Employee training and career development are essential for businesses that wish to progress. Employee training is an opportunity for employees to expand their knowledge base to help them perform their jobs better. Employee training plays the following roles: performance improvement, enhancing consistency, eliminating weaknesses and for employee satisfaction purposes.
One of the main reason employers train their employees is to improve performance. Through training, employees become more aware of the proper procedures for conducting different operations. It also provides new information on the new changes in the industry that employees must keep up with. Most notably, training may build employee confidence and provide the much needed push to succeed.
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Training often focuses on areas that employees have weaknesses with to reduce weak links within the company. Training aims at bringing employees to a higher skill level so that they can work independently without need for much supervision. Lastly, employee training makes employees feel valued by creating a positive workplace that enables employees to grow rather than making them to seek such training opportunities elsewhere.
Jehanzeb & Bashir (2013) note that, “a perfect employee training and development program must be the mixture of knowledge, career development and goal setting” (p. 245). Therefore, employee development methods are: employee training, personal development plans, leadership training, and mentor development program. Employee training involves all employees, hence it is responsible for improving the performance of the entire organization. Personal development plans apply to individual employee as seen in job rotation and job instruction. The employer and the employee work together to set personal and professional goals such as meeting a higher sales quota (Jehanzeb & Bashir, 2013). In a personal development plan, the employer and employee make a commitment to help each other so that the employee can perform better while building new skills.
Alternatively, leadership training applies to high performing employees targeted for leadership positions. Leadership training is a form of specialized career development that will enable such employees to become team leaders and supervisors. Leadership training is necessary for organizations as it helps them to promote from within, to avoid training new staff members.
According to Merchant (2010), organizations with career development programs retain a greater number of employees in comparison to organizations without such programs. Employee development boosts organizational development in three ways: market growth, organizational performance and employee retention (Jehanzeb & Bashir, 2013). Employee development is crucial to an organization’s ability to stay solvent and competitive. Employee training equips employees with business environment knowledge and skills so that they will operate effectively to bring more customers and profits to the organization. Employee training is a strong contributing factor in organizational effectiveness as training impacts on attitudes and work-related manners such that employees will be more diligent and effective. Employee training also improves performance by addressing employee weaknesses. Lastly, employee development leads to higher employee retention. Retention is a challenging concept to most organizations, organizations are constantly losing talented employees to their competitors. Through employee training, organizations show their employees that they are valued and the employer cares about their career advancement.
Employee development and organizational development is one of the core functions of human resource management. HR professionals play a crucial role in creating an organizational culture that values employee development. HR professionals are known to regularly invite employees to share about their personal and professional issues within the organization. After identifying such issues, HR professionals tailor the content of the training to address employee issues.
Additionally, HR professionals are responsible for spearheading individual, group and organizational development by identifying individual performance and what needs to be done to improve performance. HRM prides itself in advocating for employees by fostering growth and responsibility among employees. Through constant performance reviews, HR professionals will identify employees suitable for management training, specific training within their disciplines and general training.
I am already working for an organization with a robust employee training and development program. I have great experiences with my current employee, but I am looking forward to working in a more challenging position. My current employer has given me an opportunity to learn through seminars, lectures and individualized job instruction. I seized each opportunity, and I learnt a lot of skills which benefited me at work. Alternatively, I took a personal initiative to invest in my future by furthering my education. Therefore, in the next 5 years, I hope to be in a more advanced position to the one I am in now. I hope to have learnt a great deal of personal and professional skills through office interactions, educational advancement and career development opportunities at work. Thus, I see myself in a managerial position that will enable me to make important organizational decisions in the next 5 years.
I believe my current organization will give me an opportunity to advance to a better position. Employees in managerial positions started in low-level positions, and through experience, education and training, they are now in advanced positions. The organization has taken great pride in encouraging employee training and in-house promotion and I plan to take full advantage. There are different training sessions offered, and with my educational advancements, I am positive that within the next 5 years I will be in a managerial role. I plan to work extra hard, take part in leadership training, and any other form of training that will improve my chances of career advancement.
I also believe my company’s career development opportunities will be sufficient for my needs. Despite working in a small organization, my employer has implemented all methods of career development. I have no doubt that the already available career development opportunities will not be sufficient. However, if they will not be sufficient, I will seek better opportunities elsewhere. As Jehanzeb & Bashir (2013) suggest that in order to retain employees, organizations have to think about investing in their training and development. Employees should not settle for organizations that do not fulfill their career advancement goals, as there are many options out there.
To sum up, employee training and career development has become a necessity in today’s work environment. Employees are no longer contented with a monthly paycheck, rather they want to increase their skills so that they can remain relevant in their current organization or in the job market in general. Career development has benefits to both the employee and employer, and a carefully executed career development plan will ensure that an organization remains competitive. Employers have to pay attention to the training design and delivery so that it can produce optimal results by addressing the pressing needs of employees and the organization. Eventually, a systematic training and development program will make an organization more profitable and competitive. This will enable the organization to retain its valuable employees through training, promotions, and other long-term benefits.
References
Jehanzeb, K., & Bashir, N. A. (2013). Training and development program and its benefits to employee and organization: A conceptual study. European Journal of Business and Management , 5 (2), 243-252.
Merchant Jr, R. C. (2010). The role of career development in improving organizational effectiveness and employee development. Florida Department of Law Enforcement , 1-17.
