KINNAIRD COLLEGE FOR WOMEN

Course Title: TRAINING AND DEVELOPMENT

PRE-MID ASSIGNMENT
Submitted by: Insha Ghafoor
Mehreen Sultan
Mahnoor Munawar
Submitted to: Ma’am Sara Aslam
Semester: 5
Section: A
Submission Date: 20th September 2021
BUSINESS STUDIES DEPARTMENT
Session: 2019-2023

QUESTION
COVID-19 has affected many businesses and economies in the recent times.
The world, which was already facing great depression with regards to
unemployment, poverty and inflation, is now facing the worst downturn in
economies due to lockdowns causing shutdown of many businesses across the
globe. The combined effect of pandemic and economic recession has indeed
changed the way businesses look at their future. In the presence of above
challenges, do some research on how these challenges have affected new
world’s training and development activities? How companies are coping with
this challenge?
Solution
Introduction
Before commenting on the Effect of pandemic and economic recession on new worlds training
and development it is important to understand what is actually meant by the term " Training and
Development". Training and Development describes the formal efforts made by an organization
by incorporating multiple educational programs that help employees in improving their
performance and enhancing their skills which helps them in executing specific tasks in a better
way. Now the question is how COVID-19 has affected new worlds training and development.
After going through different articles we understood that every organization faces challenges in
its training process prior to COVID-19 solution to these challenges were appreciable however in
during pandemic they have become a must have for every organization. Following are some
challenges faced by organizations during pandemic and how they are coping with them.

1. Remote Workforce
Due to pandemic majority of employees were compelled to work from home. All the employees
and employers were forced to setup some sort of work space at their home just to ensure that the
work flow remains intact and unaffected Due to COVID-19. People were not used to working in
such environment and they were hardly coping up with it. When it came to training and
workshops were the whole staff is gathered in one room and is guided by an instructor or an
expert in that particularly field it became almost impossible to conduct such and activity while
maintaining all the SOP'S as a result the organizations had no choice but to call off training
sessions for some time. Zoom setup worked well for meetings and all other office related stuff
but it didn't prove to be effective for training.

How Organization Coped Up With This Challenge

The organizations were facing problems in training and development activities and the solution
they come up was their library of "Off the shelf learning content". This online library has always
been a smart option considered by organizations for training long before pandemic. Through this
library the employees have access to multiple training videos on different topics the only
difference was that this time they were accessing these videos from their homes and not from
their office desks. And for those employees who have never worked from home organizations
arranged special courses for them in which they were taught how they can improve their quality
of work, enhance their communication skills and create a better work space for themselves while
being at home. All these efforts helped organization in coping with remote Workforce challenge
to some extent.

2. On Boarding
A lot of learning of employees is during onboarding period. Pre COVID this period included
formal and informal training sessions, interacting with new employees, a motivation for getting
work done by time and understanding the culture of the organization. But work from home had a
negative effect on this. Many organizations tried to have a virtual onboarding bit it didn't work
out well as the new hire were unable to get the "feel for their new job" by just sitting in front of
computer screens for prolonged hours. They only thing they felt was fatigue. All of this impacted
training and development activities in a very negative way.

How Organization Coped Up With This Problem

To cope up with this challenge the organization allowed the new employees to self-learn most of
the things which were mandatory to have knowledge about. Such as filling certain applications,
knowing about policies of the organization and all other details that are very easy to understand
and are repeatable could be easily learned by the employees by themselves through short videos
and they don't need a live presentation. This resulted in more learning and less fatigue that
employees were facing by sitting in front of computer screens for good 8 hours.

3. Staying Top of Mind

Even if employees don't lack motivation and have access to all the material required for their
training and development there are still chances that they find it difficult to complete their
training courses if that is not their top most priority during their work hours. To make training
top most priority of employees it is important to make it a part of their daily routine in a way that
It is not annoying. To do so companies have to use some communication tools which many
companies did to cope up with Thai challenge during pandemic.

How Organization Coped Up With This Challenge

Many organizations introduced a "Slackbot integration". This bot helped the workforce in
accessing all the relevant material required for training not only that it helped them in reminding
all the due dates related to the assessments and completion of a training course. Use of such
technology made at-home training much easier for employees and it helped in making it a part of
their work.
1. Making time for training
Getting employees to set aside a few minutes for training was a troublesome enough errand
before everybody was working distantly. Remote work has changed the design of many
representatives' days: The beginning time and end of a normal workday have become flexible as
individuals stay away from a drive, however should shuffle other at-home commitments, for
example, self-teaching. Having a planned gathering or class time for training probably won't
work out, and many employees may feel qualified for skip booked meetings as home life
infringes on work life. A self-coordinated learning approach can assist with unstructured
timetables. For instance, you can give representatives every minute of every day online
admittance to a learning library so they can see preparing content when it's convenient for them.
That may be very early on before the children get up or while the dinner is in the microwave.
Does that seem like too brief period to fit in training? It's not, with microlearning. Microlearning
breaks data into recordings or videos that are around seven to nine minutes in length. So
research shows that this is sufficiently short to keep people attention catched during a bustling
day, yet adequately long to let the message hit home. A portion of the more conventional tips
for getting employees to set time for training to transfer work-at-home environment. For
instance, you can in any case foster a solid learning society or culture, use training material for
engagement and perceive or reward employees who meet training objectives. At the point,
when you have a mixture of right learning society, the right materials, and right incentives the
representatives will be motivated to "discover a way" to work in training into their timetables or
schedules.
2. Accountability

Guarantee accountability is huge worry for the managers who don’t used the dealings process
with remote workers. The need to follow accountability adds to the face challenges in training
and development as well. Fortunately, numerous employees have shown to be comparably useful
while working at home. To begin with, each representative is beginning from their own unique
spot dependent on earlier learning and experience, doing an assessment is a smart idea. A
combination of existing information and testing can help your training department make (or
pick) an educational plan that suits their present level and their objectives. Second, it's wise to
enhance instructional classes with different materials that help students (and their chiefs) keep
tabs on their development and comprehension. These might incorporate downloadable
understudy materials and worksheets, assessment instruments, and tests. Third, we prescribe
utilizing a LMS to follow employees progress. For instance, ej4's learning the executives
framework, Thinkzoom, allows administrators to see which recordings employees have gotten ,
how far they've gotten, which learning tracks they are working on, and how well they have done
on tests. This not just gives the board a preview of everyone's progress, but allows them to
identify those people who are struggling and will be at someone’s service.

Conclusion
Every challenge brings about an opportunity. The organizations faced difficulties in carrying out
their training and development activities due to COVID-19 but at the same time they came
across multiple ways of maintaining the communication between work face even if they are far
away from one another. Initially the training of the employees was compromised due to
pandemic but with the right use of technology and available tools companies were able to make
right content accessible to the employees in time and that too according to today's training
challenges.