HR assignment study help on: Training to employees

Training provides employees with required skills and knowledge to perform the job effectively. However, training is just an opportunity for learning. Skills and knowledge that are taken from training depends on the design of the training programme and0 the supportive climate that the organization provides for its employees (Blanchard &Thacker, 2007).This paper will design a three-month training and development program to a recent graduate employee to prepare this employee to be an effective member in the organization. For each training objective, there will be a specific way to deliver the need of the objective in a specific. The goal of this paper is to present a set of strategies to help the recent graduate employees to acquire the skills, knowledge and attitude to perform the job better. It also helps the human resource development department and the line manager to work together to help these employees to gain these skills and knowledge.This plan is designed for a recent graduate who will be working as an accountant In Saudi Aramco, which is the world’s leading oil producing and exporting company.In 2000, Petroleum Intelligence Weekly ranked Aramco No. 1 for the 11th straight year, based on the Kingdom’s crude oil reserves and production (Saudi Aramco, n.d.). In order to maintain this success, Aramco believes in training and developing its staff so it put a huge budget in these progrmmes. Hamed Al-Saadoun, Employee Relations and Training vice president in Aramco said that the human resource development is a strategic business priority for the organization. Aramco is very committed to provide all development opportunity for its employees and it very proud of its core values that emphasize Performance, Reliability, and Human Resources Development (Al-Saadoun, 2006).

This paper is designing a training plan for three reasons. First it will insure that the employee knows what are needed from him so he can align his performance with the strategy’s directions. Then, the plan will show the training needs to help minimize or close the competency and skill gaps. The final goal of this training strategy is that it presents the opportunity that managers have to support of the training, learning and development process and to encourage evidence of new behavior at work.

When designing the training programme, the organization has to consider the transfer of learning, which occurs when knowledge and skills acquired during a learning intervention and training programme is actually applied on the job. Any training programme should be aligned with the HRD strategy of the organization to enhance transferring the learning (Haskell, 2001). Aramco’s HRD plan will insure that acquired skills and knowledge can be implemented in the workplace to improve performance through the following points:HR analyzes the skills and knowledge that need to be acquired through the training programme so that the intervention plan is designed to achieve the needed result from the employees. Assessment will be used to know the reasons of the performance gap and trying to close it. On the other hand, employees need to know what are the skills and knowledge that are expected to apply in their job.

1. The design of the development and training program will assure that the employee will have the opportunity to learn and practice the desired performance.
2. The HR department will insure that the physical environment with all tools and suppliesthat are needed to apply the new knowledge and skills are provided. HR will also provide the employees with self-paced learning media (e.g. books), as a way to encourage diverse learning approaches.
3. The HR department will be giving the budget it needs to design and deliver the training in the most effective way.
4. Employees are giving a plenty of time to plan, study and practice the new skills that acquired from the programme.
5. Managers can act as a monitor or coach to support the employees when they apply their new skills after their development programme.
6. There is an appraisal approach that is taken to ensure the implementing of the new skills. Points will be giving for those who use their new learning in their jobs effectively. Continuous feedback on the performance and application of the new skills and knowledge from managers will be given as well.
7. Evaluation will be applied to measure the effectiveness of the training programme and wither employees gain the knowledge and skills that are delivered by this training programme.

To design the proper training programme for this employee, three analyses should be done to determine the training needs. In order to do that, the organization need to do a training need analysis (TNA) to identify where interventions are needed, how can these interventions applied and how is involved in them (Mankin, 2009). Starting with the organizational level. Organizational analysis looks at the organization’s mission, strategy, resources, external and internal environment. By analyzing these areas, the organization will be able of knowing what impact the performance of employees and wither this performance align with the strategy of the company or not. By looking to the company’s mission, vision and strategy, the areas that need to be focuses on will be highlighted. For example, if the company’s strategy is to focus on the quality, the training programme for KSAs relating to quality need to be provided for employees. Furthermore, analyzing the organization’s capital resources will determine the training budget. This will play a major rule in deciding what type of training will be used (e.g., external consultant or internal staff) (Blanchard & Thacker, 2007).

