Training and Development

HR Talk

Train to get out the best

Training is preliminarily bringing a change. Even development is also bringing the change. So what will happen when an employee is changed but the atmosphere is still idle without any change? Here is where, we should examine the money we spend on and the effort our department put towards individual development.   

Some of the Organisations have created a scenario in Oman and in some other GCC countries, which is not that much suitable to the working environment. In this practice, training for employees is a token given to them to fly to New York, Malaysia or outside the country and enjoy the star hotel stay as well as good food and be away from work atmosphere for two three days.  

This approach is somehow OK, if the organization is considering it is thus and rewarding employee through that way. But this approach is not fulfilling the actual aim behind the training and development activities. Training and Development activities are core for an organization as it plays a vital role in the progress of the company and increasing turn over.

Most of the organizations take training as a section in HR and some organization as independent. But almost all organization, especially in Oman, doesn’t have an idea on how training and development is related to the sales turn over. That is why some think that training is an expense, and not as an investment. We can trace it like this.

We identify one position in the plan as this position is very much important and eventually we make a Job Descriptions for the post which will include the experience and qualifications required for the position. As we feel difficulty to hire a person with 100% specification mentioned in Job Description, we try to adjust and satisfy with a 70% candidate. Here, the full fledged performance of this candidate will only produce 70% of the required performance. So in performance appraisal, we understand that this employee is having difficulty to perform his duties because of his available qualifications and experience. As part of Training Need Analysis (TNA) we identify, in what are all the areas, this employee needed to be improved. These areas are identified and his acquired caliber in that specific area is measured and further training is suggested and implemented for this employee.

Now come to the result. This employee has undergone a training programme and it has given him a wider understanding on the subject and he began to implement in his daily work. This has resulted in an increasing the performance from 70 % to 85 percent. So thus training brings good results. Once his performance is up to the expectation, the company will have the desired result. The desired result will definitely be seen in the turnover.

We will further explain this with an example. A young marketing salesman is working with a computer supply company. His target is RO.1 Million sale per month. He is very good in writing and talking Arabic. But week in English both written and spoken. This created a big issue for him to go and visit the non Arab purchase managers of different companies. He is sure, once he master English, he can bring another 50% business thus he can meet or cover his target. While analyzing the manager has to understand his difficulty and plan for his English Training. The company spent RO.250 and sent the salesman for one month long English course. After the evaluation, once again he sent to the next level of English course until he started talking English fluently.

Here the evaluation comes. To understand whether training was useful or not, just to check his business. By this he was able to penetrate the Non Arab market and thus sales increased by 50%. So the result is obvious. Company had an expense of only 500 RO to increase a sale of .5 million RO. So the Return on Investment (ROI) is very high in this area.

While we take marketing salesman it is easy as the result is before us. But it is not related to marketing field only. It can be for any department and any section in the company though it is not as visible as a front end salesman.