Different Kind of Training and Development Actives

According to the dynamic developments of all work fields, the organization must develop  their  HR  to  strategic  HR,  because organizations cannot apply a strategic training plan unless they have a strategic human resource management system in place. In the strategic human resource management literature, strategic training is regarded as a vital way of raising employee efficiency (Richard et al.,  2009). Performance guide was included as an important association in training in a number of studies (Aycan,  2003;  House  et  al.,  2004;  Javidan,  2004). Training has its strategic positioning and it directly contributes for organizational business goals and objectives (Niazi, 2011).

1. Cross Cultural Training

Cross cultural training refers to the training given to employees related to the cultural differences between nations the awareness of which helps in running smooth business across the nations. Cross cultural training is essential for doing business in present scenario involving multiple nations and cultures. One needs in depth understanding of the culture of the country he or she is dealing with.

Cross-cultural training can be broadly divided into two types firstly General awareness training- covers handling foreign clients. Increasing the awareness about foreign employees of the same company, facilitating negotiations across the countries, managing and supervising staff belonging to different cultures etc. Second type of training could be specific training related to particular a culture or nation. This is useful for the people who frequently visits and interacts with that nation. The training mainly focus on general beliefs, values, traditions, ethics and protocols of particular nation.

Understanding the following things in a culture is essential in study of culture.

1. Power distance- It is the degree of inequality which is considered as acceptable. Examples of high power distant countries include Mexico, West Africa and Arab Countries.

2. Uncertainty avoidance- It is the degree to which people like planned and structured situations. In the countries with low uncertainty avoidance score, people will be more easy going and also risk taking than the countries with high score.

3. Individualism- It is the extent to which people prefer to be independent than being in groups.

4. Masculinity- it is possession of qualities, behaviors, attributes and roles traditionally associated with men.

5. Long termism - it is the extent to which a country focuses on long term versus short term. Great Britain and United States score low in this.

2. Diversity Training

Diversity Training is meant to give a broader perspective to the employees where they could interact with people from different cultural backgrounds improve their knowledge and skills. In a multinational organization we often come across employees from cross-borders working in teams to complete a project. In order to ensure that there are no civil rights violations and to promote better team work, diversity training plays an important role. Diversity training is appreciated in corporate culture as the project managers face certain issues in managing people from different cultures.

There is also a bit of negativity associated with it as critics point out that diversity training will deepen the differences across people from different cultures as it reminds of racialism where instead it is better to have commonality at the work place with standard ethics.

3. Job Instruction Training

Job instruction training or JIT is a form of simple on the job training where a new employee is trained step by step by a supervisor or an assigned coworker. This kind of training usually exists for jobs requiring manual skills such as factory workers. The jobs require relatively low skills and hence can be taught in a simple step by step procedure. Job instruction training can be provided on a one on one basis as well as one to many. JIT is also used to train existing workers about new technology. The benefit of JIT is that the training is real time and based on the real workplace. Hence the trainee not only observes the trainer perform the job but also gains hands on experience in performing the job under supervision. Another overall advantage is the reduction in wastage and accidents due to proper training.

One drawback is that productivity slows down during training as the workers are trained at the actual workplace. Furthermore the risk of accidents is higher as the workers are new and may not have enough knowledge about the equipment they are working on apart from what the instructor has told them.

4. Outdoor Training

Outdoor Training is a method of training employees outdoors through activities, games, tasks etc through physical activities which helps in team building, strategy making, personality development, crisis management etc. Outdoor Training is very different from other forms of training in the sense that the mangers participate with his/her employees instead of managers leading the session. This helps to break the ice between the two and establishes a sense of comfort between the employees and their managers. Companies started such training in the early 1980 with an aim to focus on developing team spirit among managers and employees. It emerged as one of the few big HR ideas as it combines the hands on practical experience and the typical training consisting of a challenging but safe physical activities.

Types of Outdoor games:

• Biking

• Camping

• Rock climbing

• Rappelling

• Water skiing

• Canoeing

• Team challenges

• Strategic games

• Trekking

Types of skills learnt:

• Problem solving

• Teamwork

• Risk taking

• Inter personal communication

• Self esteem

Advantages of outdoor training:

• Employees and upper level management are able to blend, learn and have fun together, making the learning stress free

• It provides hands on experience and a practical learning to all the employees

• It helps participants to overcome their flaws and limitations

• It improves the trust among the team members an enhances the team building experience

• It helps to bring out the true self and the actual attitude, feelings and behavior of an employee which may not come to notice when working indoors.

Disadvantages of outdoor training:

• It has a bad rapport in the sense that it is all fun and no work.

• Everybody doesn’t participates in outdoor training

• Have to consider the beliefs, culture and attitudes of all those involved

• Some people may not be comfortable with the touching involved in these outdoor trainings as they consider touching to be invasion of privacy

• It may be discriminating against physically challenged and older employees

• Outdoor training is very expensive, leading to incurring heavy costs

• Employees might have difficulty connecting what they learnt outdoors and what they do indoors

5. Informal Training

Informal training is a type of training in which people probably are not aware that they are in training. It is some somewhat casual and incidental. This type of training occurs so naturally. The most well- known form of informal training is learning from experience on the job.

Other examples of informal training are 

• book

• discussion groups

• informal discussions among employees related to a specific topic,

• journal articles about a topic

• reading newspaper

• sending employees to hear famous speakers

Characteristics

• Informal training is less planned

• more incidental.

There are a large number of informal training methods. These are few examples

• verbal and written communications,

• reading books

• mentoring

• discussions

• debates

• giving of directions

• Mentoring is one of the most important form of informal training

• Ad hoc training sessions taken by staff members in the organization are also considered as informal training- under which a staff member, who has strong skills or knows much about a thing in a particular area, such as a computer application can provide ad-hoc training to co-workers on the job

• Other methods of informal training are publications in internal systems via intranets. It keeps employees informed and provide them with a way in to various resources that help them advance their skills

• technical and specialized libraries

• circulation of journal

Advantage:

• However, this form of training often provides the most effective, deepest, enriching, and richest learning. This is so because this type of training occurs naturally in life

• avoid miscommunication and lack of coordination because more than one employee will know how to carry out each method required by the company

Disadvantage:

If one wants to learn about a specific area or knowledge or skill in a suitable way then, Informal training is less effective than formal training.

References : 

American Society for Training and Development state of the industry report. (2008) retrieved, April 24, 2014 from http://www.astd.org/

Warr, P. B. (2002). Learning and training. In P.B. Warr, (ed) Psychology at Work. London: Penguin Books.