CHAPTER FOUR

TRAINING AND DEVELOPMENT

Definition of Training
Training is an organized activity for increasing the knowledge and skills of people for a finite
purpose. It involves systematic Procedures for transferring technical know-how to the employees
so as to increase their knowledge and skills for doing specific jobs with proficiency. In other
words, the trainees acquire technical knowledge, skills and problem solving ability by
undergoing the training programme.
According to Edwin B. Flippo, Training is the act of increasing the knowledge and skills of an
employee for doing a particular job. Training involves the development of skills that are usually
necessary to perform a specific job. Its purpose is to achieve a change in the behavior of
those trained and to enable them to do their jobs better. Training makes newly appointed
workers fully productive in the minimum of time. Training is equally necessary for the old
employees whenever new machines and equipment are introduced and/or there is a
change in the techniques of doing the things. In fact, training is a continuous process. It
does not stop anywhere. The managers are continuously engaged in training their subordinates.
They must ensure that any training programme should attempt to bring about positive Changes in
the: Knowledge, skills, and attitudes of the workers.
The purpose of training is to bring about improvement in the performance of work. It includes
the learning of such techniques as are required for the better performance of definite tasks.
Need and Importance of Training
Need for Training
It may be observed that the need for training arises from more than one reason, ie.
i. due to an increased use of technology in production;
ii. due to labor turnover arising from normal separations due to death or physical
incapacity, from accidents, disease, superannuation, voluntary retirement,
promotion within the organization and change of occupation or job.
iii. Need for additional hands to cope with an increased production of goods and
services;

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 iv. as employment of inexperienced, new or badly labor requires detailed
instruction for an effective performance of a job;
v. as old employees need refresher training to enable them to keep abreast of the
changing methods, techniques, and use of sophisticated tools and equipment;
vi. Need for enabling employees to do the work in a more effective way, to reduce
learning time, reduce supervision time reduce waste and spoilage of raw material and
produce quality goods, and develop their potential.
vii. Need for reducing grievances and minimizing accident rates;
viii. Need for maintaining the validity of an organization a whole and raising the moral
of its employees.
Importance of Training
1. Increasing Productivity: Instruction can help employees increase their level
of performance on their present job assignment. Increased human performance
often directly leads to increased operational productivity and increased company
profit. Again, increased performance and productivity, because of training, are
most evident on the part of new employees who are not yet fully aware of the
most efficient and effective ways of performing their jobs.
2. Improving Quality: Better informed workers are less likely to make
operational mistakes. Quality increases may be in relationship to a company
product or service, or in reference to the intangible organizational employment
atmosphere.
3. Helping a Company Fulfill its Future Personnel Needs: Organizations that
have a good internal educational programme will have to make less drastic
manpower changes and adjustments in the event of sudden personnel alternations.
When the need arises, organizational vacancies can more easily be staffed from
internal sources if a company initiates and maintains and adequate instructional
programme for both its non-supervisory and managerial employees.
4. Improving Organizational Climate: Training enhances the interaction and
understanding between the employers and the employees. It helps build a good
labor–management relationship and ensures that the individual’s goals align well
with the organizational goal. Thus, it aids in creating a positive perception and

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 feeling about the organization. The collective feeling of the employees about their
organization is called the organizational climate.
5. Improving Health and Safety: Training helps in improving the health and
safety of the employees. Safety training teaches the employees about the safety
measures to be followed and also the best and secure way of performing a job. It
minimizes the problems of industrial accidents and sickness. Thus, it assists in the
development of a healthy working environment.
6. Obsolescence Prevention: Training and development programmes foster the
initiative and creativity of employees and help to prevent manpower obsolescence,
which may be due to age, temperament or motivation, or the inability of a person
to adapt himself to technological changes.
7. Personal Growth: Training is an investment in people. It is emerging as an
important technique to retain people. The process of skills acquisition helps not
only the organization in achieving its goal but also the employees in ensuring
their personal growth. Obviously, employees prefer those organizations that
expose them to modern technologies and help them upgrade their skills and
knowledge
.Methods of Training

