Importance of training and development in human resource management
Discuss about the Training Analysis at BHP Billiton.
Training and Development
Training and development is one of the most important core functions under human resource management and is aimed at increasing the competencies, knowledge and skills of the workforce of an organisation, in order to optimise their performance levels (Nimmo, Clapham, & Consultant, 2016). The difference between training and development is that training is a program that is aimed at increasing job related skills or knowledge of the employees whereas development is aimed at bringing about an overall development in the workforce.
In today’s rapidly changing global business environment, it is becoming difficult for business organisations to survive in the market because of technological, economic, social, political and environmental changes. Further, the increase in the level of competition between rival firms has also made market survival difficult. As a result, business organisations are now relying on their human resources for achieving market competencies and are continuously training and developing them to increase their competencies and skills.
Training Need Assessment, also known as Training Need Analysis or TNA, is a process that is used by business organisations to identify the training needs of its employees. As discussed above, market changes are forcing business organisations to implement training and development programs for employees so that they can cope up with the market changes and can perform up to the expectations of the company (Dahiya & Jha, 2011). The cost associated with training and development programs can be huge, which makes it important for business organisations to assess whether they are targeting the right training needs, which will enable the employees to meet the desired performance levels (Cascio, 2018). This report is aimed at conducting a training need assessment for an organisation and gain a deeper insight into the process of conducting a training need assessment.
BHP Billiton is a company based in Australia that operates in the hospitality sector. BHP Billiton is one of the industrial leaders in its area of operations and is famous for its ability to offer excellent and timely services to its clients. The company experiences a lot of demand during the peak seasons while the demand is above the average industry rate during off-seasons. As the company operates in the hospitality industry, it experiences high competition and is largely dependent on the ability of its human resources to serve the clients, in order to achieve market competencies. As a result, the company is continuously looking for training and development programs that could help it in increasing the competencies of its workforce.
As discussed above, the company is highly dependent on the competencies of its workforce as a competitive workforce can serve the clients better, which in turn would help the company in establishing a stronger customer base and in outperforming its competitors in the Australian market.
BHP Billiton is one of the industrial leaders in Australia when it comes to hospitality but the company has been losing its reputation in the past few months. Thanks to the performance management system designed by the human resource management of the company, it became easier for the company to analyse the performance gaps, which motivated the company to conduct a training need assessment as the performance levels demonstrated by various teams had failed to meet the expected performance levels.
Difference between training and development
The company has recently experienced a peak holiday season and had prepared its entire workforce in accordance with the demand that the company had experienced in the previous peak season. The management of the company had expected heavy demand from its clients but the overall peak season did not prove to be as profitable as the previous peak season. The company analysed the outputs after the peak season ended and discovered that the customers who visited them in the present peak season were not much satisfied with the services offered by the company. One of the major issues that the customers reported in the feedback forms was related with the ability of the employees to understand their requirements and offer them the required solution within the shortest possible duration.
On further investigation, the management of the company realised that the employees had been experiencing issues while communicating with their foreign clients because in most of the instances, there were either linguistic barriers or the difference in accents of people belonging to different nationalities made it difficult for the employees to understand their requirement. Because of the inability of the employees to understand the requirements of the clients, a lot of time was wasted in trying to understand the issue and to call other employees to mediate. As a result, the management thought of arranging training and development programs that would enhance the ability of its employees to communicate in different languages or understand certain basic words that their foreign clients say while trying to explain their demands. Because of the cost associated with training programs that are related to communication skills, the management thought that it would be a better option if it could conduct a training need assessment before actually implementing a training program (Sharif, 2015).
