Human Resource

Management

HARSH KUMAR JHA

CARDIFF UNIVERSITY, UK
What is Training?
Training refers to a planned
effort by a company to
facilitate employees’ learning
of job related competencies.
These competencies include
knowledge, skills, or
behaviours that are critical
for successful job
performance.

Evaluating Training:
Training should be evaluated on how it
addresses business needs related to
learning, behaviour change, and
performance improvement.
Training Needs and Strategies
Concentration Strategy focuses on increasing market share, reducing costs, or
creating and maintaining a market niche for
products and services.
Internal Growth Strategy focuses on new market and product development,
innovation, and joint ventures.
External Growth Strategy emphasizes acquiring vendors and suppliers or buying
businesses that allow the company to expand into new
markets.
Disinvestment Strategy emphasizes liquidation and divestiture of businesses.

Training issues vary greatly from one strategy to another.

Concentration Strategy
• Emphasis • How Achieved • Key Issues • Training Implications
• Increased market • Improve product • Skill currency • Team building
share quality • Development of • Cross training
• Reducing operating • Improve productivity existing workforce • Specialized programs
costs or innovate technical • Interpersonal skills
• Market niche created processes training
or maintained • Customize products • On-the-job training
or services
Internal Growth Strategy
• Emphasis • How Achieved • Key Issues • Training Implications
• Market development • Market existing • Creation of new • High quality
• Product development products/add jobs and tasks communication of product
• Innovation distribution channels • Innovation value
• Joint ventures • Expand global market • Cultural training
• Modify existing • Development of
products organizational culture that
• Create new or values creative thinking
different products and analysis
• Expand through joint • Technical competence in
ownership jobs
• Manager training in
feedback and
communication
• Conflict negotiation skills
External Growth Strategy
• Emphasis • How Achieved • Key Issues • Training Implications
• Horizontal • Acquire firms operating at same • Integration • Determination of
integration stage in product market chain • Redundancy capabilities of
• Vertical (new market access) • Restructuring employees in
integration • Acquire businesses that can acquired firms
• Concentric supply or buy products • Integration of training
diversification • Acquire businesses that are systems
• Conglomerate related to the acquiring firm in • Methods and
diversification terms of technology, markets, procedures of
or products. combining firms
• Acquire businesses that have • Team building
nothing in common with • Development of
acquiring firms shared culture
Disinvestment Strategy
• Emphasis • How Achieved • Key Issues • Training Implications
• Retrenchment • Reduce costs • Efficiency • Motivation, goal
• Turnaround • Reduce assets setting, time
• Divestiture • Generate revenue management, stress
• Liquidation • Redefine goals management, cross
• Sell off all assets training
Leadership training
• Interpersonal
communications
• Outplacement
assistance
• Job-search skills
training
… PricewaterhouseCoopers uses a learning management system to create a single
access point for training activities …
Needs Assessment
Needs assessment refers to the process used to determine whether training is necessary.
Organizational Analysis involves determining the appropriateness of training, given the
company’s business strategy, its resources available for training, and
support by managers and peers for training activities.
Person Analysis involves (1) determining whether performance deficiencies result from
a lack of knowledge, skill, or ability (a training issue) or from a
motivational or work-design problem, (2) identifying who needs
training, and (3) determining employees’ readiness for training.
Task Analysis identifies the important tasks and knowledge, skills, and behaviours
that need to be emphasized in training for employees to complete
their tasks.
Needs Assessment Techniques
Observation
Questionnaires
Interviews
Focus Groups
Documentation
(ex: technical manuals; archival records)

Online Technology
(ex: customer service feedback system)
 Training Design Process (TDP)
based on
Instructional System Design (ISD)

ADDIE model because it includes analysis,

design, development, implementation,
and evaluation.
Challenge: Cumbersome; Linear
 Robert Mills Gagné

Training Design Process (TDP)

based on
Instructional System Design (ISD)

ADDIE model because it includes analysis,

design, development, implementation,
and evaluation.
Challenge: Cumbersome; Linear
 Outcome or What is Measured Example Method of Measurement
Criteria
Reactions Learners’ satisfaction Comfortable training room Surveys
Useful training materials and Interviews
Training Evaluation
program content
Learning or Principles, facts, techniques, Electrical principles, Safety rules, Tests
Cognitive procedures, or processes the Steps in interviewing Work Samples
learners have acquired
Behavioural Technical or motor skills or Preparing a dessert, Sawing wood, Tests
and Skills behaviours acquired by learners Landing a plane, Listening Observations
Self, Peer, Customer and/or
managers’ rating
Work samples
Affective Learners’ attitudes and motivation Tolerance for diversity, Safety Attitude surveys
attitudes, Customer service Interviews
orientation Focus groups
Results Payoffs for the company Productivity, Quality, Costs, Repeat Observation
Customers, Customer satisfaction, Performance data from records or
Accidents company databases

Return on Identification and comparison of Dollar value of productivity divided Economic value
Investment learning benefits with cost by training costs.
Increased Workplace Diversity
Diversity Issues
◦ Gender Diversity in real terms
◦ Gig Workers and their challenges
◦ Religion, Language, and Caste based diversity
◦ Managing Gen Z

