Discussion of the methods of training

Please complete each topic on a separate page: Topic One: Select three methods for training (such as online training, on the job training, computer simulation or others found in the reading material for this week). Give a short description of the method, which audiences it best serves (leaders, managers, administrative staff, production workers, customer service employees just as some examples). Finally, provide the advantages, disadvantages and at least two metrics for evaluating the training. Topic Two: Application After reading the module for the week, answer the following: The board of directors of HHS thinks a training program and a process is required to project what skills and certifications will be needed in the future at HSS. They have provided a list of questions that they feel should be answered before developing this training program. These questions are: How will the organization’s training needs be determined? How will HSS know if the training program is being effective? Please use the following as references: (1) http://hr.commerce.gov/Practitioners/PerformanceManagementandAwards/DEV01_006301 (2) http://catalogue.pearsoned.co.uk/assets/hip/gb/hip_gb_pearsonhighered/samplechapter/027375307X.pdf (3) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJRHRxa6O7s (4) Please use the information below Topic 1: Appraising Employee Performance One of the most stressful times of the year at work for many employees is when they have their annual appraisal. Appraisals are also a very stressful time for many managers. If appraisals are done properly, they should not be a stressful time for anyone. Making appraisals effective and relaxed involves constant, day-to-day effort. Too many organizations and managers see appraisals as a one-shot, once-a-year effort. Effective appraisals involve a constant management presence so that the managers are aware of what the employees are doing and the employees are aware of what the managers expect. It seems to be common sense that if we want employees to produce more, we should let them know what they are doing right and what they can improve. If managers are constantly present, they can be providing constant consultation for the employees rather than giving criticism and praise only once a year. Appraisals may be ineffective for a number of theoretical reasons: * Appraisals are often based on the assumption that the employee has had adequate and proper training. It may be unfair for the organization to criticize the individual if the organization has not provided that training. * The quest for good appraisals, especially if those appraisals are associated with raises or promotions, can become a political quest by employees. In this case, the employee who is rewarded is not always the employee who performs best; it may be the employee who knows how to work the organizational politics best. * Some of the performance of positions in organizations is dependent on the performance of other individuals. This may lead to an individual being criticized, or praised, for things over which the individual has no control. * Appraisals emphasize the contributions of individuals over the performance of the organization or team. This can lead to individual actions that make that individual look good at the cost of overall productivity. In reality, employees need feedback to perform at their best. Broadly interpreted, appraisals provide that feedback. Among managers and employees, however, the word appraisal has come to mean the more formal aspects of that feedback. One of the reasons for this is the need to keep records that satisfy legal needs. Legal Considerations with Appraisals Appraisals are formal documents that go into an employee’s record. This makes them important documents whenever there is a question as to the employee’s performance. Many managers give good appraisals to avoid conflict with employees, especially if they believe that a particular employee would create conflict if he or she were to receive a poor appraisal. It is a common occurrence in organizations for an employee to receive good appraisals but then have to be disciplined for poor performance. If the employee contests that discipline, the organization is in a very difficult legal position because the formal appraisals do not support the discipline. Appraisals are also important documents when dealing with EEO considerations. It is important that all managers who are doing appraisals receive training in EEO and diversity issues and are aware of all EEO laws and regulations. Legal issues with EEO are more likely to be an issue if there is an overall trend for any of the protected statuses to have lower, or higher, appraisal scores than the organization’s nonprotected-status employees. To be legally sound, appraisals must: * be objective * be uniformly applied * be job-related * be specific to the individual * be specific as to the behaviors being assessed * be done by a supervisor who is familiar with the employee’s performance * be communicated to the employee * give the employee access to the appraisals * provide for employee comments on the appraisal form * have a defined appeal process Ways to Measure Performance A number of ways have been developed to measure performance and communicate the results of that measurement to the employee. One of the most common performance appraisal measurement methods uses categories. Using the graphic rating scale, the supervisor places the employee’s performance level on a scale that is often based on a 1-to-5 or a 1-to-7 continuum. Different tasks or performance expectations are listed, and the supervisor evaluates the employee on how they “rate” on each task or expectation. Another category rating method is the checklist, in which the supervisor checks the