A broad range of training methods is available to an organization to deliver training to its

employees. Based on the training goals and need assessments, an appropriate method may be
chosen. There are two options available to an organization while deciding on a training
programme. It can either design its own programme or get an externally available package and
make modifications in it to suit the purpose and requirements of its training programmes.
Training methods are broadly divided into two categories namely:
 On the Job Training Methods and
 Off the Job Training Methods
1. On-the-Job Training Methods

This type of training is imparted on the job and at the work place where the employee
is expected to perform his duties. It enables the worker to get training under the same working
conditions and environment and with the same materials, machines and equipments that

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he will be using ultimately after completing the training. This follows the most effective
methods of training the operative personnel and generally used in most of the individual
undertaking.

i. On Specific Job: On the job training methods is used to provide training

for a specific job such a electrician motor mechanic pluming etc.
ii. Job Rotation: The major objective of job rotation training is the broadening of
the background of trainee in the organization. If trainee is rotated periodically
from one job to another job, he acquires a general background.
The main advantages are : it provides a general background to the trainee,
training take place in actual situation, competition can be stimulated among
the rotating trainees, and it stimulates a more co-operative attitude by exposing a
man to other fellow problem and view-points.
iii. Special Projects: This is a very flexible training device. The trainee may be
asked to perform special assignment, thereby he learns the work procedure.
Sometime a task-force is created consisting of a number of trainees
representing different functions in the organization.
iv. Apprenticeship: Under this method, the trainee is placed under a qualified
supervisor or instructor for a long period of time depending upon the job
and skill required. Wages aid to the trainee are much less than those paid
to qualified workers. This type of training is suitable in profession, trades, crafts
and technical areas like fitter, turner, electrician, welders, carpenters etc.
v. Vestibule Training: Under this method, actual work conditions are created
in a class room or a workshop. The machines, materials and tools under this
method are same as those used in actual performance in the factory. This method
gives more importance to learning process rather than production.
vi. Multiple Management: Multiple management emphasizes the use of
committees to increase the flow of ideas from less experience managers
and to train them for positions of greater responsibility. The McCormick &
Company of Baltimore, U .S.A. developed the programme. The company claims
that the plan has increased employee efficiency, reduced labor turnover and
absenteeism, and enabled the company to pay higher wages than those prevailing

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 in the area and industry. In this method; a junior board is authorized to
discuss any problem that the senior board may discuss, and its members are
encouraged to put their mind to work on the business a whole, rather than too
concentrate to their specialized areas.
2. Off-the-job Training Methods

This type of training is given to the trainees away from the work floor and is not the
everyday activity of the organization. Following are the off the job training techniques:

i. Special Courses and Lectures: Lecturing is the most traditional form of

formal training method. Special courses and lectures can be established by
business organizations in numerous ways as a part of their development
programmes.
a. First, there are courses, which the organizations themselves establish to be
taught by members of the organizations. Some organizations have regular
instructors assigned to their training and development.
b. A second approach to special courses and lectures is for organizations to
work with universities or institutes in establishing a course or series of
course to be taught by instructors of these institutes.
c. A third approach is for the organizations to send personnel to programmes
established by the universities, institutes and other bodies. Such courses are
organized for a short period ranging from 2-3 days to a few weeks.
ii. Conferences: This is also an old method, but still a favorite training method. In
order to escape the limitations of straight lecturing, many organizations have
adopted and guided discussion type of conferences in their training programmes.
In this method, the participants pools, their ideas and experience in attempting to
arrive at improved methods of dealing with the problems, which are common
subject of discussion. Conferences may include buzz sessions that divide
conferences into small groups of four or five intensive discussion. These
small groups then report back to the whole conference with their conclusions
or questions. Conference method allows the trainees to look at the problem
from a prouder angle.

