Training & Development : The Purposes

English: Economic development training session in a with the member of a community organisation. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Training is designed to provide learners with knowledge and skills needed for their present job. While development involves learning that goes beyond today’s job, it prepares employees to perform future job and to keep pace with the organization as it changes.

The three purposes of training and development are:

(i)                     Attainment of precision and clarity in the transaction of daily business and every turn of the organization. Training provides familiarization with the company’s mission, vision, goals, rules, regulations and work environment to the new employees. As for the existing employees, they could enhance their skills and efficiency through training, which would indirectly make them eligible for promotions and at the same time, uplifting the overall output of the organization.

(ii)                   Continuous adjustment to the changing socio-economic needs and increase staff productivity. Training and development programs are designed to enhance knowledge, skills and experience of employees. Well-trained staff would increase their tasking flexibility and show not only quality but also quality in their work performance and cutting unnecessary waste of time and resources.

(iii)                To cultivate a new altitude and behavior in human personality. For existing employees, training and development programs could refresh their knowledge and enhance their skills besides help kills boredom as they have been with the  organization for a while. This would results in positive motivation and encourage innovative and passion in work. For new employees, training could help boost their morale by indirectly offering job security, as they feel easy when they know what the organization is expecting from them. Through understanding organization new goals and turns via training provided, it would enhance staff teamwork.  While the employees feel united, happy and satisfied as they all share the common goals, it would indirectly reduce staff turnover. Talented staff that shows excellence performance after training would be promoted, and this would boost the spirit of the employees to continuously excel in every job.

Regardless of the position of an employee in the organization, he / she

should be given equal opportunity for training and develop. Training and

development program would not only help the organization to evolve and

compete with others, it would also help to increase self confidence in the

employees and hence, increase productivity and marginal output of a 

production. Not all employees should be given the same training,training

and development should be conduct after the needs analysis has been

studied and the methods of training are chosen carefully to suit each

employee's function in the organization.

Performance Appraisal : The Problems

List 4 problems in conducting performance appraisal:

1.       The supervisor may tend to only recognise the recent performance of an employee, and neglect the achievement in the entire year. The recent event marks the most impressions on the appraiser; it is a very subjective and non-empirical method of evaluation. This is so called the recent effect.

2.       The performance appraisal is usually design to be evaluated and appraise annually, instead of year-around evaluation. The design of the appraisal system should be restructured so that the supervisor is able to monitor and evaluate one employee all year around, not only at the end of each year.

3.       Central tendency which lead the appraiser to rate and evaluate all the employee at the certain / same level as average performers. The appraiser tends to rate the employees at a level not too high (overrated) or too low (underrated). In public agency for example, public servants would be rated through annual performance appraisal and the best achiever would be awarded APC. To keep the quota of achiever in a seemingly normal level, the appraiser took the safe path and rates the employees as average performers.

4.       Personal bias and favouritism. The supervisor appraises and rates the subordinate based on his own feelings and opinion on the subordinate, not on the achievement and performance of the subordinate. The bias and favouritism may be caused by political issue, family background, former wrongdoings of the employee that marked the negative impressions and etc.

The performance appraisal has been an issue not only for the appraiser (supervisor), but also an issue for the employee. As the appraisal system mostly designed as one-way appraisal, the interaction between the supervisor and subordinate are extremely low. Usually, after the subordinate submit the performance appraisal form, it rarely came back to their desk to tell them how far they have achieved in a particular year. As the result, in the coming year, the employee may make the same mistakes again and never improve. 

Performance Appraisal : The Importance

4 purposes of conducting performance appraisal could be extracted from two 2 basic purposes for performance appraisal: administrative and developmental. (Refer to Fisher & Shaw 2003)

Administrative; serve as a jury, the appraiser (supervisor) is responsible for any decision made regarding:
1. For salary increment

2. Promotion purpose / reference

Developmental: serve as a helper or mentor, the supervisor is responsible :

3. To identify the developmental needs of an employee for better performance in the future

4. To observe and evaluate the development and performance of an employee are up to the predetermined standards (referring to previous performance appraisal and aim for the current appraisal).  

