HRM Training and development.

Training and development

This is the third main area of human resources, and is very important in the contribution to the development of the competitiveness of the business and the need for the business to invest resources in training and development programmes. With the contribution of training then that business is best placed to add value to products and thus gain a competitive advantage.

Training

This includes all forms of planned learning experiences and activities designed to change the performance and the behaviour of the employees working in the business. Types of training can be broken down into several different groups, these are:

Traditional training- this is training where the employee learns specific facts and content, which enables improvements in job performance, such as technical skills training.

Education- this is where the employee acquires knowledge, skills and understanding, usually in schools, colleges and university.

Vocational education- this is learning schemes between educational and training.

Management training- this is where training is directed to the managerial competence.

Organisational development- activities designed to change how individual employees work within an organisation, possibly through teamwork activities.

Development

This approaches the individuals from a different angle than training and considers the individuals motivation. With training it is concentrated on making sure the employee can contribute as well as possible to the objectives of the businesses personal development is more concerned in how to develop that individual in the best way that suits that person. In theory it is hoped that the two will be put together, to provide a workforce, which are well trained in what they want to do in the future. This means there has to be a balance between the employee and the manager of the business, so the employee can concentrate on their needs as well as their contribution to the business and the same with the manager, so both come together and provide a successful business.

To help get a steady balance of training and development a personal development plan (PDP) is constructed. The individual must be willing to contribute to making it ‘personal’ yet they will need the backing and support of their organisation. The plan will include:

The goals and ambitions of the individuals
The resources and support needed to achieve these goals
An estimate of the time needed
How the goals would be recognised by others

The plan would then be discussed with the appropriate manager or team leader usually followed by the decision to back the individual in meeting their goals. Providing them with the resources needed and sending them to relevant training can do this.

Wetherspoons training and development programme is a combination of ‘on the job’ training and ‘off the job’ training courses. The companies’ training focuses on career progression and links training with national qualifications. Wetherspoons understand that it is important to enable employees to gain relevant qualifications at a national level. These include areas such as licensing laws and food hygiene. This is good for employees as they can use it when applying for other related jobs, the fact that they have a qualification in it means also more to potential employers than just having worked in the certain area. Wetherspoons training is very good, as they have won awards including ‘The Honours for Industries Top Trainers’ in February 2001. This award is excellent for Wetherspoons as it promote its good name as well as encouraging people to work with them.

The benefits of training

The advantages of training can benefit the company in a great way, which is one of the reasons why businesses are happy to pay for it. Successful training can:

Improve the competitiveness of the organisation, also with a fully training workforce, and then it should improve its productivity and service to the customer.

It is how proven that the cost of training in the long run is less than trying to employee already fully employed workers from outside the organisation. Recruited, fully trained employee tend to leave much sooner than employees the organisation has trained itself

Training creates the right attitudes in employees and in a big business the attitudes of an employee are almost as important as the skills and knowledge that the person has. This is because without a good an attitude then the employee will never work productively.

The long term benefits of training outweigh the short run cost for all sorts of reasons such as higher morale, higher skills and knowledge level, lower labour turnover and reduced recruitment costs. All these benefits are useful to how the business operates effectively.

Many employees are keen to engage in training because they see it as adding to their own motivation and enjoyment you will never get a good working, productive team.

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Many employees are keen to engage in training because they see it as adding to their own motivation and enjoyment you will never get a good working, productive team.

It is important that training is kept as close to the real business environment as possible, so those employees can keep up-to-date with what is happening in their surroundings. The majority of the different environment at J.D Wetherspoon is not that fast changing so there is not much that employees need to be kept up-to date with. Yet it is still important to train people in an environment similar to the real thing, as it is more practical. J.D Wetherspoon training is vital for their staff to do their job, they need to be able to serve customers efficiently so they can maximise their sales. Without training the sales staff will not have any knowledge of the products and if a customer needs more information, then this would be unavailable.

