ENHANCING THE CREDIBILITY OF THE TRAINING FUNCTION:

INVOLVING LINE MANAGERS IN SALES TRAINING

Training is the acquisition of knowledge, skills, and competencies as a result of
the teaching of vocational or practical skills and knowledge that relate to specific
useful competencies. Training has specific goals of improving one's capability,
capacity, productivity and performance. In every organization there is need for
some training for their employees. How training is perceived really depends on
the organization. There are organizations that think it is really a waste of time
and money. They think employees learn best while doing their job. There are
other organizations that invest a lot of time and money to train their employees.
The quantity and quality of communication between management and employees
at the enterprise level is a significant factor in establishing and maintaining
harmonious and productive industrial relations. Information that can be shared
may include present day-to-day quality issues that affect the company.
Communication channels should ideally provide a channel for management to
obtain feedback regarding programs or policies and their implementation.
Training, on the other hand, is a crucial component of workplace communication
and empowerment. In this assignment we are going to analyze a case of a midsized direct selling organization named Direc2U.

Direc2U:

Direc2u is a family-run, online supplier of ride-on and outdoor toys and products
based in the East Midlands. Their warehouse is located in Long Eaton, Nottingham
(NG10). They offer: children's scooters, go-karts, electric scooters, petrol
scooters, pocket bikes, quads/atvs, ride-on cars, spare parts etc.
They bring their products from the manufacturers with no wholesalers or
middlemen and minimal overheads. So they can offer their customers incredibly
low prices. They hold their own stock of all items, so all their orders are
processed rapidly upon receipt, and delivery can be made direct to the customer
without delay.

Case abstract:
Rakesh Sharma, the training manager of Direct2U, was denied funds to conduct
any training for line managers at Direct2U by Sanjay Shah, the CEO of Direct2U as
the firm was not in a profitable situation that he could not allocate more money
for the training intervention for line managers as he felt that despite a
contemporary training programme, the sales force was unable to internalise the
training due to lack of support from the line managers in the field.
The CEO of Direc2U was not supportive of the initiative as he saw no value in this
programme. Moreover, as the company was going through a tough phase he also
wanted to cut the training budget further. Rakesh was looking for some
alternatives and in-hand statistics to convince Shah. As the sales team was not
performing well rakesh wanted training for Line managers who would coach the
sales team and improve the firms productivity. As the firms profit was relatively
down Shah was not ready to invest on training this left Rakesh in a state to gather
more points to convince Shah. Sharma find ways to involve the line managers in
sales training and also find ways to link training to the bottom line results.

Definition of line manager:

A line manager is defined as a manager who is authorized to direct the work of
subordinates and is responsible for accomplishing organizational goals. He /she
is directly accountable for obtaining results through people in his/her
organization, in comparison to other employees, who do not have the same level
of accountability and responsibility to senior management for the work of others.

Importance:
Line managers can play an important role in encouraging employee learning and
development. The concept of line managers assuming developmental roles such
as learning facilitators or coaches has received considerable attention in recent
years. Line managers can drive HRD policies and practices, which are designed to
achieve the organizations strategic objectives through identifying, developing
and supporting the appropriate knowledge, skills, commitment, and performance
in employees. HRD activities are increasingly devolved to operational managers
and so the actual training and development activities should be carried out by
line management and employees, while HRD specialists can monitor the quality

and provide assistance and advice. A number of benefits exist in using line
managers as developers of people:

A line managers role is critical in creating and stimulating the appropriate

work environment supportive for learning. It requires the promotion of
positive attitudes towards continuous learning, since learning is not
something that happens only during formal classroom training activities,
but it is an integral facet of everyday working life. A line manager is
expected to encourage the individual or team to take responsibility for how
they will manage their own learning processes. It should happen through
the provision of various opportunities for learning, for instance organizing
meetings between employees with similar experience, creating mentor and
job rotation systems, coaching, and others.

Demanding jobs, with relative freedom on how to do the job, stimulate

continuous learning. The best way to learn, by far, is being shown how to
do things and then practicing them. It will often be the immediate line
manager who will show employees, especially relatively new ones, how to
do things, and line managers play the strongest part in structuring
peoples actual experience of doing a job. Line managers, structure and
deliver learning opportunities. Line managers provide coaching and
guidance, and they are the ones that lead teams to stimulate the learning of
team members. Line managers also have a key, and perhaps more
traditional, role to play in conducting performance appraisals and agreeing
development plans.