Conducting a training need assessment is not an easy task. It requires a lot of experience and efficiency to analyse the right training needs. The inability of a company’s human resource managers to analyse the right training needs can be a huge burden on the resources of a company as training the employees on the basis of a wrong need analysis is wastage of money and time, while the employees will also fail to meet the desired performance levels even after undergoing training (Ford, 2014). To ensure that the correct training needs are analysed, it is important that the management choses the right assessment method. Training needs of employees can be analysed using a wide variety of methods, such as direct observation, questionnaires, interviews, focus groups, work samples, literature review, outside intervention, etc. but for this particular case, considering work samples of the employees and questionnaires can prove to be the two best methods (Ahmed & Dhrubojyoti, 2015). Work samples and questionnaires can be used in the following ways to ensure that the correct training needs are analysed:
Questionnaires: Designing questionnaires and making the workforce answer questions is one of the best ways to analyse their training needs. The management at BHP Billiton has already gathered some information about the area where its employees lack competency and are required to be trained in order to serve the customers in a better way. The management of the company can now use this information to design a questionnaire, which would contain questions regarding the ability of the employees to effectively communicate with customers belonging to different cultures and the ease with which they can understand the requirements of the customers (George & Jacob, 2016). To make the process more reliable, the management can add an anonymity clause in the questionnaire, where the employees do not have to disclose their identity while answering the questions. Anonymity in questionnaire method is important because it eliminates fear of being judged or pointed out from the mind of the employees (Johnston, n.d.). Further, the management can also add direct questions, such as:
Challenges faced by organizations in rapidly changing business environment
– Do you feel that you lack competency in a certain field? If yes, what field is it?
– If we want to arrange a training program for you, what skills or competencies would you like the program to target?
– Do you feel that you are performing up to the expectations of the company?
– Do you find it difficult to perform your job duties or responsibilities?
– Is there anything that prevents you from performing your duties? (INSEC, 2013)
To ensure accurate results, these questionnaires should be distributed throughout the organisation and the feedback received from the employees should be carefully analysed by the human resource managers. Such questions can help human resource managers in easily analysing the right training needs of the employees. One of the biggest advantages of using anonymous questionnaire method is that the feedback is reliable and gathering feedback from the entire workforce can help managers in identifying major issues prevailing in the organisation (Assesshub, 2016).
Work samples: To ensure maximum accuracy, it is always better to use at least two different methods while identifying training needs because there is always a scope of an error. The second method that the management can use to reinforce its findings is analysing the work of its employees (K, 2016). To achieve reliable results, the management can call an outside entity for an intervention without disclosing it to the employees that their work is being monitored. A third party can be called upon to bring in people from different cultures to experience the services of the company and identify if the workforce actually lacks communication skills and is unable to understand the requirements of customers belonging to different cultures. Using this method can also help in making the training need assessment more accurate because the employees will be judged on the basis of their performance while at work and without bringing it to their knowledge that they are being observed.
Training need analysis is an important part of training and development programs but most organisations do not pay much heed to it. Business organisations, which do not conduct training need analysis or are not able to carry it out accurately, are often found to implement training programs that do not target the competencies or skills that their workforce actually lacks (Gough, 2010). Therefore, it is important to understand the issues that can arise if a company fails to conduct a training need analysis properly:
First of all, failure to conduct a training need analysis can make a manager identify wrong training needs and implement training programs that do not target the right skills or competencies. Such training programs fail to increase the skills or competencies of the employees and the employees are not able to transfer their learning to their jobs (Perry, 2014). As a result, business organisations fail to meet their performance gaps even after implementing training and development programs. Secondly, failure to conduct a need analysis can result into wastage of important resources of a company, such as time and money (Falola, Osibanjo, & Ojo, 2014). Thirdly, training programs based on incorrect training need analysis fail to foster a learning environment in the workplace as the employees do not feel motivated to learn the skills being targeted in the training programs. The employees become more likely to lose their interest in the training program, which causes the training program to fail altogether. Fourthly, training programs with wring focus can decrease employee morale and can cause frustration amongst them. It can further increase absenteeism rates, which will ultimately lead to loss of productivity (Simmons, 2018). Lastly, failure to conduct a training need analysis can make an organisation teach the right skills to the wrong people or teaching the right skills in the wrong way, which would also be a wastage of time and money (Shiftelearning, 2018).