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iii. Case Studies: This technique, which has been developed, popularized by the
Harvard Business School, U.S.A is one of the most common form of
training. A case is a written account of a trained reporter of analyst seeking
to describe an actual situation. Some causes are merely illustrative; others are
detailed and comprehensive demanding extensive and intensive analytical
ability.
iv. Brainstorming: This is the method of stimulating trainees to creative
thinking .This approach developed by Alex Osborn seeks to reduce inhibiting
forces by providing for a maximum of group participation and a minimum of
criticism. A problem is posed and ideas are invited. Quantity rather quality is the
primary objective. Ideas are encouraged and criticism of any idea is discouraged.
Chain reactions from idea to idea often develop. Later these ideas are critically
examined. .
v. Laboratory Training: Laboratory training adds to conventional training by
providing situations in which the trains themselves experience through their
own interaction some of the conditions they are talking about. In this way,
they more or less experiment on themselves. Laboratory training is more
concerned about changing individual behavior and attitude. There are two methods
of laboratory training: simulation and sensitivity training.
a. Simulation: An increasing popular technique of management development is
simulation of performance. In this method, instead of taking participants into
the field, the field can be simulated in the training session itself. Simulation is
the presentation of real situation of organization in the training session. It
covers situations of varying complexities and roles for the participants. It
creates a whole field organization, relates participants, through key roles in
it, and has them deal with specific situations of a kind they encounter in
real life.
b. Sensitivity Training: Sensitivity training is the most controversial laboratory
training method. Many of its advocates have an almost religious zeal in their
enhancement with the training group experience. Some of its critics match this

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 favor in their attacks on the technique. As a result of criticism and experience,
a somewhat revised approach, often described as” team development training”.

Management Development

Definition and Importance

Management development has become the new mantra of the transforming economies of
different countries. Having rapidly created the basic institutional infrastructure of a market
economy and weathered a post-liberalization recession, the economies now faces new challenges
learning to cope with the requirements of production and managerial efficiency in a modern
economy. Thus, full economic recovery depends not only upon the continued evolution of those
businesses which survived the transition from a command to an open economy, but upon the
establishment of new businesses which operate under the principles of modern management
techniques.

Definition

Management development is concerned with improving managers’ performance in their present

roles and preparing them for greater responsibilities in the future. It has been described by
Mumford and Gold (2004) as ‘an attempt to improve managerial effectiveness through a
learning process’. Management development contributes to business success by helping the
organization to grow the managers it requires to meet its present and future needs. It improves
managers’ performance, gives them development opportunities, and provides for management
succession. Development processes may be anticipatory (so that managers can contribute to
long-term objectives), reactive (intended to resolve or pre-empt performance difficulties) or
motivational (geared to individual career aspirations).

Importance

Executive development is comparatively new concept. Before the World War II, the common
belief was that the managers are born, not made. Now it has been replaced by the view that
managers can be made by giving them proper opportunities for development. The assumptions

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that a man could acquire leadership, skills and management abilities by serving long-term have
gone wrong.

The importance and need of the executive development program can be viewed as below:

1. Managerial Obsolescence: Advancements in the science, human psychology, anthropology

etc. have thrown better light into the pattern of human behavior and motivation and have
developed better mathematical and/or tools for the benefits of managers. Those managers
who have abreast with these advancements are able to update their knowledge and
managerial skill. Such managers are in a position to apply better methods of taking decisions
whose chances of success are more. If managerial knowledge is not updated, there is a likely
for managers to become obsolescence in their profession.
2. Technological Obsolescence: Contemporary period has shown precedents progress in
technology. Technology has become a third and the most powerful dimension in industry, the
other two being capital and labor. Technological breakthrough have changed the design of
products, the existing production methods, the prevailing practices of storage and
transportation, age-old methods of testing, servicing and maintains etc.
3. Conservation of Resources: The most important task is the optimum utilization of the re-
sources. Executive should be exposed new techniques to find better methods of utilization of
resources. He/she should know techniques to find better methods of utilization, preservation
and conservation of the resources.
4. Competitive Advantages: Globalization and Liberalization has made the competition more
severe. Managers must learn to take action for quality improvement, cost reductions
techniques, better logistic, better after sales and services.
5. Quality of Life: Improvement in quality of the life of the people is the national objectives of
all nations.