Promotion : What's the problem ?

4 issues in promotion may be as follow:

1. Transparency of the promotion process may be doubted. In public service for example, the outcome of annual performance appraisal is rarely shared between the supervisor and his subordinate. Supervisor avoids doing explanation on his evaluation, and when the subordinate’s colleague being promoted, whereby they have equal seniority, lots of questions and doubts would raises. Personal relationship, which may led to bias judgement.

2. Stereotype judgement is the most general issue in promotion. The general assumption of a supervisor may influence his judgement to select the right candidate to be promoted. For example, if a male supervisor have an idea of ‘female could not perform 100% as male employee does’, then he would tend to select male employee to be promoted, regardless of the performance and achievement of the female employee.

3. Political favoritism. Misjudgment may happened if the employer promote one employee not simply based on his performance, but also taking in consideration of the political party the employee was in.

4. Seniority versus ability. Promotion based on seniority has always been the argument of both the managerial and also the lower level employee. The employee who excels in work and has better achievement was wasted in the seniority system, as the system choose to promote whoever comes first in the organization, not based on whoever did well. 

RECRUIT : Internal or External?

Internal promotion or hiring new people from outside both have pros and cons to consider.

Internal promotion would lift motivation of both the promoted employee and other unselected workers to perform or work harder to show their true potential in order to get recognize  Whereas, by hiring new people from the outside, psychologically, the existing employees would feel threatened by the new comer. Although new people from outside the company may inject new ideas, innovations to the company, the cons are too much to bear. As the existing employees may feel undervalued by the organization, and led to discipline problem, disloyalty and negative productivity. 

 Internal promotion can also save resources (money, time and human resources) in conducting the staffing process by only recruiting from the inside of the organization. Hiring new people from the outside of the organization is an exhausting process, as the staffing process have to start from recruiting, which will cost a lot of money to be used on advertising to attract people. Panels of interviewer will need to be set up to help the selection process, and normally, the people applying for the job from outside the organization outnumbered the number of interviewers, usually, one interviewer have to make session after sessions of interviews. Moreover, the result of selection is uncertain, as we don’t know who will apply for the job, and did they really are who they said they are on the paper. In terms of performance and all, they are unpredictable since the organization may not held the copy of performance appraisal of the new employee, or worse, the new employee hired from outside of the organisation  does not have any working experience.

 The process of internal promotion is much simpler to undergone compared to hiring new people from outside. The organization keep its own organization chart, the number of posts which has been filled and yet to be filled are complete in hand. It is much easier for the manager to select and shift people from the inside, as he knew best who fits the job. And the existing employees keep their performance record to the organization. Hiring new people from the outside should be the last resort every manager should take if finding no right candidate (from inside the organization) to fill the post. Although recruiting from the outside can help boost up human capital, but a positive marginal productivity is not a guaranteed.

Some may say, by hiring people from outside the organization could help injecting new inspiration to the organization, as outsider see the organization at a different angle than the existing employees, hence, people from outside could bring fresh ideas and creativity to help the organization to evolve and catch up with the developing industry. But, what is more important to an organization: New ideas and creativity or the employees who know the organization best? Considering the stability of the organization in its daily operation, promoting employees from inside the organization would certainly accelerate its development. Inspiration and creativity can be obtain by sending the existing employees to advancement camp, brainstorming session and so on.

 In terms of training and orientation, the existing employee only have to go through basic job-related training and not compulsory for induction, as they've worked with the organization for some time and should know the background and objectives well enough compared to new people from outside the organization. This would help save a lot of money and unnecessary drop of production as employees who are on training are not able to produce. Hiring new people from outside the organization needs a lot of training, start from the basic – induction to the job-related training.

Via analysis of position vacancies, the supply of internal human capital should be evaluate before a manager decide on the hiring method (to hire from inside or outside of the organization). If the internal supply of human capital is low, the shortage occurred, and the best alternative for hiring would surely be by external recruit / hiring from outside of the organisation. Surplus of labor would happen if the manager tends to hire new people from the outside, whilst the internal supply of human capital is sufficient to fill the job vacancies. In conclusion, internal promotion should be applied before any manager consider to hiring new people from the outside,taking into consideration that the number of employee is sufficient to fill in the vacancy. If there are really no qualified candidates from within, then the last resort is to hire people from the outside. This situation is always faced by the manager usually when hiring experts or professionals.

