Read the following magazine erticle about staff training in companies and then answer questions 25-31 on page 35. Indicate the letter A, B, C or D against the number of each question. Give only one answer to each question. ‘The employees know their jobs. ‘They haye all successfully completed initial training courses and they've had plenty of direct, day-to-day experience. Nonetheless, companies instinctively fee! that they could ‘get more out of their staff by giving them further training in areas related to their work When it comes to investing in such staff training, however, there isa fundamental paradox. Training remains an absolutely essential luxury item. All managers agree ‘that they want it and they all know it is a good thing, but the more they need it, it seems, the Getting a return from training John Whitley examines the practicalities and pitfalls for companies who decide to invest in ongoing staff training. on your return, and normally there is more to do than when you left. You return to the same ‘company operating in the same way, with the same colleagues, and the same clients. You may be different, your toolkit of knowledge and experience may have grown, but unless you can apply your knowledge there and then, or within a short space of time, you will most likely carry on doing everything exactly the way you did it before you went on the course. ‘The moral is that ongoing training can be of value, but getting at that value Is not as easy less they are prepared to find the necessary resources for it. At the slightest excuse, the training budget gets cut Happily, however, there are companies who try it, swith the best intentions in the world. But even when. companies guarantee a budget and commit themselves to ongoing staff training, it does not always work, This article will ttempt to look at why this is so. A few years ayo, a car company hired a team of external consultants to investigate why owners of a articular model in theie range seldom came back for another one. The investigation pointed to a key factor in building customer loyalty - the quality of service at the company’s garages. In particular if repairs were carried out effectively and to budget, customers were more likely to buy fiom that dealer gall, The senior managers leapt on this with zeal, seeing a simple solution to their ailing sales figures. A rigorous training programme was designed for ‘every mechanic in every garage. But a funny thing happened. Customer satisiaction with the quality of service fell dramatically. It tusned out that garages work to tight profit margins, with a prescribed number of mechanics to service a certain number of vehicles in a given period. Take a load of them out for training and the rest have more work to do in the same amount of time: Hence rushed jobs and mistakes. Simple realy, and falily obvious ~ when you go away on a training ‘course, the world does not stop, Your job awaits you as one might think. There must be many a manager who has invested a lot of effort in identifying the kind of training required, has sent an employee on an external training course, but then has failed to conduct a thorough review of the outcome of What training afterwards. It is assumed that, on return to work, the magical effects of a course will naturally surface anid employees will somehow be better at their jobs. This can happen, especially where some technical skill hhes been learned, and the knowledge ts being. applied directly. But itis wiong to assume thet it will always happen. With training, one needs to build on the investment made to ensure the maximum value isextracted. Another flawed approach to training concerns the telephone call centre run by a mail-order company. Here, the problem was correctly identified as a lack ‘of adequate product knowledge by the staff who dealt directly with customers. A major training. programme had failed to have the desired result, and. itdid not take a genius to identify why. Staff turnover was running at 120%. No sooner were staff trained than they left, to be replaced by novices, Until the underlying problem had been solved, expenditure on further training was doomed to failure. Clearly, where training is concerned, managers need to apply the same levels of rigour in. planning, monitoring and examining the outcome that they employ in other business contexts. TEST 2, PAPER 1