Training & Development - Are You Planning to Train Your Employees?
Do you have a human resource development strategy? If not, follow these tips to up-skill your employees and meet the needs of the business. For the most part, “training happens haphazardly” points out Monica Maroun, a specialist in human resource management. Generally a supervisor or manager will see an advertisement and ask HR to book training.
As a result of this sporadic process it is not uncommon for employees to attend the same course three or four times.
Maroun advises training managers to perform a training needs analysis before searching for training programmes. “First establish the needs of the organisation, the needs of the department and the needs of the employee.”
Identifying the needs of the employee is especially important as professionals will often ask “ what is in it for me?”.
How do you perform this needs analysis? One idea is to obtain information through a direct yet informal conversation with staff members.
Maroun suggests asking questions like “can you do this task? Are you confident about what you need to do? Do you feel comfortable in your work?”
The key is to make the conversation relaxed and ensure that the employee feels safe enough to answer honestly.
Another suggestion is to gather information during the performance appraisal, which should go “hand-in-hand” with the skills analysis.
For example when employees give themselves a low or average rating during a performance review it might help to establish their skill level in that task.
However, Maroun cautions against making assumptions about the cause of poor performance.
“HR often assumes people need skills development when they are not doing well in their job”. But poor performance can be attributed to many factors.
Poor resources, heavy workloads or time-wasting could all lead to incompetent or unproductive workers.
Monica recommends that training managers administer performance appraisals at least once a year, preferably during the budget review period. This allows you to advocate for training in the new financial year and set aside funds for skills needs that have been identified. For more tips on how to maximise your training budget join training courses hosted by Alusani Skills & Training Network®.
Published on skillsportal.co.za – Cindy Payle. Unauthorised reproduction will be actionable under South African law.
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