A Company's Unionization Process, Part Iv: Training and Development Program

A Company's Unionization Process, Part IV: Training and Development Program

American Widget is dedicated to acquiring and retaining the most talented employees in the industry. The previous essays have detailed the implementation of the union, the compensation and benefits package, as well as employee recruitment. According to Coget (2011), "Conventional wisdom has it that all companies should invest in the training and development of their employees" (p. 2011). Once we have hired new employees it is our duty to effectively train them and this development must continue to ensure our sustainability and continued growth. The adult learner is complex; they are only interested in training that helps improve their knowledge and help their work performance. This essay will discuss the characteristics of effective training practices, principles that enhance learning, evaluating training programs, the purpose of performance appraisal systems, and when and how often appraisals should be done.

Effective Training Practices

The way to effectively train the adult learner is to have clearly defined learning objectives, employee involvement, and to make it fun. Effective training practices have specific training objectives that are pertinent to the job that they perform enhancing the skills that they already possess and that the employee clearly understands how this training enhances their job skills. The employee must be engaged throughout the training and allowed to share their practical real world experience. If employees do not participate in the training and allowed to apply it then they will not retain as much of the material. The last objective is to make the training fun by including activities where the employees can put the new material into action and remain engaged throughout the training process.

Principles That Enhance Learning

Principles that enhance learning are to be prepared, know your audience, and deliver the information in a manner that keeps them engaged. The first and most crucial step in training is preparing your material, if the facilitator is not knowledgeable of the material then you will lose your audience and they will not believe in your message. Part of being prepared is doing your ground work before and understand who you audience is. The adult learner learns information in three differing ways; auditory, visual, and kinesthetic. According to Teece, Pisano, and Shuen (1997), "Organizations that are able to effectively utilize accumulated tacit and firm-specific knowledge are more likely to coordinate and combine their traditional resources and capabilities in innovative and distinctive ways, providing more value for their customers than their competitors" (p. 509). An inventory of each employee should be done to determine their learning style. If that time is not available the training should be conducive to each learning style. The auditory listener needs to hear the information; the visual learner must see the information, and a kinesthetic learner needs to be active or involved in the training. Lastly, the training should be interesting and fun to hold the attention to retain the information, by getting them involved.

Evaluating Training Programs

Evaluating the effectiveness of the training program is one of the most important aspects to ensure that you employees are receiving the correct message and that the training will improve the skills they already possess. It is important to inspect what you expect. After training the follow up portion allows you to see if the employee was able to retain the information covered during the training course and this tells whether or not the material was presented correctly. This also allows the trainer to tweak the information in the real work setting to show