Usually line managers lack knowledge and competence in human resource

management. Therefore, greater line managers involvement in HRD
activities may lead to a development and transformation of the managers
themselves and they would become more competent in managing people.
This can also positively contribute to broader organizational change.

Line managers can help to improve the quality of HRD interventions by

closing the gap between organizational performance and individual
performance. Line managers, rather than HRD specialists, are very familiar
with the business context and both organizational and individual learning
needs; therefore they should be able to address the most pressing learning
needs. They are closer to the daily operations and customers. This gives
line managers unique knowledge concerning organizational realities and
needs, which can inform their understanding of the important issues and

possible knowledge gaps. Without a systematic training needs analysis

linked to the performance appraisal process it is unlikely that HRD will
make a meaningful strategic contribution to enhancing organizational
effectiveness. Identifying training needs arising from strategic goals, new
technology and changes in the work process and linking it with
performance appraisal process then becomes critical at the operational
level for which a line manager is responsible.

Challenges:
The concept of line managers assuming developmental roles is the exception
rather than real practice, since delegating HRD responsibility to line managers
carries various problems and risks, which need to be carefully explored and
seriously considered. Despite the growing number of publications on the
changing role of line manager to support HRD, there is a lack of empirical data on
the actual implementation of the idea.

Workloads of line managers may marginalize their efforts in developing

employees and they may not be able to pay sufficient attention to employee
development.

Performance criteria and reward systems are more likely to consider

business results, than a longer term people development role.

The responsibility for HRD is not very often included among line managers
performance objectives. Also, it might be difficult for line managers to play
two opposing roles of assessor and coach.

Line managers are not specialists in HRD and may lack confidence,
knowledge and organizational support to assume the responsibility for
HRD.

Senior managers must be highly supportive in HRD role of line managers

and an incentive system should be developed to motivate them.

Acting as a HRD facilitator demands a coaching management style, as

opposed to a directive management style.

Overcoming the Challenges:

Line managers in most of the organizations have not assumed the responsibility
for HRD because it is difficult to fulfil this role, either because of their work load
or lack of skills and management tradition. But there are five roles which the line
managers can undertake to overcome the challenges:

(1) Line managers should discuss periodically the performance and the
development and learning needs of their subordinates;
(2) Line managers should partner with HRD training specialists on strategic
HRD/HRM issues;
(3) Line managers should show interest and support learning of their
subordinates on a daily bases;
(4) Line managers should train and coach their subordinates;
(5) Line managers should actively participate in HRD strategy development
process.

Costs of Training:
It is advisable to review company resources before embarking on any training
activity. If your company does not currently have a training budget, developing
one will assist you in deciding whether proposed training plans can be supported.
It is important to include all training costs in a training budget.

Design and development costs

The first category of cost to be considered is the design and development of
the training program, whether this comprises classroom events, self-study
materials, simple coaching sessions or some combination. You will need to
consider:
o Internal days of design and development
o Costs of external designers and developers
o Other direct design and development costs (purchase of copyrights,
travel, expenses, etc.)
o Outright purchase of off-the-shelf materials

Promotional costs
Most organizations devote effort to promoting their training program. This
second category takes promotional costs into account:
o Internal days of promotional activity
o Costs of external agencies
o Other direct costs of promotion (posters, brochures, etc.)

Administration costs
An allowance must be made for the time taken by the training department
in administrating the training program. This will typically be a factor of the
number of students:
o Hours of administration required per student
o Direct administration costs per student (joining materials,
registration fees, etc.)

 Faculty Costs:
The next category of costs relates to the delivery of the training, whether
this is mediated by faculty (tutors, instructors, coaches, etc.) or is selfadministered (workbooks, CBT, online training, etc.). Lets start with the
information needed to calculate faculty costs:
o The number of students who will be going through the program
o Hours of group training (whether classroom-based or delivered in
real time, online)
o Hours of one-to-one training (typically face-to-face, but could
conceivably be conducted by telephone, video conferencing link or
in real-time, online)
o Hours of self-study training
o additional faculty hours (preparation time, the time needed to
review or mark submitted work or the time needed to correspond
by email or bulletin boards with online students)
o Faculty expenses (travel, accommodation, subsistence, etc.).

