1.4. Desarrollo Sostenible
1.4.9. Reciclaje
1.4.9.4. Gestión Ambiental
It is for knowing whether training programme has been able to achieve its objectives. Various methods of evaluation can be used to determine the effectiveness of training.
Companies nowadays, are designing career programmes with a view to increase employee productivity, prevent job "burn out" and obsolescence, and improve the quality of employees' work lives. Thanks to the LPG era (liberalisation, privatisation and globalisation) individuals, too, are expected to develop new and better personal skills of self-assessment and career planning
Notes to be in the race, especially since companies do not have the resources to completely plan
individuals' careers. Effective career planning should become an inescapable fact of organisational life because it helps companies meet internal staffing requirements and reduce turnover while it helps employees meet their needs for challenge and achievement of career goals.
Did u know? Diversity training considers all of the diverse dimensions in the workplace –
race, gender, age, disabilities, lifestyles, culture, education, ideas and backgrounds – while designing a training programme. It aims to create better cross-cultural sensitivity with the aim of fostering more harmonious and fruitful working relationships among a firm's employees.
Self Assessment
Multiple Choice Questions:12. Career progress largely depends on (i) international exposure (ii) performance
(iii) experience (iv) mentoring (v) qualifications.
13. Career planning is the responsibility of (i) government
(ii) the HR department (iii) the sponsor (iv) the employer (v) career counsellors.
14. Information for career planning in a company (i) is available through the HRIS
(ii) can be had form line manages (iii) can be obtained from staff assistants (iv) is often not available
(v) is best obtained from fortune-tellers.
15. An example of a career development ability would be (i) scaling a mountain
(ii) planning a vacation (iii) working hard
(iv) discussion with the boss (v) getting another degree.
Notes
Notes Knowledge Management and Learning Organisation
Today we come across two most commonly used terms like; Knowledge Management and Learning Organisation. These two terms are intertwined with Training and Development Function. Hence a brief discussion on these two terms will benefit the reader to update themselves with the changing need of HR professionals.
Knowledge is reinforced through learning. Learning is a process of acquiring new skills or knowledge, which results to a new behaviour. Learning can take place through multiple ways. But for organisations best way to promote learning is by exposure to new experiences. Knowledge is the ability and wisdom to use the learned experiences for achievement of individual and organisational objectives. Knowledge management, therefore, is the process of systematically and actively managing and leveraging the store of knowledge in an organisation. From organization point of view, thus Knowledge Management is a concept in which an enterprise gathers, organizes, shares, and analyses its knowledge in terms of resources, documents, and periodically retires the old knowledge. Today, both knowledge and information are the main inputs of HR. This justifies that the Knowledge Management efforts should be lead by the HR department. It perhaps even prompted many organizations to rename their HR function as knowledge management function.
Learning organization is defined as an organisation that learns and encourages learning among its people. It promotes exchange of information between employees hence creating a more knowledgeable workforce. This produces a very flexible organisation where people will accept and adapt to new ideas and changes through a shared vision. To create a learning organization following steps are necessary:
Awareness
To start with organisations must appreciate that learning is necessary at all levels and not just limited to managerial level. This apart, need for change also has to be accepted first as the only way to survive. Such awareness at organization level can only be created once organization believe in emulating the examples of success stories of those who have leapfrogged their growth truly developing the learning organization culture.
Environment
Creating a learning environment requires to share with all members of the organization a comprehensive picture of the whole organisation and its goals by creating a flatter (organic) structure which encourages innovations. The flatter structure promotes transparency of information between members of organisation and thereby develops a more informed workforce.
Leadership
Leaders are enabler for an organization to gain competitive advantage. A leader sells the concept and encourages learning to help both the individual and organisation in learning. It is the leader's responsibility to help moulding the individual views of team members. It requires management to provide commitment for long-term learning with resource support.
Empowerment
Real testing tool for learning is the degree of empowerment. Empowerment requires involving workers in decision-making. Empowerment makes workers more responsible
Notes for their actions; without letting loose the managerial involvement. Managers still need
to encourage, enthuse and co-ordinate the workers. Empowerment must be allowed at all levels so that members can learn from each other simultaneously.
Learning
Learning systems also need to replicate real-life situation through series of simulation games. This facilitates learning from mistakes to make the future learning more effective Learning environment need to be open, flexible and motivating. To facilitate continuous learning some organizations also make extensive use of electronic media like e-learning, duly providing a track to measure the learning progresses. But its acceptance largely depends on workers urge to learn. This can be ensured linking learning with various incentive packages and HR decisions.
