Page 75 - DMGT518_TRAINING_AND_DEVELOPMENT_SYSTEM

Training and Development System

Notes trainers, the organization or sponsor, the service providers and even the customers who depend
upon the services of the trainees. The other factors that influence the training dates are climatic
conditions and seasonal character of industry for on the job training.
When to block dates: Dates have to be blocked for any training programme at least 90-120 days
in advance, particularly if the programme is heavily dependent upon outside resources, right
from venue to the resource persons. Training managers should consult the major stakeholders
like the organization, the trainers, the trainees (or their supervisors), the service providers like
audio visual equipments and hotel managers to ascertain the convenient dates. The biggest
challenge here is to fix a date for conducting the training programme on a date which is most
suitable for all stakeholders particularly the trainees and the organizations.
From the trainee perspective, the training should not be held during periods wherein lot of
intervening holidays are going to come. This may happen if training programmes are arranged
during the Diwali festival in India or Christmas in America. Discourage the practice of keeping
training programmes during April-June months since many of the employees would like to go
on vacation, as this period has school holidays for employees’ children. Organizing off the job
programmes after the working hours or before the working hours on the days of working
causes inconvenience to the employees since they have to make too many adjustments in their
daily schedule of life. While these are the basic constraints of Indian workforce, companies
having employees from different nationalities will have more challenging problems.
The employer would say that normally training should not be held during the busy business
season of January –March quarter; it should be arranged when necessitated most from the
business perspective, ideal if loss of mandays due to training is minimized, say by organizing
the programme on weekends like Friday-Saturday or Saturday-Sunday. His ultimate concern is
to see how to conduct effective training programmes with minimum disruption of business
activities.
Trainers/resource persons would be happy to participate if the programme is conducted on the
days they are not engaged elsewhere. If trainer’s date and your date don’t match with each other
no doubt the trainer will loose an assignment, but you as an organizer will also face serious
problems if the said trainer happens to be person of exceptional skills/expertise, which cannot
be found easily in many other trainers.
Blocking the dates in advance is equally important from the service providers’ angle especially
when the training organizers are heavily dependent upon them right from the venue and
catering services to audiovisuals and transportation.

Example: Training cannot be conducted if a suitable venue is not available on the
predetermined date.
Service providers may be rendering their services to their other clients elsewhere but training
organizers would be seriously handicapped to go ahead with the programme or may end up
compromising on the training standards. Therefore, training organizers should keep in mind
all these factors while implementing the programmes.

5.2.2 Mobilizing the Resources

Financial resources: Training resources of course, does involve financial resources but goes beyond
by touching the human resources, material resources and infrastructure resources. The reason
why a training manager has to focus seriously on resource mobilization is because money alone
cannot obtain all the other training resources.

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