statements in a list that apply to the employee. These methods are popular because they are quick and easy for the supervisor, and they require less training of the rater than other methods. Other methods compare the performance of employees. The ranking method ranks all of the employees from highest to lowest, either on specific job functions or on overall performance. The forced distribution method usually uses a bell-shaped curve to make sure that only a few employees are rated at the highest and lowest levels, with most employees being rated somewhere in the middle. The paired-comparisons method is similar to a tournament ranking in sports. Individuals are paired against each other, with the better-performing individual being compared with another better-performing individual until a determination of the best-performing individual(s) is (are) obtained. Managers are required to write an evaluation of the individual performance in the essay method. While the essay method can be more effective in communicating strengths and weaknesses of the individual’s performance to the individual, essays are not easily quantified and so are less useful in comparing employees in the organization or in proving that legal requirements have been met. The critical-incident method requires raters to write a statement when something favorable or unfavorable happens with the employee’s performance. The accumulated statements can be used in an overall appraisal of the employee’s performance. Behaviorally based methods usually involve the rater either writing observations of an employee’s specific behaviors in defined areas or the rater rating how the employee performed on different dimensions of the job as defined by behavioral statements. Behaviorally based appraisals provide insights to an employee’s performance but are difficult to develop and validate. There may be legal problems in using behaviorally based appraisals if those appraisals do not have validated anchors that are job-related. Management by objectives (MBO) is designed to be a method of managing employees but may be used effectively as an appraisal method. In MBO, the supervisor and the employee set specific and measurable objectives for the employee to achieve. The objectives should be related to the overall organizational goals and the employee’s function in that organization. Because the goals are specific and measurable, they provide a benchmark to see if the employee is performing as was agreed upon by the employee and his or her supervisor. The most difficult part of MBO is in the original setting of the objectives. MBO may also be difficult to implement for employees who have goals that are difficult to measure. Potential Rating Errors One of the major problems in organizations is that the organizational culture affects how ratings are viewed. In the leniency effect, the appraisal process may be seen as having a potential for conflict between the supervisor and the employee. In many organizations this leads to the supervisor giving everyone very high ratings to avoid conflict. This means that the appraisal is not very effective because it does not give an honest rating of the employee’s performance. In some organizations the opposite occurs, causing a severity effect. The managers want to give employees a reason to improve and build a paper trail in case an employee must be disciplined, so they tend to give everyone low ratings. A related concept is the central tendency effect, in which the rater tends to rate employees toward the middle of the rating scale to avoid any extremes. When central tendency occurs, everyone in the organization tends to be rated as average, even if they have performed superbly or poorly. Other rater problems are the recency effect and the primacy effect, in which the most recent performance or the first performance observed has too high a weight in the rater’s appraisal of the employee. The halo effect and the horns effect occur when a rater lets an employee’s good or bad performance on just one aspect of the job affect the overall rating they receive on their appraisal. The most damaging rater errors occur when raters allow bias to creep into their ratings of employees. This bias is often unintentional, and raters are often unaware of their bias. The bias can be expressed in terms of stereotyping individuals who are members of a protected status as fitting an impression that the rater has of people who are members of that protected status. This bias may show up in ways such as, for example, the rater seeing women as not being good at decision-making, or Vietnam veterans as being mentally unstable. A bias may also show up when a rater subconsciously rates people higher if they look and act like the rater. It can also occur if an organization pushes a supervisor to have employees who look and act a certain way or “fit” the organization’s image. There are many cultural and organizational biases that raters may have to be aware of so they can be sure they are not basing their employee appraisals on these biases. One of the best ways to protect against potential problems with employee appraisals is to have well-defined and job-related elements that a rater can use for the appraisals. Another good strategy is to have well-trained raters. Formal performance appraisals are important for legal and organizational reasons. The most effective way to do appraisals is to have informal communications between managers and employees on a regular basis. If the frequent informal appraisals are effective and are conducted by well-trained managers, the formal and legal aspects of an appraisal system will easily follow. Topic 2: Training for Greater Productivity and Individual Advancement The overall goal of training is to increase the productivity of the organization’s employees. Part