Page 7 - DMGT518_TRAINING_AND_DEVELOPMENT_SYSTEM

Training and Development System
Notes
2 LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY
education in many ways, for all practical purposes training is aimed at specific, job-based
objectives rather than the broader society-based aims of education. Historically, trainees were
expected to learn their jobs by ‘exposure’, i.e. by picking up what they could from experienced
fellow employees. They were not termed trainees since they were not systematically trained,
but, they enjoyed such titles as helpers, apprentices, in industrial circles. But this method of
learning was haphazard, learning time was lengthy, motivational needs often neglected with
the possibility of many incorrect procedures being passed on. There was also a certain fear from
experienced members of the workforce that passing on their skills would ultimately lead to
their own exit. Planned economy and economic growth in the country has given emphasis to the
need for a more systematic means of training for jobs skills. Thus, was born a more analytical
approach of training.
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Caution It is important that due attention is paid to training right from the time when one
first starts doing a job.
If not, as is the unfortunate experience of many, it attempts at learning games and sports, it will
be extremely difficult, if not almost impossible to unlearn what has once been learnt wrongly
on one’s own during the initial stages.
A job is not learnt merely by instructions. By telling and showing step by step the way it ought
to be done, the job is perhaps presently learnt but not done well when left on one’s own. By
showing and making the trainee do the job step by step along with instruction, the chances are,
that the job will be learnt and yet there is no guarantee that the job will be done well for long.
The job will be really learnt satisfactorily by making an individual repeat and demonstrated
step by step during instruction. By keeping a watchful eye at close intervals in the initial stages
and by checking progress periodically later on, one can ensure that the job will be well done for
all time to come
Scope
The essential elements in any commercial enterprise are materials, equipment and human
resource. Training, allied to the other human resource specialisations within management,
ensures a pool of manpower of the required levels of expertise at the right time. But, firstly,
consider the attention given by an average organisation to the provision of materials, machinery
and equipment. Then compare the commitment to the third essential factor in the production
cycle, viz human resources. One of the most important factors in this regard is the traditional
view of training and trainers. They are seen as an expense, a service, as second rate to production
or as a necessary evil. Training has tended to fall behind other management activities, especially
in the planning phase. It is often carried out as a reaction to immediate needs, a patch up
operation in many cases, instead of an ordered activity.
If we accept the fact that people are a company’s greatest asset, one remedy for these traditional
attitudes is to convince the top management that training is a principal management function.
Another remedy is for the trainers to display an increasing professionalism and so demand a
chance for their voice to be heard at top level, along with other managers. The image of training
in the concern is often based on concepts of cost-effectiveness. The alternate view of training as
welfare activity is that it withers away in the face of depression in the trade cycles. So training
must be an activity open to the analytical eye of the accountant. Yet, in some respects, it is an act
of faith to pass on one’s knowledge, skills and attitudes to those who follow. And a climate in
which learning is seen to be an important part of work and is not easily generated by those who
merely see training as a budget-balancing exercise.