To implement a learning organisation philosophy in an organization, we require an overall strategy with clear, well defined goals. Once goals and overall strategy are identified, specific action plans are required to implement the same. There are three generic strategies to develop a learning organization. Peter Senge also focused on certain initiatives required at organization level to implement learning organization philosophy. Three strategies, however, are as under:
1. Accidental: For many organisations implementing learning organisation philosophy is more accidental than preconceived. In the process of achieving business goals quite often unknowingly they develop a framework, which fit the learning organisation philosophy. Therefore, even remaining unaware, organizations can emulate the learning philosophy to gain competitive advantage.
2. Subversive: Subversive strategy encapsulate the dissidence by exploiting ideas and techniques of people working in the organization. It requires open endorsement of the learning organisation ideal, so that people can express their ideas.
3. Declared: The third option is the declared approach. It requires clear promotion of the principles of learning organizations, as part of the organizational ethos and are manifested openly in all organizational initiatives.
Learning Organisations Work at following Aims:
Development of People: A Learning Organisation facilitates learning which improves the personal skills and qualities of members of organisation. Members just not get benefited from their own but also from sharing of experience of others.
Greater Motivation: Because of participation of people to improve their own skills, values and work, they become more matured about their role and feel motivated to contribute their best. Opportunities for innovation and creativity, free thinking develop their self and make them feel satisfied in their job roles.
Workforce become Flexible: Learning organisation makes workers more flexible. Workers can move freely within the organisation in between jobs and thereby develop their capability to cope rapidly with a changing environment, to survive in competition.
Workers become More Creative: People get more opportunities to be creative in a learning organisation. They can try out new ideas without bothering about mistakes. They get recognised about their creative contributions which makes room for new ideas to flourish.
Improvement in Social Interaction: Learning improves social interaction and develops interpersonal communication skills. This encourages teamwork which as a result makes organization to work better.
Notes Teams and Groups work better: Learning Organisation develops high performing teams. They learn, grow and develop and perform efficiently for the organisation to deliver better results.
Knowledge sharing: "Openness Creates Trust." In a learning environment, information and knowledge being flows around freely, intra and inter team sharing of knowledge also develops mutual trust and makes an high performing organization.
Interdependency: A culture of interdependency in organization increases awareness of its members and improves relations between them at a personal level. By knowing each other about their roles, needs and tasks, members can learn how to manage their time better and plan their work more efficiently. With the increased spate of learning, however, such dependency decreases and members can get on their own, plan their job better without relying on others.
These apart, a learning organization can facilitate breaking down of traditional communication barriers, improves customer relations, develops the knowledge resources, fosters innovation and creativity, hedges against risk in decision making, etc.
Case Study
Remedial Training
Amandeep Sharma has been employed for nine months in the accounts section of a large Publishing company in New Delhi. You have been his supervisor for the past three months. Recently you have been asked by the management to find out the contributions of each employee in the Accounts Section and monitor carefully whether they are meeting the standards set by you.
A few days back you have completed your formal investigation and with the exception of Amandeep, all seem to be meeting the targets set by you. Along with numerous errors, Amandeep's work is characterised by low performance - often he does 20 per cent less than the other clerks in the department.
As you look into Amandeep's performance review sheets again, you begin to wonder whether some sort of remedial training is needed for people like him.
Questions
1. As Amandeep's supervisor, can you find out whether the poor performance is due to poor training or to some other cause?
2. If you find Amandeep has been inadequately trained, how do you go about introducing a remedial training programme?
3. If he has been with the company six months, what kind of remedial programme would be best?
4. Should you supervise him more closely? Can you do this without making it obvious to him and his co-workers?
Notes
7.11 Summary
Training is a planned programme designed to improve performance and to bring about measurable changes in knowledge, skills, attitude and social behaviour of employees. The various types of training include: skills training, refresher training, cross functional
training, team training, creativity training, diversity training, and literacy training. Formal training methods include (i) on-the-job training covering job instruction training,
coaching, mentoring, job rotation, apprenticeship training, committee assignments and (ii) off-the-job training includes lectures, conferences, simulation exercises and programmed instruction.
Training can be evaluated at five levels: reaction, learning, behaviour, organisation and results. Career planning is the process by which one selects career goals and the path to these goals. Career planning is not a sure bet, but without it, employees are seldom ready for the career opportunities that arise.
Career development is a lifelong process of understanding your career preferences; identifying, obtaining and developing appropriate skills and training for that career and continually evaluating your career preferences and skills over your working life to find whether they continue to meet your needs and those of the organisation.
Succession planning though a neglected area in the pre-liberalisation period, is carried out in a systematic way in most professionally-managed companies in India now. Succession planning focuses on creating and stocking pools of candidates with high
leadership potential. Career development could occur at the individual or the organisational level. Individuals can push up their careers through performance, exposure, networking, leveraging, etc.
7.12 Keywords
Career: A sequence of positions held by a person during the course of a lifetime.
Career Development Workshop: A training programme designed to assist employees in managing their careers.
Career Path: The sequential pattern of jobs that comprises one's career.