Materials
Then there's the cost of materials:
o Cost per student of training materials (books, manuals, etc.)
o License cost per student for use off-the-shelf materials

Facilities
The organization will also need to allow its cost of training facilities,
whether these are internal or external. It has to make sure to include the
rental or notional internal cost of the following:
o Training rooms
o Open learning / self-study rooms
o Equipment used.

Student costs
Probably the most significant delivery cost relates to the students
themselves. It is only necessary to charge a students cost against the
program if training is undertaken in time that would otherwise be
productive and paid for, so you only need to estimate the amount of travel
and training that is undertaken in productive work time, i.e. not in slack
time, breaks or outside work hours.
When an employee goes through a training program in work time, the
organization does not only have to pay that persons payroll costs, they are
also losing the opportunity for that person to add value to the organization.
When a salesperson is on a course, they are not bringing in new business.
Similarly, a production line worker is not creating products, a researcher is

not developing new ideas and an accountant is not finding ways to save
money.
If an employee can be easily replaced while they are undergoing training,
then there is no lost opportunity the cost is simply the employees payroll
costs. In many cases, however, it is simply not practical to obtain a suitable
replacement, so the output that the employee would have generated in the
time that they are receiving training will be lost. In this case, the true cost
of the employee being trained is the lost opportunity the 'opportunity
cost'. The calculation of opportunity costs are greater than an employee's
payroll costs and need to be considered in any serious evaluation of costs.
Finally, the organization should not forget to include any direct student
expenses - travel, accommodation and subsistence.

Evaluation
The organization also needs to make an allowance for the time spent
evaluating the training, whether this is an ROI analysis or some other
method.

Training in tough times:

Most company executives decide to spend money on training because it's popular,
especially when economic times are good. There is a view that it's "good," and it's
also something that responsible leaders are "supposed to do" to prepare for the
future. Unfortunately, training becomes the first activity to be cut when times get
tough.
Actually, training, education and coaching should be the absolute last
consideration when investigating cost reductions during difficult economic times.
However, continued spending of money on training isn't the only answer.
Training alone will not produce the kind of results that training combined with
coaching and education can produce. Training can increase specific skill sets, but
coaching/mentoring and education are necessary for complete employee
development which incorporates leadership into the equation.
To maximize the effectiveness of any training, coaching/mentoring the employee
must become part of the process. This is especially important when the skill set
required is more difficult. Coaching becomes more important as you provide
feedback while the employee demonstrates his ability to perform. It's imperative
that you feel confident that the employee understands completely and can
demonstrate that understanding through performance.

Barriers to ROI Evaluation:

Resistance on Part of HRD Professionals [Phillips, 2011]

Inability to Measure ROI

They are not aware of the information to be collected.
They find it difficult to deal with a number of variables affecting the change.
They are not aware of the business problems their training and development
programmes are supposed to address which leads trainers to provide wrong
ROI metrics [Peak & Berge, 2006]
Absence of or unstructured training needs analysis makes it difficult for
them to identify the parameters relevant to ROI measurement.
Even those inclined to measure ROI may be loaded with other activities
leaving no time with them to do ROI measurement.

Unwillingness to Measure ROI

There is lack of support and motivation from the top management.
They tend to avoid introducing and dealing with over complications in the
evaluation process.
Attitudinal Issues: They generally have the attitude that it is sufficient
enough to restrict to Level 2 or Level 3 evaluation of the programme if at all
required by the management to evaluate. In relation to ROI analysis, they
believe that:
There is no need to justify my existence
This is none of my jobs
They fear lest the training and development programme reflects low or
negative ROI and rather create criticism for their work than justifying their
efforts.
Lack of ROI policy, procedures, ROI model and lack of cooperative
colleagues and administrative staff are some other factors which restrict the
use of ROI methodology [Davis].

Resistance on Part of Top Management

Resources constraint the ROI evaluation activity. The process of ROI is

considered to be involving high expenditure for it to be implemented [Phillips,
2011].

It is a time consuming process. An accurate and credible evaluation up to and

including level 5 requires organisations to commit to allocate trained staff to
work in this direction [Skillnets Ltd., 2005].

