The Importance Of Employee Training In A Competitive Market Environment

Positive Impact of Employee Training on Productivity

Discuss about the Impact of employee training to an Organization.

The tremendous growth in technology has created a very competitive market environment to businesses.  Innovations that are coming up daily are vital to these organizations and therefore it is important to be up to date with the technology. However, many organizations retain most of their workers who in most cases are not updated to the new technologies. This acts as a challenge to the organization since the technology alters the way the entire business operates. Therefore, more skills are required for the adoption of the technology. Employee training hence becomes relevant for continuity of the organization in this competitive environment.  The training enables the employees to acquire knowledge and skills that enhances their productivity. As stated by Slavic, Berber and Lekovic (2014), training measures positively affects productivity. The organization managers organize and facilitate the training. This develops and motivates the employees and makes them aware of their responsibilities in the job. Though it takes the organization to properly budget for their employees training programs, it helps to increase their performance in their respective roles. It is unfortunate that may organization do not embrace the aspect of training their employees and this reduces their profitability and also increases the cost of hiring new workers to enhance productivity. As asserted by Elnaga and Imran (2014), organizations should invest in training their workers to enhance their competence in these uncertain eras.

As affirmed by Obisi (2011), the aim of the training is adding value to the employees. If the program does not add value, the program is therefore not relevant and ought to be cancelled. However, firms that realizes the benefits and enjoys high profits prioritizes these trainings. The training has positive impact to the organization.

Employee training has shown improved performance in their roles. It is observed that most of employees may not be well acquainted with their job descriptions. This results to poor performance which directly indicates failure to the organization. For instance, for newly hired employee who are fresh from school, they normally face the challenge of transferring the theory read in class to the practical field. Operating new systems that they have never encountered before intimidates them and reduces their self-esteem (Kotey and Folker, 2007). As according toAguinis and Kraiger (2009), on-job-training leads to greater innovations and tacit skills. It changes the trainee knowledge and mental models that acts as a motivation and increases their determination to work as per the training received or even more (Lambrechts, Mula, Ceuleman, Molderez and Gaeremynck, 2013).Training increases the employee’s capabilities and competence. This is normally reflected to their performance in the respective role which is reflected in the organization productivity and profits. Since performance is influenced by job satisfaction, knowledge and management, the training enhances the smooth running of the business operations and positively creates job satisfaction to the employee and enhances management and this reflects increase performance (Asfaw, Argaw and Bayissa, 2015).

Improved Performance in Roles

It is evident that when employees work with less or no knowledge of their job, there is high probability of damages to the equipment and other resources. This therefore leads to high cost of maintenance and repairs to the organization. However, the training creates awareness of the resources to be used during the operations and information on how to properly use them and protect them from damages is passed to the workers. Therefore, confidence is created in the employees and this enhances their performance. This reduces the expenses catered for by the organizations and hence high profits (Vemic, 2007).

When an organization takes the challenge and trains their employee, their competence and knowledge is improved. The ability to perform all the relevant roles reduces the need of hiring new employees to do the service. The process of hiring new employees increases the expenses since professional in certain field tend to be highly paid than an employee who have acquired the talent or skills through trainings that are facilitated by the organization.  Increased in expenses reduces the profits and therefore training reduces this expenses and hence improved performance lead to increased profits to the organization.

Regular employee training ensures that they continuously advance in line with the upcoming technologies and changes in the production field. As indicated byJayakumar and Sulthan (2014), development of employees’ talents motivates innovations, the employee may contribute to decision making that facilitate growth of the organization by coming up with new methods of improvements which may favour the organization and give it an upper hand in the competitive market. As stated by Khattak, Rehman and Rehman (2014), standing still without development slowly leads to failure and death of a business. The ability to use the new technologies also enables the organization to meet the market needs by producing unique services or products that draws more customers to them and this directly increases the marginal profits. Therefore, it is necessary for organizations to ensure there are regular training for their employees.