Introduction training

Induction training occurs when new members are employed. It is a way of introducing them to the company and making them become part of the environment. Induction periods follow on form the recruitment and selection process and allow new recruiters to find their feet and learn all of the basic skills needed for their job. They would also be taught their role within the organisation along with the objectives and culture of the business.

Generally there would be a senior member of staff who would give a talk, videos to watch and other new colleague’s to meet. It is the ideal time to be taught about the health and safety requirements of the business, an important training that all staff needs and should regularly be revisited.

Mentoring

The individual would be teamed up with co-workers who would be come their mentor. The trainee would carry out the job required turning to the mentor for help when or if they needed it. This type of training is common within J.D Wetherspoon, when new people are recruited and have been taught their basic skills they would be allowed to carry on with their job but if they need help there is a more experienced member of staff that they can turn to. This is a good way to boost a team spirit and morale in the workforce.

Apprenticeships

These have been proven to be very successful within the UK. Although man of them no longer exist. It involves those that are new to the trade being paired up, almost like mentoring, with a more experiences ‘master’ of the trade. The master would then teach all that he can of the trade to his apprentice who on time would become a maser himself eventually having apprentices of his own.

The number of apprenticeships have decreased, many of which are caused by:

Machines replacing skilled labourers
The development of ICT and communication technologies has changed us into a post- industrial society, reducing the need for skills.
The reduction of training in the UK since 1945, the end of the Second World War.

The government is trying to reintroduce the popularity of apprenticeships by creating the modern apprenticeship scheme. This is endorsed by those at college, as it incorporates lessons.

As with many other business areas training can occur externally or internally, known as on-the-job training or off-the-job training. On-the-job training occurs at the place of work. Off-the-job training involves sending employees away for training. Large companies usually use specialist outside trainers where as others are another branch of the business.

For a business to show how competent they are they can become part of investors in people. To do this the organisation must meet their aims and improve performance by developing employees; they must be clear about how they can meet these aims and what they are; they must understand how investing in people improves performance. For an organisation to be part of this national standard they would be assessed by an independent assessor who would ensure the standards are continually met. Being part of this national standard allows the public to view the organisation in a more positive light, especially potential stakeholders and employees.

The skills that we all learn and use are either transferable shills or non-transferable skills. It used to be common practice for people to be taught a skill to perform their specialised job, a job that they have for life. Nowadays this has become quite rare. Most of these jobs have been outdated by the development of ICT, people are now becoming taught transferable skills. These are skills that can be transferred to any job, which makes you valuable to a larger variety of employees. The type of skills that would be transferable are those that are needed in every environment, such as:

Communication
Problem solving
Team work
Numeracy and literacy
Organisation
Personal values
Leadership
Reasoning

At J.D Wetherspoon the bulk of their employees will be kitchen and bar staff at the pubs and hotels. The majority of their skills will be transferable. Such as:

People skills, being able to communicate with customers and colleagues
Be able to handle money
Know how to operate the till
Be trustworthy
Product knowledge
Know how to make all the food on the menu
Know how the kitchen equipment works
Obey hygiene rules

When new individuals start at J.D Wetherspoon they would have an induction period, where basic training would begin, the job role would be set out and health and safety would be explained along with the aims and objectives of the business. After this time period they would be appointed a mentor, this will allow them to carry out their job with the safety of somebody to turn to.

During their time with the company PDP’s may be constructed, allowing employees to set them selves goals which can be for-filled with help and support of J.D Wetherspoon. They may decide to give employees regular assessments, this will keep track of who can do what and who needs skills improving. This is where performance management becomes involved. Performance management and training development work closely together.

Performance management

This is where a business has to manage the performance of its employees effectively to remain competitive, by developing systems and methods to do so. There are also several theories, which cover motivation and ideas in which businesses manage their employees.