Interview : Problems when conducting interviews

Interview is a process in selecting the best qualified candidate for a specific job title. There are several types of interview; among them are the unstructured interview, structured interview, behavioral interview and stress interview.

Problems that can be identifying in conducting interviews are as follow:

   1.       Limited resources. The information provided by the candidate may be falsified and inaccurate; the interviewer may not have enough resources to check on the details provided.

   2.       Unfair judgement and bias while interview may occur if the candidates are to be interview in a group. Based on one question, each candidate is giving chance to elaborate on their own point of view, personal preferences of the interviewer may lead to misjudgement and bias on the selection of the right candidate for the job. Most of the time, the interviewer would choose the one who has the same point of view as he is.

   3.       Argument between the interviewer and candidates on the issue discussed while interviewing. The interviewer intention to extract the knowledge of the candidates may lead to argument if the interviewer pushing too far and begins to argue for the fact.

   4.       Derailed from the objective of the interview would happened when the interviewer and the candidates are both exhausted from long hour interviewing session.

JD & JS : Job Description & Job Specification : The Differences

Job description and job specification are job documents which are created after the information or data of a job has been gathered and analysed. According to Brian L. Delahaye in his book “Human Resource Development”, these two documents has become the predetermined standard for the performance appraisal as a comparison point for the occupant’s behaviours and abilities.

The differences of these two documents are as follow:

  1.    The job description or best say the desk file “fail meja” is a document which contains a lot of information about the position, such as the position title, position summary, duties, tasks, and responsibilities.

The job specification lists the characteristics such as the knowledge, skill and ability required by one to fill the position, to enable him to carry out his duties and to achieve the predetermined performance indicators.

  2.   The job description contents the general information or an overview of a position. Information such as the relation of one position to the other positions is also included. Such relationship would show who the person reports to, who are the subordinates and who are they working with. Once job description was read, people would get to know what the job or position is about.

Job specification did not content such detail, but job specification would rather elaborate on ‘who and how to’ carry out the duties as said in the job description. For example, position titled ‘Kindergarten teacher’ must have the ability to communicate with children, language knowledge, ability to handle hyperactive kids, kind hearted, friendly, patient and passionate. These are all specific details which would not say in the job description. Once job specification was read, people would get to understand who can perform the job said.

  3.  The outputs expected of the position are listed in job description, and is shown as the performance indicators. But such details are not contented in the job specification; the job specification is more about the characteristics of one person who can perform the job.

Training Needs Analysis

Training as part of human resource planning which aim to help develop the employees in terms of their skills and knowledge to enable them to meet the needs of the organization. Before conducting training programs, the needs of training should be analyse to ensure the objective of the training program is parallel to that of the goals of the organization.

3 types of Training Needs Analysis are as follow:

1. Organizational needs analysis. The organization needs to evolve and expand alongside with the development of the global and to compete with others. To able to do that, the human capital of the organization should be well-trained, updated of current issues and needs of the customer. For example, if a restaurant needs to expand its business from dine-in to drive-through service, the manager should evaluate the supply of the human capital, their capability and so on, and train them on how to take order for drive-through and such.  The analysis focused on the needs of the organization, regardless of the capability of employee.

2. Task needs analysis refers to the job-based training analysis. Say a service manager is transferred to the human resource manager, his previous experience and training report would be evaluated. If needed, he would be recommended to attend human resource seminar and training to enable him to handle the job better. This analysis is necessary to prepare the existing employees well prepared for the job and lowered their anxiety when being transferred or when given new job or task.

3. Person needs analysis refers to individual needs. For example, a newly hired employee who has no experience in assembling a bicycle would be given proper training to give him adequate knowledge to enable him to perform job of assembling the bicycle efficiently in the future. Person needs analysis emphasis on the needs of an individual in the organization.