Career Planning and Development: A conscious process through which a person becomes aware of personal career-related attributes and the lifelong series of stages that contribute to his or her career fulfillment.
Career Stages: An individual's career moves through five stages; exploration, establishment, mid-career, late career and decline.
Counselling: The discussion of an employee's problem with a view to help the employee cope with it.
Development: Broadening an individual's knowledge, skills and abilities for future responsibilities.
Education: Conceptual learning that improves understanding of a subject/theme.
Notes Job Rotation: Moving a trainee from job to job so as to provide cross training.
Leveraging: It refers to resigning to further one's career with another employer.
Mentor: A person who is higher up the organisation and who can provide career advice and support to a less senior employee.
On-the-job Training: Any training technique that involves allowing the person to learn the job by actually performing it on the job.
Role Playing: A development technique requiring the trainee to assume a role in a given situation and act out behaviours associated with that role.
Training: A planned programme designed to improve performance and bring about measurable changes in knowledge, skills, attitude and social behaviour of employees.
Vestibule Training: A training method involving the creation of training facilities separate from the regular production area but with the same equipment.
7.13 Review Questions
1. What do you mean by 'training'? Distinguish between training and development with the help of some examples.
2. Explain the various methods of training. 3. Write short notes on: Types of training
4. "Training programmes are helpful to avoid personnel obsolescence". Discuss.
5. Suppose that you are the manager of an accounts receivable unit in a large company. You are switching to a new system of billing and record keeping and need to train you supervisors and thirty two employees in the new procedures. What training method(s) would you use? Why?
6. You are training someone to use a new accounting software package in a medium-sized firm. What training method(s) would you use? Why?
7. How would you identify the training needs of a group of sales employees of a large public sector insurance company facing stiff competition from private sector insurance companies in recent times?
8. Explain whether and how the effectiveness of training programmes can be evaluated. 9. Suppose you are assigned to develop a career planning and development programme in
a large organisation with a diverse workforce. What unique concerns might you have because of this diversity?
10. What type of information would you seek from the HR department to help you develop your individual career plan if you were just starting with a large multinational corporation? 11. List the pay offs and limitations of career planning. Also indicate how career planning
efforts could be initiated in a successful way?
12. Give some reasons for the trend toward increased emphasis on career development programmes.
13. Succession planning is emerging as an alternative approach in light of future business needs and challenges. Comment.
Notes
Answers: Self Assessment
1. (iv) 2. (i) 3. (ii) 4. T 5. F 6. T 7. F 8. T 9. F 10. F 11. T 12. (ii) 13. (iv) 14. (i) 15. (v)
7.14 Further Readings
Books Aswathapa, K. (2008), Human Resource Management, 5th ed., Tata McGraw Hill. Dipak Kumar Bhattacharyya, Human Resource Management, Excel Books.
French, W.L. (1990), Human Resource Management, 4th ed., Houghton Miffin, Boston. H.J. Bernardin, Human Resource Management, Tata McGraw Hill, New Delhi, 2004. Ivancevich, J. M. (2008), Human Resource Management, Tata McGraw Hill. Madhurima Lall and Sakina Qasim Zaidi, Human Resource Management, Excel Books.
Rao P.S. (2008), Essentials of Human Resource Management and Industrial. Relations, Text cases and Games, Himalaya Publication.
Online links http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Training_and_development http://www.businessballs.com/traindev.htm
http://www.colgate.co.in/app/Colgate/IN/Corp/Careers/Training Development.cvsp
Notes
Unit 8: Performance Management System
CONTENTS Objectives Introduction
8.1 Performance Appraisal
8.1.1 Meaning and Definition 8.1.2 Objectives of PA 8.2 Performance Appraisal Process 8.3 Methods of Performance Appraisal
8.3.1 Past-oriented Scale 8.3.2 Future-oriented Appraisal 8.4 Performance Management System
8.5 Problems and Challenges in Performance Appraisal 8.5.1 Problems with Performance Appraisal 8.5.2 Challenges 8.6 Summary 8.7 Keywords 8.8 Review Questions 8.9 Further Readings
Objectives
After studying this unit, you will be able to: Define the term Performance appraisal Discuss objectives of PA
State the relevance of performance appraisal process Discuss the challenges in performance appraisal
Analyze the significance of performance management system
Introduction
All organisations use performance appraisal for various purposes. The main issue hovers around the question of what criteria should be used to appraise performance. Given that all appraisals involve judgements which are not always fair, organisations use multifarious techniques and tools to measure performances as objectively as possible. Besides a good technique, successful performance appraisal requires a consistent approach; clear standards and measures and bias free ratings. A critical part of the evaluation process is the preparation of the rater. Raters must be trained on the system being used and it's purpose to ensure consistency and accuracy. Finally, if the employees' performance is to improve, they must be provided feedback on their performance and advice on how to make improvements.
Notes