of that training effort is to develop the talent that an organization has. Once that talent is developed, it is important that there be programs that help employees develop their careers in the organization. If the employees in an organization do not know how to do something, they cannot do it efficiently or effectively. Employees can usually be trained to make even the simplest tasks in an organization become more efficient and effective. Training should take into account not only the specific tasks people are being trained for, but also how that task fits into the overall organization. Training must also take into account the future needs of both the organization and the individuals being trained. People should be trained in a variety of skills. Those skills include technical, human, and personal skills. * Technical skills are the specific tasks a person must be able to do to perform a job. These might include how to use particular equipment, how to use software, how a particular process must be done, and so forth. * Human skills involve the ability to work effectively with other people. Human skills might include management training, EEO training, teambuilding skills, and so on. * Personal skills include how one handles oneself when dealing with the organization. At a lower level, this may include helping people to know what behavior is expected as far as coming to work on time, personal hygiene, safety training, and so on. At higher levels, personal skills may include stress management, negotiating skills, personal financial management, and so forth. Needs Assessment Planning for training follows from the strategic plan for the overall organization, the human resource plan, and job analyses for positions in the organization. Doing a needs assessment is part of this training plan. The needs assessment takes the information from the strategic plan, from projected human resource needs, and from the job analyses for the various positions in the organization and organizes that information to come up with questions about future staffing needs for the organization. The needs assessment also researches what needs are not being met in the organization—now—for skills for which employees must be trained. This research often consists of asking employees and managers about what their training needs are, to come up with an objective assessment of these needs. The Training Program Once a needs assessment has been done, the training program can begin to take shape. The development of the training program involves determining who, what, where, and how the training will take place. Who to train is a tricky question. Some organizations see training as a reward for their best-performing workers. Other organizations see training as being most important for the workers who are not performing up to their promise. An organization cannot expect employees to be as productive if the employees do not have adequate training. Sometimes a poorly producing worker can be turned into a star performer with a little training. However, there is a career-development advantage to providing training to the star performers. What training will take place involves deciding what people must be trained to do. Most of these decisions will be apparent from the needs assessment done earlier, but decisions often must be made about the priorities for different training needs because of limited budgets or limited time. Where the training will take place centers on whether the training will be internal or external. The training is more effective internally if the organization already has the resources and knowledge to do the training and if there are a number of people to be trained. The training may be more effective externally if the training would require a major expansion of internal training resources or knowledge and if there are only a few employees that need the training. Many organizations compromise between internal and external training by bringing in a consultant to do the initial training and then use the people who were trained (“train the trainer”) to conduct any additional training internally. If the organization is highly specialized, there may be no external resources to provide the training, so any training may have to be internal. How the training will be accomplished will depend on what type of training is being done. If the needed training is more technical in nature, it is usually good to include a “hands-on” component. This can be accomplished through on-the-job (OJT) training or through apprenticeships. It is useful to have some classroom trainingwith OJT because an individual will learn faster if they understand the larger principles behind the training they receive. Classroom training also tends to standardize the training that different individuals receive on the job. Classroom training provides a process in which they can compare the OJT they are receiving with the OJT that other individuals may be receiving. If the training is more human in nature, it is often provided through tuition reimbursement programs and the use of training consultants. Human training tends to be more classroom-oriented, but it can involve experiential components such as mentoring programs, job rotation, behavior modeling, and internships. If the training is of a more personal type, outside agencies may conduct the training at the lower levels and training consultants may provide the training at the upper levels. Even though some organizations may see personal training as the “problem” of the individual, personal training has great potential to help retain employees and thus save the organization money in the long run. Computers are being used successfully to provide many types of training through programmed training, simulations, and distance learning. Computers can also provide