	2 months	18 plant operators 12 supervisors	$3000
Office suite	Upgrade company to MS Office Suite	Contractor	1 month	20 supervisors 15 support staff	$ 2500
Safety needs	Design personal safety measures	Contractor	2 weeks	40 supervisors 10,000 casual labourers	$ 4000

In designing the training and development plan for BHP Billiton, learning theories behaviourism, constructivist, and cognitive are considered (Cohn et al., 2015). The four objectives of the program plan include:

1. Upgrading and maintaining proficiency and competence in employees current jobs
2. Acquire and enhance skills, knowledge, talents, and abilities unrelated to employees’ current duties in order to achieve self-determined goals and realise career objectives

• Develop new skills, knowledge, and abilities as part of succession plans and leadership development processes at BHP Billiton

1. Learn new industry systems, technologies, procedures, and trends

The schedule of the planned activities is represented below:

Planned Activity	Time line
Introduction to work environment	4 months
Machine cross training	2 months
Office suite	1 month
Safety needs	2 weeks

Three training and delivery methods will be used in this program for BHP Billiton, and these include:

Coaching and Apprenticeships: The trainers locate new employees close or next to experienced workers to get trained.

Seminars: BHP Billiton to organize for seminars through external contractors and ensure that in-house trainers together with other employees attend the seminars for training purposes.

Instructor-led training: Both the in-house and external contractor trainees assemble new employees in a training room to equip them with the skills required to work for BHP Billiton in a more productive manner.

The management of BHP Billiton must issue instructions to both in-house and contractor trainers before starting the actual training and development process (Forehand & Kotchick, 2016). Examples of instructions to trainers include:

1. Trainers must ensure that they become members in the training and development program for the employees to emulate them.
2. The training sessions should not exceed the stipulated time- and within the set limit, all the training and development objectives ought to have been achieved.

• Help weak employees gain confidence by genuinely complimenting their progress during the training program.

1. Trainers should not be bias, discriminative and prejudice to employees, all personal issues have to be kept aside during training sessions.

After the training program, the management of BHP Billiton will need to assess employees’ feedback on the training program and evaluate its progress to the company over a given set of a period.

The HR management of BHP Billiton will issue only questionnaires with a Yes or No answer to the employees trained to collect data on the efficiency and appropriateness of the training and development program.

Further, the company will effectively monitor these employees performance and determine any gap in performance to either positive or negative side. Through this doing, the company will be able to evaluate the success of the training sessions by the company.

Various resources will be required in facilitating the design, implementation, and evaluation of this training and development program’s success or failure. The main resources needed include:

Technology is the most critical resource required in this program plan (Arnold, 2016). For example, BHP Company should have a projector for trainers to use in demonstrating concepts to ideas (Dunning, 2014). Other technology resources required are computers, internet cables, and the internet.

The trainees need to have notebooks, smartphones, or computers to write small notes about the new skills learned/ being taught by the trainers. Handouts are also required to facilitate proper reference.

For the program plan to take place and succeed, BHP Billiton must have recruited employees who have the training and development needs. Also, the company should also employ in-house trainers or contract outside trainers.

The choice of where the training and development program will take place should be strategic, convenient, and accessible to all participants.

Resources are costly. However, the proper use of resources leads to cost-effectiveness to a firm. The approximate cost for the above four resources is $6000 per annum.

Planning forms the most important aspect of organisational success. Every program plan is faced with barriers (Jackson, 2015). The most possible barriers to BHP Billiton’s implementation of this training and development program are:

The entire program planning may turn out to be frustrating due to lack of management support. When top management fails to support training and development needs of a company through ideas and defending them, this hinders program success (Crane & Matten, 2016). Without top management motivation, new strategies for employees training and development fail before they are tried.

Some training needs cuts across all employees regardless of their experience and expertise. However, the most experienced employees discard these training and development programs as a waste of time and show no concern (Fleming & Measham, 2015). The negative perception by part of employees and some other leaders that the training program is less important to their expertise and company could harm BHP Billiton. Where these negative perceptions occur, lack of participation prevails.

BHP Billiton has a grand plan to execute the training and development of employees program. However, insufficient capital or lack of adequate funding could hinder the success of this program plan. Starting the program plan and leaving it unfinished discourages the employees, something which significantly threatens project success (Brown & McCracken, 2009). Therefore, lack of enough capital and its associated risks endangers the success of BHP Billiton program plan.

Misunderstandings among the participants are another potential barrier to BHP Billiton’s program plan success. Some managers of the company may feel that the identified training and development need is not essential, while others insist it is necessary (Brown & McCracken, 2009). The believe that planning heavily rely on inexact prediction techniques like guesswork affect some managers, and this could arise at BHP Billiton. In such instances, a poor planning climate is created and hence leading to ultimate failure of the entire program plan.

Conclusion

Training and development of employees contribute greatly in the success of a company in the market. Trained employees are creative and innovative of new business ideas that once executed improve a company’s productivity. Also, employee training and development help in equipping them with new talents, skills, and knowledges. Such employees fell encouraged and become more committed in their tasks, hence improving company productivity. However, lack of management support, insufficient capital, negative perception, and conflicts of interest hinder the success of training and development programs. Companies should establish a proper climate for program training and development in order to avoid these barriers. Therefore, all companies should train and develop their employees given the countless benefits that result from the program to employees, the company, and the society at large.

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