Training Effective and Ineffective Employee Training Few

¶ … Training

Effective and Ineffective Employee Training

Few features define an organization as directly and as fully as its personnel. The knowledge, dedication and ability required to afford a company success must all be encapsulated in said company's employees. While recruitment and screening will play a significant part in ensuring that personnel are an adequate fit to contribute these qualities to a company, it is also critical that the hiring company employ training strategies both for initiation into the company and for ongoing advancement of skills.

As the discussion hereafter will demonstrate, training is necessitated by a combination of the specific procedures, practices and expectations within a specific company and by the various ways in which objectives, companies and industries will undergo change. As the text provided by eCornell (2010) denotes,

"the many challenges associated with the changing nature of work and the workplace environment are very real for every organization. Rapid change requires a skilled, knowledgeable workforce with employees who are adaptive, flexible and focused on the future." (eCornell, p. 1) It is for this reason that it is invaluable for an employing firm to provide its employees with a clear, streamlined and proven method of training.

It does bear noting though that there are a wide array of training methods and that some are more effective than others. It would benefit an organization to account for the method likeliest to be effective in its given context. Some traditional methods of training may well fall short of their intended goal for lack of suitability to the given setting. For instance, the text by Noe (2009) indicates that such frequently employed methods as the lecture may not achieve the desired effect in all settings. While this is a mode of instruction often used in more discursive learning environments, Noe warns that this approach might not be practical in more hands-on settings. Accordingly, the text tells that "lectures tend to lack participant involvement, feedback, and meaningful connection to the work environment -- all of which inhibit learning and transfer of training. Lectures appeal to few of the trainees' senses because trainees focus primarily on hearing information." (Noe, p. 267)

This suggests that in many instances, the use of the lecture methodology may not only fail to engage trainees or employees in ongoing training, but it may also manifest as wasted time and effort. Indeed, today, most employees require and will be benefit significantly more from training strategies that are more directly engaging. It is for this reason that Noe espouses on-the-job training (OJT) as a more preferred and more inherently effective way of improving employee skill sets.

As to these 'hands-on' strategies for training, Noe tells that the use of games, activities and case studies can have a far more engaging and stimulating impact on the learner. Noe asserts that "these methods include on-the-job training, simulations, case studies, business games, role plays, and behavior modeling. These methods are ideal for developing specific skills, understanding how skills and behaviors can be transferred to the job, experiencing all aspects of completing a task, or dealing with interpersonal issues that arise on the job." (Noe, p. 269)