a good component to OJT because they can provide a way for an OJT trainee to get answers to their questions when their trainer may not be present. Evaluation of Training It is essential that an organization evaluate the training the employees receive. The ultimate test is whether the trainees’ productivity increases. There are so many factors in whether productivity increases that it is important to document what part of a productivity increase is the result of the training. If only some of the workers receive the training, and the productivity of the trained individuals goes up while the productivity of the untrained individuals stays the same, the training was probably effective. Many organizations test individuals before they receive training (pretest) and then test the individuals after the training (posttest) to see if the individuals have gained skills and knowledge from the training. Some organizations rely on the evaluation of the individuals taking the training to help them judge the effectiveness of the training. In the end, there should be evidence that the training has gained the organization more benefits than it cost to do the training. One important question is, does the training last over time? Some training experiences get employees excited and involved but do not have any follow-up components, so over time the individuals go back to doing things the same way they did before taking the training. To be effective, the organization must reinforce the training, and the training must be updated to fit with the organization’s new needs. Training has the potential to increase an organization’s productivity. To be effective, training involves a needs assessment, an ongoing training program that fits the tasks being trained for, and ongoing evaluation of the training program’s effectiveness. Career Development Career development is important to the organization because it provides future skilled workers, managers, and leaders for the organization. The work environment in all modern organizations is changing constantly. Career development enables the individuals that work in the organization to adapt to those changes and grow with the organization. Career development involves technical, human, and personal skills. Individuals must develop their careers so they can accomplish career goals in their lives. Organizations should help individuals develop their careers so the organization will have a well-trained and stable workforce. Individuals and organizations should practice career development by: * assessing interests and abilities * setting goals * being aware of opportunities * gaining appropriate training, degrees, and certificates * building a professional reputation * learning to deal effectively with organizational politics * building skills for working in teams * developing networks and networking skills * being adaptable * evaluating and reassessing interests, abilities, and goals One of the most important aspects of career development is balancing work life and family life. Each individual and their family should be well informed as to the time commitments and costs associated with actions aimed at developing a career. Training and earning degrees and certificates take time away from family life and so must be supported by the individual employee’s family. Some career-development actions may involve significant costs, so the individuals’ families should be aware of any sacrifices that they may have to make. Organizations can help with many of these work-life and family-life conflicts by providing benefits such as day care, maternity and paternity leave, tuition-reimbursement programs, flexible work arrangements, and telecommuting opportunities. An important part of a career-development program is providing opportunities for dual-career couples. Nepotism policies (policies on hiring members of the same family) may have to be revised so that an organization could hire both members of dual-career couples. Relocation assistance may have to be provided for spouses in the instance where a move must be made for one of the family members to move up the career ladder in the organization. Travel policies that allow both members of a couple to travel when it is not too harmful to family life may have to be developed. The Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) provides unpaid leave time for a full-time employee that must take care of a family member, for maternity and paternity leave, for adoption or foster-care needs, and for illness of the employee. The employee must be reinstated in the organization at the end of the leave in the same or a similar position as they held before taking leave. More information on the FMLA can be found at http://www.dol.gov/esa/whd/fmla/. Other career-development strategies can involve mentoring, internships, and/or coaching. Mentoring involves placing a junior employee with a more senior employee so that the senior employee can help the junior employee in developing his or her career. Internships are used mostly with college students working part-time in the organization. By having internships, an organization gets a chance to observe the work and the potential of a possible employee before committing to hiring that employee for the long term. Coaching involves having someone provide objective advice and encouragement to an employee as they advance in their career. Coaches are often outside the organization so they can provide advice without it being seen as having political implications in the organization. Career development is an extension of training. For an organization to prosper, it needs both training and career-development programs. These programs are an important part of meeting an organization’s needs as outlined in its strategic plan, human resource plan, and job analyses.