Below I will explain different methods businesses can use to manage the performance of their employees. The first method used is:

Performance reviews including appraisals

With this the business has to first set up mission statements that the employees can relate to. In the case of J.D Wetherspoon it could be, wanting to be the leading business in their market or offering the best service. From this it means that all the employees are heading in the same direction for the business and all knows exactly what the business wants out of them. Also from these objectives for each level of the business and also individual objectives. Then from these objectives the business can trace how effective the business is making the objectives and also how effective each individual is making their objective. With these objectives it also provides the employees with a goal, and something to aim for. This will improve the motivation and therefore their quality and speed of their work. This is a very important part of what a business has to do to its employees. If employees are not motivated and find working hard, hard work and boring, then the employees will produce a low standard of work and will directly effect the businesses image. This is why J.D Wetherspoons has to set goals for each employee within the business. These objectives are not set by the top managers but by the individual supervisors. These supervisors would call a meeting to talk to the people about how they are getting on and contributing to the business. Each meeting objective is changed and a small comment on that person is recorded with what they could do in the future six months to improve. This can then be looked back upon to see if there are any improvements. This also motivates the employee to make them aim for something and make them think they are working for their own propose and not just the companies.

Performance appraisal

This is a process of evaluating the way in which the employees of a business work systematically and from which providing feed back so performance adjustments can be made. This works by the following equations:

Desired performance – actual performance = need for action

The main purpose for these are:

Define the specific job criteria against which performance will be measured
Measure past job performance accurately
Justify the rewards given to individuals, thereby distinguishing between high and low performance
Work out the experiences that the employees will need for their ongoing development. This should improve their productiveness and also prepare the employees for future responsibilities.

A top down appraisal usually does this from managers to employee. But in the modern business environment with empowered organisations and team working, there are all sorts of variants.

Self evaluation

This is another important part of performance management. Businesses will try and encourage employees to establish meaningful goals and then evaluate performance in meeting these goals. By doing this it should encourage the employees firstly to take far more responsibility. This means that each employee will feel they have much more importance in the business and therefore this will motivate them into meeting their goals and improve their overall performance within the business. Also the individual employee will have a better understanding of the area where they work then an external appraiser may have. This is certainly the case that the job involves a high level of creative skill and external appraiser will not be able to appreciate or understand what is involved with the specific job. This is why by self-appraisal the employee knows where they stand within the business and will also know exactly where they can improve. Finally it is cost effective and also time efficient. It cuts out people having to evaluate the employees. This will cost the business money through paying the appraiser and also the employee who will be being paid for producing no work. This could mean taking their work, which could distract the employee and also obstruct fellow employees.

Peer evaluation

This is where fellow employees working on the same job or task together will appraise each other with the team. This makes it possible to check on how much team members are contributing to the product of the teamwork and the process of the teamwork. This can be very effective because employees don’t think that they are being judged from above and that each and every person on the same level is evaluating each other. This means that there is a relationship built up between the employees, to produce a productive unit that work with each instead of working against each other. This will produce motivation within the group of employees as they all work to produce the best work. For this to work effectively there needs to be several ingredients that must be matched such as each employee must:

Respect each other
Trust each other
Non-competitive atmosphere
Say what they feel
Be honest
Participate

These are just a few, but without every employee in putting these ingredients then the peer evaluation would not work. This would only work if the employees have a good relationship with each other; otherwise there would be conflict between employees, where colleagues of the same level would offend them by telling them what to do. This means that this is a very hard method of performance management to implements and could cause many problems within the business.

Target setting

This is when employees participate with usually their superiors to set specific targets for those individuals to aim for. There are three broad approaches to staff appraisal, based on personal attributes, skills or performance.

Personal attributes

These are attributes that may affect the performance of the job; some of these could be reliability, judgement, application, initiative, and adaptability. There are several disadvantages to this approach, such as there can be many interpretations of different attributes and managers through out the business may value each attribute differently, this means the system is not consistent.

