Every year, most organizations budget money for training — over 50 billion dollars in the United States alone. The volume of money and effort suggests that corporations believe training is important.
What do they know about training that justifies this much investment?
For starters, training plays an important role in developing a productive workforce and finely tuning processes to increase profits.
Training also helps people and organizations manage change. Because organizations are continuously changing techniques, goals, equipment, people, and locations, all members of the workforce require training to support these changes.
1- A business need or requirement. This is the starting point. Effective training starts with the clarification (or creation) of organizational goals. This enables the training department to provide a strategic approach to the services it offers the organization. Examples of business needs include increasing customer satisfaction, increasing market share, and improving quality.
2- A need to improve or change performance. Performance is usually tied to a specific job and a task or set of tasks within that job. It is what the employee must do to achieve the organizational goal. For example, if improving quality is a business goal, each employee must know what process to use to ensure delivery of a quality product or service.
3- A need for change in the environment. At times, employees may possess the skills and knowledge required to change their performance, but some aspect of the environment either prevents or discourages individuals from making the change. For example, if an organization’s goal is to improve quality, there will be little change if the reward system focuses on quantity, not quality.
4- A need to gain knowledge or to learn new skills. In order to change performance, employees may need to learn something new. This learning may take many forms such as coaching, classroom training, computer-based training (CBT), on-the-job training (OJT), or self-study.