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Methods of Management Development

It has often been said that managers learn to manage by managing – in other words, ‘experience
is the best teacher’. This is largely true, but some people learn much better than others. After all,
a manager with 10 years’ experience may have had no more than one year’s experience . Some
managers are better at developing people than others, and one of the aims of management
development is to get all managers to recognize that developing their staff is an important part of
their job.

However, to argue that managers learn best ‘on the job’ should not lead to the conclusion that
managers should be left entirely to their own devices or that management development should be
a haphazard process. The organization should try to evolve a philosophy of management
development that ensures that deliberate interventions are made to improve managerial learning.
Revans (1989) wanted to take management development back into the reality of management
and out of the classroom, but even he believed that deliberate attempts to foster the learning
process through ‘action learning’ are necessary.

1. Formal approaches to management development

Management development should be based on the identification of development needs through

performance management or a development centre making use of the following formal
approaches.

Formal approaches to management development

 Coaching and mentoring.

 The use of performance management processes to provide feedback and satisfy
development needs.
 Planned experience, which includes job rotation, job enlargement, taking part in project
teams or task groups, ‘action learning ‘and outside the organization.
 Formal training by means of internal or external courses.
 Structured self-development following a self-directed learning programme set out in a
personal development plan and agreed as a learning contract with the manager or a
management development adviser.

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  Competency frameworks can be used as a means of identifying and expressing
development needs and pointing the way to self-managed learning programmes or the
provision of learning opportunities by the organization.

2. Informal approaches to management development

Informal approaches to management development make use of the learning experiences that
managers come across during the course of their everyday work. Managers are learning every
time they are confronted with an unusual problem, an unfamiliar task or a move to a different job.
They then have to evolve new ways of dealing with the situation. They will learn if they analyses
what they did to determine how and why it contributed to its success or failure. This
retrospective or reflective learning will be effective if managers can apply the lessons success-
fully in the future. Experiential and reflective learning is potentially the most powerful form of
learning. It comes naturally to some managers. They seem to absorb, unconsciously and by some
process of osmosis, the lessons from their experience, although in fact they have probably
developed a capacity for almost instantaneous analysis that they store in their mental databank
and which they can retrieve whenever necessary. Ordinary mortals, however, either find it
difficult to do this sort of analysis or do not recognize the need. This is where informal or at least
semi-formal approaches can be used to encourage and help managers to learn more effectively.

Informal approaches to management development

 Getting managers to understand their own learning styles so that they can make the best
use of their experience and increase the effectiveness of their learning activities – the
manager’s self-development guide by Pedler et al (1994) provides an excellent basis for
this important activity.
 Emphasizing self-assessment and the identification of development needs by getting
managers to assess their own performance against agreed objectives and analyses the
factors that contributed to effective or less effective performance –this can be provided
through performance management.
 Getting managers to produce their own personal development plans, self directed learning
programmes.

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  Encouraging managers to discuss their own problems and opportunities with their
manager, colleagues or mentors to establish for themselves what they need to learn or be
able to do.
3. Development centers

Development centers consist of a concentrated (usually one or two days) programme of exercises,
tests and interviews designed to identify managers’ development needs and to provide
counseling on their careers. They offer participants the opportunity to examine and under-stand
the competencies they require now and in the future. Because, ‘behavior predicts behavior’
centers offer opportunities for competencies to be observed in practice.
Simulations of various kinds are therefore important features – these are a combination of case
studies and role playing designed to obtain the maximum amount of realism. Participants are put
into the position of practicing behavior in conditions very similar to those they will meet in the
course of their everyday work. An important part of the centre’s activities will be feedback
reviews, counseling and coaching sessions conducted by the directing staff.
Development centers use similar techniques to assessment centers, but in the latter the
organization ‘owns’ the results for selection or promotion purposes, while in the former the
results are owned by the individual as the basis for self-managed learning.

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