Conclusion
BHP Billiton is a company that has been performing very well in the Australian market but the recent changes in the market trends is having an impact on the performance of the company. The company has an idea about the training needs of the employees, which it has identified using its performance management system, but needs to conduct a training need assessment to check whether it is targeting the right training needs. Targeting the right training needs and implementing a training program on the basis of it will definitely help the company in reviving its business, which can only be done if the training need assessment is accurately conducted.
Ahmed, D. A., & Dhrubojyoti, M. (2015). Identifying Critical Training Needs from Performance Appraisal Ratings . International Journal of Research in Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management , 3(2).
Assesshub. (2016, January 3). A 10 Step Guide to conducting a Training Need Analysis process . Retrieved April 19, 2018, from www.assesshub.com: https://www.assesshub.com/blog/a-10-step-guide-training-need-analysis-process/
Cascio, W. F. (2018). Managing Human Resources: Productivity, Quality of Work Life, Profits (Vol. 8). McGraw-Hill .
Dahiya, S., & Jha, A. (2011). Training Need Assessment : A Critical Study. International Journal of Information Technology and Knowledge Management, 4(1), 263-267.
Falola, H. O., Osibanjo, A. O., & Ojo, S. I. (2014). Effectiveness Of Training And Development On Employees’ Performance And Organisation Competitiveness In The Nigerian Banking Industry . Bulletin of the Transilvania University of Brasov. Economic Sciences, 7(1), pp. 161-170.
Ford, J. K. (2014). Improving Training Effectiveness in Work Organizations . Psychology Press.
George, A., & Jacob, S. K. (2016). Training Need Analysis and Job Preference of Students . Imperial Journal of Interdisciplinary Research , 2(8).
Gough, V. (2010, May 4). When training needs analysis isn’t enough . Retrieved April 19, 2018, from www.trainingzone.co.uk: https://www.trainingzone.co.uk/deliver/coaching/when-training-needs-analysis-isnt-enough
INSEC. (2013, March 31). Questionnaire defining the training needs. Retrieved April 19, 2018, from www.insec-project.eu: https://www.insec-project.eu/download.php?f=16&key=1cad4c786769f36f102e0c377b68455f
Johnston, K. (n.d.). What to Ask in a Training Needs Analysis Questionnaire . Retrieved April 19, 2018, from yourbusiness.azcentral.com: https://yourbusiness.azcentral.com/ask-training-needs-analysis-questionnaire-8992.html
K, A. K. (2016, November 22). Methods for Conducting Training Need Analysis – Part 5 . Retrieved April 19, 2018, from blog.commlabindia.com: https://blog.commlabindia.com/elearning-design/training-need-analysis-part5
Nimmo, G. R., Clapham, M. C., & Consultant, H. (2016). Staff Training and Development . Handbook of Intensive Care Organization and Management , 87-105.
Perry, S. (2014, November 4). Stop the Failure Cycle, Execute a Training Needs Analysis . Retrieved April 21, 2018, from Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20141104224047-100991537-stop-the-failure-cycle-execute-a-training-needs-analysis
Sharif, S. (2015, January 15). Why a Training Needs Assessment is Important . Retrieved April 19, 2018, from Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-training-needs-assessment-important-subhan-sharif
Shiftelearning. (2018, February 13). DON’T Skip the Training Needs Analysis! Here’s Why . Retrieved April 19, 2018, from www.shiftelearning.com: https://www.shiftelearning.com/blog/dont-skip-the-training-needs-analysis-heres-why
Simmons, K. (2018, January 23). A Costly Mistake: Skipping the Needs Analysis Phase, Part One: The Value of Needs Analysis . Retrieved April 19, 2018, from www.sweetrush.com: https://www.sweetrush.com/a-costly-mistake-skipping-the-needs-analysis-phase-part-one-the-value-of-needs-analysis/
Order an Essay Now & Get These Features For Free:
Turnitin Report
Formatting
Title Page
Citation
Outline
