A workforce with superior skills is a primary source for sustainable competitive advantage. Organizations use training and development to sustain competitive advantage through continuous learning. Organizations can buy skills through hiring, or they can develop skills through training and development (T&D) activities. T&D becomes the critical factors to create readiness and flexibility for change across all organizational levels, and there are strong linkages between all facets of the T&D system and the strategic leadership and planning processes of the business. Readiness and flexibility are achieved largely through supervisory, management, and executive training, as these individuals set the boundaries for modification and continuous improvement of existing organizational practices.
For some organization, investment in T&D is presumed low in market return, as it thought that after the training, employee will not stay long enough to generate the dividen. Anxiety of the long term engagement with employee will make a major set back in T&D program, however ensuring that knowledge transfer is done sufficiently will provide additional insurance to the investment.
As companies assess employees' developmental needs and begin making plans to deliver T&D, an important consideration is T&D transfer. Transfer refers to the degree of continuity between learning in the T&D context, and behaviors and results in the job environment. There are three basic approaches to maximizing transfer:
1) overlap between T&D and job contexts,
2) integration between T&D and other elements of the human resource management system,
3) integration of management into the T&D process.
1) Overlap between T&D and job contexts,
The first critical requirement for transfer is an overlap between learning in training, and requirements on the job. The overlap assures that the knowledge, abstract concepts, attitudes, or behaviors acquired through T&D match the strategic business needs. The relevance of T&D content is enhanced when there is an obvious connection between T&D objectives and the strategic mission and goals of the organization; such relevancy enhances transfer. However, linking the T&D programs with the business strategy is the most important strategy. Similarity of the training content with the job environment is also important. The simplest way to maximize overlap between the job and training environments is through on-the-job training. Even though most T&D occurs away from the job, there is a noticeable trend toward incorporating learning into the job itself. Taking people off the job to learn is simply becoming too costly. On-the-job T&D reduces downtime, eliminates travel costs, maximizes content relevance, and increases the likelihood that the learning will become embedded into routine processes and interactions among colleagues. Moreover, the learning process and is able to facilitate and reinforce the continuation of the desired behaviors. Most of the training comes from experiential learning.
2) Integration between T&D and other elements of the human resource management system,
A second transfer strategy is making T&D part of human resource framework that systematically hires, promotes, develops, and rewards people using a core set of competencies and behaviors. Such continuity across HR systems helps translate T&D learning into behaviors and results on the job.
Organization can uses a single integrated HR system in which critical competencies are derived from job analyses. These critical competencies drive all HR subsystems and serve as the common underlying competency framework for selection, promotion, and reward decisions, and for establishing T&D requirements for a given job.
Supervisory trainees are held accountable for improved performance following training, as part of their performance appraisals. Transfer is greatly encouraged when promotion decisions are predicated on evidence of T&D transfer, for example, that the trainee's performance appraisal documents that he or she is successfully applying newly acquired skills.
Pay-for-knowledge systems are also a way to translate T&D into results on the job.
Another strategy that integrates T&D with other HR functions is structured career path. Individuals receive T&D at critical junctures in their careers, and it is reinforced through their career progression.
3) Integration of management into the T&D process.
The third transfer mechanism recognizes that it is not enough that co-workers and supervisors are passive observers of the trainee's improvement following T&D. To ensure transfer, they must be involved in pro-actively supporting knowledge based and behavioral improvements from T&D. Involving management in all aspects of T&D is critical in obtaining this level of support.
As an example, organization can implements T&D sequentially across the organization, from the top down. Everyone receives the T&D twice, once as trainee and once as trainer to his/her direct reports or peers. This will result to that every manager knows how to support the new behaviors, and no manager is surprised by behavioral changes in the workplace that come as a result of training. In the other hand, organization can use line managers as the primary deliverers of T&D. Training sessions were conducted by line managers, many of whom is assigned as a trainers and training is not a dead-end career choice for these managers, they can become executives.
As an alternative organizations can provide managers with written or video reports summarizing the content of employees' T&D and suggesting strategies to reinforce learning. Managers also are held accountable for the returns on investment in T&D, around behaviors and results directly tied to T&D objectives. Finally, management is involved through the active planning of T&D with employees. Another suggestion is building a "partnership" between learners and their supervisors, who meet together before and after T&D to go over expectations and results. The process can be made explicit through pre-T&D "contracts" between employees and their managers. Expected T&D results are specified, including how they will be monitored and facilitated, and a trainee re-entry plan is designed to create continuity between learning in the T&D environment and behaviors and results on the job.
