Employee training: a management perspective

How does the management view employee training and what do they expect from it? This was a question which intrigued us; we wanted to understand how senior employees looked at the training function from a strategic perspective.

This blog outlines the results of our discussions with employees in operations, management, HR & training departments. We wanted to understand what companies did after the employee evaluations, during succession planning, manpower planning, recruitment and training budget allocation process.

The rest of the blog discusses our approach and insights gained.

Key questions we asked

1. What is the training process followed?
2. How were the training needs identified?
3. What is the number of hours of training provided on a yearly basis? Is there any standardization? Did it change for different types of employees?
4. What are typical training budgets? How are these determined?
5. What is the ratio of in-house versus external training?
6. How was training effectiveness measured?
7. Now that the economy is on an upswing, is there any change in focus on training?

Common insights

Some of the common answers we got from our discussions were:

1. Employee training and development are considered a strategic objective
2. Training budgets vary from 0.25% to 1.25% of employee costs but we could not find any correlation between the budget and the type of industry, growth projections, profitability or any other parameter. Most companies admitted to some budgetary allocations towards skill development.
3. Training is considered to be a line function with responsibility resting within the departments to which the employee belonged
4. Skill-based training was imparted to junior level employees while competency and leadership development training were imparted to middle management
5. Job transfers and cross-function exposure was considered to be an important training criteria for skill development
6. Training inputs received by an employee were always examined during succession planning as well as career development

Technology as an aid

Most executives believed that automation could be an effective enabler and help optimize delivery. Some of the perceived benefits of automating the training function are:

1. Competency and skill gap analysis help identify training gaps; this could be done during or after appraisals
2. 360 feedback surveys help in identifying leadership and competency oriented gaps
3. Integrating Training Need Identification (TNI) with employee development plans and training budgets could help in generating effective training calendars
4. Computer based training (CBT) cuts the training budgets by over 70% by significantly reducing travel time
5. Training effectiveness feedback that is filled by the trainer, trainee and the line-managers may help measure training benefits
6. Linking Paid-Time-Off (PTO) with training nominations and calendar would increase attendance
7. An employee database that captures the number of training sessions attended by employees for analysis and future planning would be extremely helpful

Empxtrack is an integrated web-based solution that meets all requirements connected with Employee training & development. Empxtrack Training Management software is also available as a stand alone module which can be interfaced with the existing HRMS of an organization.