Skills

This focuses on the skills needed by certain employees and how well they apply these skills. This related to training and development, where employees should be continuously educated in new procedures and technologies so if a job did come then the employee could cope with the skills needed for that job. This method of evaluation could be done through a person doing the evaluating. They could observe the employee working and make their judgements compared to past experiences, how the employee fares to other employees or set standards, then from this the appraiser can set targets for that employee to aim for, this could also be done for group work or for individuals.

Performance

This can be quite hard to evaluate in some forms of jobs, but with J.D Wetherspoon it is usually okay. The time and quality of their work, plus the polite and friendliness of them as a person can usually evaluate this. There are expected times for jobs, from past experiences and if these times are met with the high standard of work then that employee is performing at a high enough rate.

This can also be pushed so the standard is continuously improving so employees consistently produce a performance higher than expected. This would improve the business performance as a whole and also the productiveness of the business. The performance can be related to the training.

Measuring individual and group productivity

This can be a hard area for the appraiser to work in, because they have to provide a lot of appraisal for each individual employee. This means that there maybe very little difference between different employee’s appraisals and this may cause dissatisfaction. Supervisors can see how the behaviour of an employee effects the performance of their work; this is what most businesses believe is the result of quality work; the employee’s behaviour and attitude to their work instead of their capabilities. The capability of an employee comes second to the behaviour of the employee, because these can be altered easier than a person’s behaviour and natural instincts.

As you can see from the above information, there are a lot of areas involved with performance management, and many clash with other parts of human resources, such as training and development. Most performance management looks at the capabilities of individual employees and looks at objectives and goals to set those employees to improve their performance for the business. This could then be related to the training they have. To perform well in a business the employee needs to be trained in how they can produce the best work; they need to know how to use equipment effectively and also how the business works. Without this then employee will not be able to perform effectively. Also if the employee is set goals for the following year, then to reach those goals, individuals may need extra training, this could be developing new skills to deal with certain problems or from earning new methods of producing quality work. These improvements have to be taught to the employee through either training or development. Without training and development the goals and objectives will not be met.

This means that the individuals performance needs to be related to training and development, for example, if a employee is lacking in knowledge in a certain area, then this person needs to be updated and trained up to the right standard so they can cope with the work better. This would apply to all employees if their knowledge in a certain area is lower than expected and could effect their job performance, then they could be put back on training specifically for that area. This would be a strong link between training and development and performance management, so the business can guarantee that all there employees are up to date with all types of training they need to perform effectively within the business. This knowledge could then be tested every six to twelve months so the business is sure that each employee has had fresh training. This should mean the business would be far more productive and the employees would work better together as they all will share the knowledge of the business. Also some businesses are recently treating the behaviour of employees as just as important as their capabilities.

This means that managers have to be sure they are employing staff that has the correct attitude and behaviour for the job. If they get this wrong in the recruitment and selection part of human resources, then it could lead to a lot of time and money being wasted through someone who doesn’t have what it takes to do the job effectively for the business. If they employee someone with the correct attitude then this new person will come into the business with an added interest and this will motivate existing employees.

Employee protection

With performance some employees will try to work extra to meet these targets and try to produce the best work possible, but with this there comes constraints. The working time regulation 1998 provides protection for employees with regards to the number of hours worked on average per week. This should not exceed 48 hours averaged over a period of 17 weeks. Employees can agree to be excluded from the maximum working week requirements on a voluntary basis. Also employees have a rest period of 11 hours over a 24-hour period and a weekly rest period of no less than 24 hours over a weekly seven-day period.

Maternity leave is something that has been recognised for a number of years now, and recently paternity leave has been added to it. Both parents now have the same equal right to 13 weeks paternal leave to care for each new born or adopted child they may have. This is only available to those that have given a year of service to their employers, yet it can be taken at any time before the child starts school.

Minimum wage is something that was introduced to the UK in 1998, many say it has increased costs for many businesses leading them to financial difficulties. Yet it was created to guarantee that employees wouldn’t be cut short for the work that they have done. The minimum wage for those between 18 and 21 is £3.80 and for those 22 or older it is £4.50.