For additional background and context on the following questions,...

For additional background and context on the following questions, read and review Reading 9.1 in the text Strategic Organizational Development Interventions: A Case of Microsoft Corp. Limited.

• What is organizational development?
• How does it compare to personal and professional development?
• What is the significance of strategic planning and development on organizational development, training, and education?
• Almost everyone has participated to one degree or another in some form of training and development. Include some of your own experiences in your responses.

 

 

9-1Benefits of Training and Development

Training involves some kind of change for employees: changes in how they do their jobs, how they relate to others, the conditions under which they perform, or changes in their job responsibilities. Although some employees may find any kind of change threatening, change that results from employee training and development has nothing short of win-win outcomes for both employees and employers. Strategically targeted training in critical skills and knowledge bases adds to employee marketability and employability security that is critical in the current environment of rapidly developing technology and changing jobs and work processes. Organizations continue to seek out and employ knowledge workers rather than workers with narrowly defined technical skills.

Organizations can benefit from training, beyond bottom-line and general efficiency and profitability measures, when they create more flexible workers who can assume varied responsibilities and have a more holistic understanding of what the organization does and the role they play in the organization's success. Providing employees with broader knowledge and skills and emphasizing and supporting ongoing employee development also help organizations reduce layers of management and make employees more accountable for results. Everyone (employees, employers, and customers) benefits from effective training and development programs. The key strategic issue then becomes how to make training effective.

In order for organizations to provide effective employee training and development, key decision makers must consider employees from the investment perspective described in Chapter 1. Training and development quite frequently involve short-term costs (for design and delivery of the learning activities) and long-term benefits. Particularly with issues of employee development, there may be no return on investment for the immediate time period. Organizations that are bound by short-term financial performance indicators are less likely to value training and less likely to  support a culture that fosters employee development.

One critical decision that can impact the benefits and outcomes achieved by training is whether training activities will be centralized or decentralized within the organization. Centralized training provides economies of scale and can allow the organization tighter control over all training initiatives. This can ensure that all training programs are consistent with the organization's strategy and each other as well as ensure that there is little to no duplication of effort. Decentralized training moves training into each individual business unit and can facilitate stronger alignment between division needs and training. This is particularly true when considering that different divisions within an organization may have drastically different responsibilities and make significantly different contributions to the organization's strategy.

Organizations that take a strategic approach to HR can find that employee training can be much more efficacious as part of an integrated approach to HR. For example, training and development are greatly assisted by having appropriate and well-thought-out staffing strategies. Judicious recruitment and selection of new employees will not only allow more targeted training that addresses specific needs but also minimize the need to conduct any extensive or remedial training among new employees.