Issues/Challenges in Conducting ROI Evaluation of Training:

Assessment of Benefits

Compared to determining the cost of conducting a training and

development programme, it is hard to assess the benefits arising out of it.
This is primarily attributable to the difficulty involved in converting the
outcome to monetary terms. Conversion of programmes outcomes to
monetary terms requires identification of a unit of measurement and its
conversion to a monetary value [Lynch et al., 2006; Subramanian et al.,
2012].

Sometimes the programme conducted contributes indirectly to the

organisation, for instance where supervisors are trained to take the best
out of their subordinates, the real impact of their application of knowledge
gained through programme is difficult to be measured being indirect in
nature [Subramanian et al., 2012].

Benefits also accrue overtime and optimal time to evaluate is ambiguous

[Lynch et al., 2006].

Isolating Effect of Training and Development Programmes

Many environmental factors such as market conditions, system changes,
incentives offered to employees may influence the post training performance. ROI
calculation requires determining the method for isolating the effect of training
and development programmes so that it may be ensured that the ROI figure
represents the benefit arising out of the training and development intervention

alone and not any other factor which may have influence on the outcome obtained
[Buelow, 2008; Subramanian et al., 2012].
Determining Cost

Subramanian et al., (2012) states that defining different cost categories and
ascertaining how certain costs should be prorated are also challenging
decisions to be made by an organisation while measuring ROI.

Costs of the programme should be fully loaded for ROI analysis [Phillips &
Phillips, 2011].

Differing Treatment
Value of ROI differs for managers at different levels and in different departments.
It is not valued alike at all levels of the organisation [Peak & Berge, 2006]. Thus
there is a need for an agreement to be reached at by various stakeholders while
analyzing the results [Matalonga & Feliu, 2012].
Intangible Benefits
The expected intangible benefits are not captured in the ROI figure which is
considered to be a pure financial figure.
Risk Element
There is a risk of liberal estimation when participants or their superiors are
asked to provide an estimate to reflect the value of the training and development
programme [Buelow, 2008].
When times are flush, most people in a company believe that training and internal
communications are good things. When times are bad, managers of various
departments, who are all struggling to make do with diminished resources, can
easily view much of training and employee communications as luxuries.
Now, it is certainly true that training often gets cut, in hard times, simply because
it is easy to cut, because power lies elsewhere. Many companies do themselves
great injury by giving their employees less support in best practices just when it
is needed most . . . rather like someone who, in response to rising fuel prices,
decides not to replace a flat tire to save money and boost efficiency.

And it is equally true that many other functions in employees' daily work life
would be just as hard to justify, with close scrutiny.
But with all that said, training functions must bear some responsibility for
becoming easy targets. Just delivering the message to employees is not enough.
We must ensure that members of the organization, at multiple levels, recognize a
real contribution. Without that recognition, tight budgets can quickly make
training and employee communications, in part or in whole, irrelevant frills.
This is, of course, a big topic. But here are a few places to get started

Mindset: think about the benefit to the company in everything you do.
If you don't think of your work that way, you can be sure that other units
competing for the same dollars won't think of your work that way.

Creative Measurement: I'm not suggesting you always need an accountingtype hard figure to prove your value. Vocal support (the "silent majority"
does little good) from managers whose employees improve their
performance, simple testimonials and anecdotes, can be powerfully
persuasive. Ask the right questions of the right people at the right time.

"Preventative" Training and Communications require extra effort, things

like safety training, compliance with laws and regulations, and quality
assurance. Develop a model for the costs related to, say, an employee
injured on the job, so you can demonstrate the benefit best practices,
achieved through your training, provide. Otherwise, a great safety record is
boring, and the work that produced it easily undervalued.

Look for New Opportunities to Deliver Benefits: just because budgets are
pulling back doesn't mean you can't keep looking for new ways to
contribute. Perhaps just the right communications will actually save the
company money, or boost revenues, at a crucial time.