Need for Awareness-based and Skills-based Training

 Diversity Training – What goes wrong?
• Trainers' own psychological values are used as training templates
• Trainers have political agendas or support and promote particular special interest groups
• Training is too brief, too late, or only used in response to an existing crisis situation (such as a
charge or lawsuit)
• Training is only provided as remediation and trainees are considered people with problems,
or worse they are considered to be the problem
• The working definition of diversity is too narrow
• "Political correctness" is frequently the prevailing atmosphere
• People are forced to reveal private feelings or are subjected to uncomfortable, invasive
physical and psychological exercises
• Individual styles of participants are not respected; Only one group is expected to change

Von Bergen, C. W., Soper, B., & Foster, T. (2002). Unintended negative effects of diversity management. Public Personnel Management, 31(2), 239–
251.
STEM Training
Founded in Berlin in 1847, Siemens AG has grown to become Europe’s largest engineering
company and manufacturer of medical-diagnostics equipment. The Munich, Germany-based
multinational and its subsidiaries employ 360,000 people in more than 130 manufacturing
plants across nearly 200 countries. Clearly, the firm is well-versed in science-and-engineering
recruiting. But when the company sought to expand its Charlotte, N.C., generator and steam-
turbine plant to include a gas-turbine facility in 2011, it hit a hiring snafu. The expansion
required Siemens to hire an additional 1,500 people, nearly tripling its existing Charlotte
workforce of 800. Since many of the area’s textile companies had shut down, the area was rich
with unemployed people eager for a new opportunity. But while nearly 10,000 people
submitted applications through the Siemens website, the vast majority didn’t have the requisite
science, technology, engineering and mathematics—or STEM—skills.
STEM Training
“We’re talking about very basic STEM-related skills—math and applied
technologies,” says Mike Panigel, senior vice president and chief human
resource officer for Siemens Corporate Human Resources U.S./Americas,
based in Washington. “The bodies were there, but the skills were not.
We had to find a mechanism to address it.”

That mechanism came in the form of a partnership with Central

Piedmont Community College, also located in Charlotte. CPCC instructors
worked with Siemens to develop a specialized Pre-Employment
Readiness course to prepare out-of-work individuals for jobs in Siemens’
newly expanded facility.
A Cautious Approach
Is training really needed?

Who to train?
◦ Balancing high and low performers

Training inhouse (or external)?

◦ Advantages : Lesser travel cost; Convenient; Focused;
◦ Disadvantages: No networking; Lack of innovation; Undedicated
Employee Development
Comparison between Training and Development

Training Development
Focus Current Future
Use of Work Experiences Low High
Goal Preparation for current job Preparation for changes
Participation Required Voluntary
Different Types of Training Provided by Companies

Profession or industry-specific
11%
Managerial and supervisory
12%
Processes, procedures, business practices
9%
Mandatory and compliance
12%
IT and systems
7%
Customer service
8%
New employee orientation
8%
Basic skills
6%
Interpersonal skills
7%
Product knowledge
Employee Development: Approaches
Formal Education Programs
Assessment
◦ Myers-Briggs Type Indicator | Belbin Team Roles| Transactional Analysis
◦ Assessment Center
◦ Performance Appraisals and 360-Degree Feedback Systems

Job Experiences
◦ Job Enlargement and Job Rotation
◦ Transfers, Promotions, and Downward Moves
◦ Temporary Assignments, Projects, and Volunteer Work

Interpersonal Relationships
◦ Mentoring
◦ Reverse Mentoring
◦ Coaching Relationships
Reverse Mentoring

https://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/is-it-time-for-more-reverse-mentoring?
Jack Welch on Reverse Mentoring@GE
In his pilot project, he paired 500 senior and junior employees, in hopes the latter would teach
the former about technological advances and tools. “We tipped the organization upside down,”
he explained. “We now have the youngest and brightest teaching the oldest".

In the years since Welch’s pioneering effort, many companies—including industry leaders such
as Target, Cisco, Unilever, Procter & Gamble, Boeing, AXA, Fidelity, Hewlett Packard, and Tesco
have developed their own reverse mentoring programs. Although they vary in scale and scope,
all share one common approach: coordinating shared learning between colleagues of diverse
backgrounds, in particular, bridging the workplace generational divide to create symbiotic
corporate learning.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4i6Av9U-wg
Sources/Suggested Readings
Green, G. 2003. Developing teams. Oxford: Capstone Publishing Limited.
Grundy, T., & Brown, L. 2003. Developing the individual. Oxford: Capstone.
Noe, R. A. 2010. Employee training and development. New York: McGraw-Hill Irwin.
Taylor, P. J., Russ-Eft, D. F., & Chan, D. W. L. (2005). A Meta-Analytic Review of Behavior Modeling
Training. Journal of Applied Psychology, 90(4), 692–709.
Von Bergen, C. W., Soper, B., & Foster, T. (2002). Unintended negative effects of diversity
management. Public Personnel Management, 31(2), 239–251.