The trainings lead to development of skills and knowledge of the working environment. Since learning is a process, the employee learns managerial and leadership skills and therefore become competent for top seats in the organization. Having in mind that recruiting new employees involves high cost, the training creates opportunities for the employees to be promoted. Since the organization has confidence in their employees’ qualifications for the higher seats from the training given, they find it easy to promote rather than hiring new workers. This acts as a motivation factor to the employees and increases the competition among them for the promotion position which is usually assessed by individual performance (Naqvi and Khan, 2013). This leads to high performance in productivity and hence high profits to the organization. The promotion opportunities save time and money for the organization that could be spend in advertising for the post and the recruitment process which involves interviewing and initial training of the new employees to acquaint them with the new working environment.

Reduced Expenses

The training empowers the employees to do the job under less supervision. As stated by Herzberg (2008), the training makes the employees more responsible in their roles and this increases their ability to be accountable of their success or failure. Therefore, supervision is less necessary and this enables the supervisors to have adequate time to make decisions and develop strategies of improving the organization. The training also helps to identify the employees’ weaknesses. Since there is less supervision, the employees who cannot do well in certain fields will be identified and this will hep the organization managerial team to develop mechanism of boosting their productivity by helping the weak employees to reach to the levels of the other employees.

The training ensures that all the employees have the relevant skills for given fields within the organization. Many organizations face drawbacks when one or several employees leave the firm. This challenge affects production and makes the organization to undergo an extra expense of seeking a person to fill the gap. It may also fall in a trap of quickly filling the gap but end up filling with a person who does not meet the vital qualifications. However, for organization that had regular training for their employs there is a big pool of talents among their employees and it becomes easy to fill the gap or even promote. This saves the company money and hence more profits.

Training and development creates a sense of team spirit. The frequent training provides an interactive opportunity between the managers and employees. As asserted by Teece (2010), many businesses and organizations are over managed than led. This creates a communication barrier in an organization and therefore the managers install fear in the employees. This demotivates them from performing their duties perfectly hence affecting the productivity. However, the ability to interact enhances communication between the managers and the workers and hence a team spirit is created.  Through working together as a team an organization is in a position to achieve its set goals and also increase in productivity. This indicates high profits ad good working environment.

Having the right training program is beneficial to an organization. It increases the employees’ competence, productivity, responsibility and motivation. It helps to reduce mistakes during operations and damage to the equipment. The regular training also creates a good working environment and develops team spirit which makes the organization competitive in the market environment. All these call for a consideration of employee training by the human resource managers. It is unfortunate that some organization human resource managers see employee training as an expense and they never budget for it (Kaplan and Norton, 2005). Though the cost of training might be high but the benefits that an organization enjoys from the trainings are comparably higher. As according to Phillips (2012), the technology design and organizations structure are constantly changing, organizations needs to be up to date with the technology and easily adapt to the changes. This will ensure continuity and enhance competitiveness. Lack of this will stagnate the operations and eventually will lead to the organization death or failure. Together with budgeting for other factors in an organization, human resource should always consider budgeting for the trainings for the better of the employees and the organization.

Regular Employee Training as Advancement with Upcoming Technologies

The move of organizations to digital business where companies are moving mobile in their operations, it is important for organization to engage in such trainings for their employees. The ability to use social media for the marketing purposes is crucial for employees. As stated by Hoffman and Fodor (2010), companies still faces challenges in using the social media tools and many have not yet embraced it for their marketing. Adoption of these new technologies in an organization has shown positive developments and success of business. Therefore, organizations should focus on regular training of their employees on the trending issues in the markets to enhance their competence and productivity. This is core factor in the success of the organization.

Conclusion

Since change is inevitable, the new technology is inevitable too. New developments that are coming up each day possess a risk to organization. Hence embracing the changes and adopting the technology that comes with it, is vital. For success of the organizations there is need to consider employee trainings and prioritize on them. This will ensure that the organizations are in line with the changes and hence will earn a chance of continuing in the competitive market.

References

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Obisi, C. (2011). Employee training and development in Nigerian organisaitons: Some observations and agenda for research. Australian Journal of Business and Management Research, 1(9), 82.

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Vemi?, J. (2007). Employee training and development and the learning organization. FACTA UNIVERSITATIS Series: Economics and Organization, 4(2), 209-216.