Long Term Benefits of Training:

Benefits in Individual career:

There is documented evidence that training activities have a positive impact on the
performance of individuals.
It confirms their job. Training is a chance for provisional employees to get the job
permanently.
Training grooms the poor performers, so that they can cope with the challenging environment.
Training teaches new methods of work process and enables employees to work in different
positions in the workplace.
Training teaches new methods of work process and enables employees to work in different
positions.
A proper training helps an employee to understand aim, mission & vision of the organization.
Training helps to get promotions in the upper positions.
Training communicates the innovative & changing environment in banking industry with the
employees.
Training also helps to get increments.
In case of job switching, training plays a beneficiary role in the career profile of that
employee.
Training increases the performance capacity of employee.

Organizational Benefit:

Training diminishes absenteeism of an employee.

By training, an employee works efficiently and that helps the organization.

A trained employee is an asset for the bank.

Training develops loyalty inside an employee.

Training develops job satisfaction inside an employee & increases performance.

Training teaches organizational cultural behavior OCM.

A trained employee, with his efficiency can generate customer satisfaction towards the Bank.

Customer satisfaction is a valuable asset for the bank which is ensured by an employee.

Customer satisfaction creates word of mouth and helps promoting the organization.

Achievement of The training Manager in partnering with the

Line Managers (Case):

Rakesh Sharma, the Training manager of our case, understood the importance of
training for the employees. He also believed that if the Line managers got
involved in the training programs then it will not only be beneficial for the
employees and the line managers, but also for the organization itself. And he
identified that, this lack of involvement by the line managers in the training
programs is one of the main reasons for the hardship of the organization.
After Rakesh came to this conclusion, he went to the CEO of Direct2U, with an
intention to explain him the importance of the involvement of the line managers
in the training programs. But after listening to Rakesh, the CEO rejected Rakeshs
idea by saying that the company is thinking to reduce the budget of training,
because the company is not being able to earn targeted profit. Then Rakesh tried
to explain him that the support of the Line managers is crucial for getting optimal
result of training.
Instead of understanding the situation, the CEO suggested that Rakesh should try
to convince the Line managers to understand Rakeshs point of view. And to
explain them that this training program will have a positive impact on their
performance. At this point Rakesh suggested that instead of him going to the Line
Managers, the Line Managers should come to him with their problems. But the
CEO said that the Line Managers would like to see some results first before
approaching him. He also added that he himself will only support this training
program if Rakesh can show him the Return on Investment from the training.
After that Rakesh got very frustrated and decided to convince the Line managers
to get involved in the training programs. But he knew that it was not an easy task.
Previously he heard a lot of negative comments from the line managers regarding
the requirement of training. Some of the Line managers thought that training was
not helpful to them and some complained that training was a time. Some believed
that working directly in the field will help them gain more experience and so it is
better than training. And some believed that if a person does not have the skill of
being a salesperson, by born, then he could not be trained to be one.
But Rakesh was determined to bring forward the importance of training and so he
started by collecting pre-training and post-training sales data of the Sales
Representatives. Then he analyzed the pre-training sales figures with the sales
figures of three and six months after the training. This brought some new facts
into light. He found out that:

Those teams who received training along with their first line managers,
performed better than those teams whose line managers did not attend the
training program.

Sales representatives with an open-minded and enthusiastic Line manager

performed better than those SRs whose Line Manager was skeptical.

The teams with Line managers who were champions in training did
exceptionally good. Those Line managers regularly consulted him
regarding various matters and also provided him with feedback and
suggestions to improve the training program.

Though the information which Rakesh found out was very significant, but he
knew that it was not enough to persuade the CEO. So did not take any chances and
straight away went to the National Sales Manager, Sanjeev Rao, with these
findings.
Rao got quite interested in helping Sharma after analyzing all those information.
He suggested Sharma to make sure that the Line Managers understand that their
objective was same as Sharmas objective. He also suggested Sharma to disclose
his findings to the Line Managers as well. Sharma decided to take Raos suggestion
into consideration and asked Rao to convince his team for this program. Rao
assured Sharma that he would convince his team.
After six months Sharma got success in his expedition.

Sharma opened communication lines with the RMs and AMs, and got them
involved in designing the Training programs.

The Line Managers helped the trainees in understanding their strength and
weaknesses, based on which they were trained by the Training Manager.

At that time more Line managers started to approach Sharma with their
problems and suggestions.

The Line Managers understood that that their objective and the objective of
the training manager was the same and so they supported Sharma, and as a
result their sales figures improved.