HRM and the Training Function

The training function as a component of the personnel or HRD department within an organisation provides a service to the organisation which covers

• training needs analysis
  - researching and evaluating changes in the internal and external environment of the firm which will require the organisation to improve/change the competencies and abilities of its employees. Changes may stem from the company's strategic plans, new products, new markets, legislative demands. New staff need specific training for their jobs. The role demands and contstraints of existing jobs may change requiring employees to acquire new knowledge and skills - behaviours relevant to performance in their own job and thence to the organisation's objectives as a whole.

• TNA will identify the training policies, programmes and activities that must be designed, promoted and implemented either direct by training staff themselves or via bought-in trainers. Training and development specialists would also support line-managers who train and coach members of their own teams.

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  Assignment

  Consider the scale of this for a large national or multi-national company such as a supermarket chain, car manufacturer, airline or bank. Simply considering the range of jobs in a hospital: medical, nurisng, paramedical, administrative and manual - reveals the scale of the education and training provision which needs to be initiated and co-ordinated.

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• The training function may also provide individual advice and developmental support to staff as individuals (counsellor/mentor) and in groups (a consultancy role). This facilitator/consultant role may extend to advising employees on educational opportunites which are not specifically job related. The consultancy-role is likely to be more directly related to the organisation's objectives.

• there is training administration to be done
  (information, records, budgets). Who needs training, who is in training, who has been trained? What are the training resources and opportunties - this includes organising training internally (rooms, training manuals/materials, expenses, hotel bills, overhead projectors). Where there is an external training resource - there is work to go to appraise external training resources and support organisational staff in obtaining the external training. This may extend to booking someone on a short course or part-time degree to opening doors for a visit to a conference or participation in a learning project.

• a training function would typically evaluate the effectiveness of training and learning activity across the business.
  • Are the methods working?
  • Is the right training being done?
  • Are people actually learning?
  • Is it making a difference to the firm?
  • Is value for money being obtained?
  • Do those participating in company supported training and planned learning activity feel that they are deriving benefit?

• the passive training manager/administrator and the innovative, consultant training manager.
• the facilitator/counsellor

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BOLA is developed and maintained by Chris Jarvis