In an operational or departmental level, the most important key is to analyze the job. This is to determine all the tasks that are needed to complete the job and what are the KSAs that are required so that this job is done efficiently. This paper will only show one approach of job analysis which is job description. It is a good starting point of any job analysis. Job description is a written statement that emphasized the responsibilities that are required for a certain job (Mankin, 2009).An accountant job description is functions include inputting financial data, preparing schedules and reports, making accounting entries, initiating payments, and maintaining records. Besides that, responsibilities could include analyzing financial data, monitoring costs and cost control procedures and providing accounting support to customer. Knowing the responsibilities of a certain job will clarify the KSAs, competencies and requirements to do the job.

The third analysis is the personal analysis. It is done to see wither the employee possess the KSAs that are required to this certain job. The individual analysis determines who are the people who need the training, and what are the KSAs that they specifically lack (Drummond, 2008). Since this plan is designed for a recent graduate, the personal analysis cannot be done by performance appraisal or data. In this situation, interviews, questionnaires, assessment centers or attitude surveys are useful in analyzing this employee.

After going through the training need analysis, set of objectives were set to help the company achieve the level of desired performance. These objectives are aligned with Aramco’s strategy to deliver the needed skills and knowledge to recent graduates. These objectives are:Objective 1: To work effectively within a team

Objective 2: Enable the employees to work effectively in a diverse workplace

Objective 3: Enhance writing and presentation skills for employees as a way of business communication

Objective 4: Continuous self development

A detailed plan for each objective is provided in the next paragraphs. The training plan used an enhanced approach to develop KSAs of its employees for the success of Aramco. When going through each objective, it will be seen how TNA helped in deciding on these objectives.

Objective 1: To work effectively within a team

Aramco’s strategy stressed on the teamwork and values it as well as it values individual contribution. Making partners with other companies around the world makes teamwork a very important aspect. Working in close partnership with a global network makes teamwork a critical skill that employees should have (Saudi Aramco, n.d). Teamwork training aims at maximizing the effectiveness of working as a team member. Enhancing performance regardless of the level of performance the team is already achieving.

The training strategy that will be used here is off-the-job external training. When employees are taken away from their workplace, training will more systematic and focused. Therefore, more efficient. The company will insure that trainer is good and the design of the programme is relevant (Vaughn, 2005). The trainee will provide the trainers with exercises with other people to develop how they work, interact and figure out how to work with others in one project. These exercises enable the trainee to assess the KSA of the trainers (Blanchard & Thacker, 2007).

In the end of this training, employees should be able to:

–          Advance through the team development stages.

–          Appreciate the importance of communication and collaboration

–          Aware of several communication styles

–          Anticipate and avoid common misunderstandings

–          Emphasize the importance of active listening

–          Pay attention to other’s concerns, opinions and ideas.

–          Acknowledge others’ skills, knowledge, experience and contributions.

–          Build trust

–          Being able to build a constructive relationship within the team

–          Make the team more cohesive

–          Make effective team decisions and plans.

–          Contribute to the problem solving processes and be able to find the right solution and corrective actions.

As this is a core aspect in this training plan, the employee will be assigned for this program from the six weeks of his training programme. This training strategy is linked to the behavioural theory, which focuses on the behavioural outcomes as a result of learning process (Mankin, 2009). The teamwork training is based on the idea that this programme is able to transfer the knowledge, skills and attitude that are linked to teamwork to the employees so they can engage with that successfully (Harrison, 2009).

Objective 2: Enable the employees to work effectively in a diverse workplace

Aramco has 54,000 employees from more than 40 different nationalities working in 66 countries around the world. Diversity is not only on culture; Aramco’s employees are diverse in Race, Religion, Gender and Age as well. Nowadays, Aramco is experiencing more diversity on gender. The number of women is increasing as they are now more passionate about work, which increase the diversity of employees (Arabian Oil & Gas Staff, 2009). The gender diversity is an interesting area. Women turnover turned to be twice the turnover of men employees, which entitled to the differences between both genders (Blanchard & Thacker, 2007). Beside of the diversity of Aramco’s staff, the company has multinational projects around the world, which makes it critical to the employees to know how to deal with diversity.

This diversity might result in bias treatment, tension and conflicts in the work place (Blanchard & Thacker, 2007). To minimize that, Aramco stressed on the importance of diversity training. This diversity training program does not only focus on the culture aspect, it concerned also with understanding the differences among people in race, age, ethnicity and gender.

Diversity training requires more involvement from upper management. The involvement of upper management is more important in diversity training than other training and learning interventions. This will make employees see this training as something valued by the organization and not only a legal standpoint (Blanchard & Thacker, 2007). So the diversity training will be internally through action learning set, seminars and lectures. Action learning sets enable the trainer to reflect and review on how a certain diversity situation is being dealt with. Seminars and lectures will contribute in educating the employees about different cultures and how to deal with people with different gender and age. Diversity training is based on the behavioural learning theory where the behavior toward people who are different can be changed. It is also based on a cognitive learning where the employee acquires new knowledge about diversity in cultures, age and gender. It changes the way the employee perceive and understand others (Mankin, 2009).  The employee will be assigned for this programme from week 7 until week 10.

Diversity training will promote:

–          Cultural awareness.

–          A better understanding of different cultures and how to deal with these differences.

–          A better understanding of culture challenges that might face employees.

–          Change wrong stereotypes.

–          Change the concept of behaving based on the perception.

–          Enhance cultural sensitivity.

–          Reduce cross-cultural misunderstanding

–          Support positive cross-cultural working relationships.

–          Behaviour toward the other gender

–          Valuing others regardless of their gender, culture or age.

Objective 3: Enhance writing and presentation skills for employees as a way of business communication

Ali Allafi, Finance vice president in Aramco’s Houston office, stressed the importance of communication in the the Accounting department.  It must be clear, complete and timely to ensure accuracy, completeness and timeliness of records, actions and decisions.  The communication should be upward and downward and can be written, presentation or verbal.  All department staff should be encouraged to speak-up and share their experiences and concerns.

In the Accounting department, there is a weekly communication meeting attended by all staff members.  This gives the opportunity to all employees to share their thoughts, learn from others and stay up-to-date with management expectations.  In many of these meetings, a presentation is given to address a specific area, topic or project.  These presentations are later shared with top management if they address a critical subject or are in response to requests from management.  This makes the communication skills including presentations very important.

Business communication training will be giving as an off-the-job training. The organization will provide a programme consist of a small group of 6 members. They will be giving lessons and lectures on how to write in a proper way. Plus, teaching the basic presentation skills. Then, each member has to present in front of the rest group. This exercises will teach the employees how to deal use the skills they learned on lectures. They also have to write a report and being assessed by their managers. The employee will be assigned to the business communication training programme for the last 3 weeks of the three-month training programme.In the end of the business communication-training programme, the employee should:

• Appreciate the value of good writing communication
• Learn and practice business writing
• Know pitfalls of business writing
• Learn how to deliver the message in an appropriate way
• Being able to assess their writing and know how to improve it
• Learn how to present an effective presentation
• Practice presentation
• Learn how to engage with audience
• Use presentation tools
• How to answer audiences’ questions
• How to deal with difficult situations
• Present to an international audience

Objective 4: Continuous self-development

As Aramco put a huge emphasis on learning, training and development, it encourages its employees to continuously develop them to possess all knowledge and skills that Aramco needs. To facilitate that, Aramco provide an E-learning service to all of its employees.

Huda al Ghoson, general manager of the Aramco’s Training and Career Development emphasized the importance of continues self-development and said “Young professionals are encouraged from day one to take ownership of the process and to assume a driver’s seat in the roadmap of their careers. The emphasis is that continuous development is their own responsibility and that they need to take active roles to ensure that their learning objectives and career and business goals are aligned”. It is a critical aspect in Aramco that employees take the initiative to develop themselves.

Aramco promotes a culture of continuous learning and self development across the company through our e-Learning network. Aramco’s Corporate Integrated Learning Services had more than 3,612 e-Learning courses attended by 53,896 participants from Aramco’s employees (Saudi Aramco News, 2008). Recent graduate will be introduced to this service as soon as he joins Aramco’s staff. This service provides various courses for employees such as personal effectiveness courses (e.g. stress and time management). It is the employee’s responsibility to determine what learning they need to undertake using e-learning.Training evaluation is frequently neglected. However, evaluation is a very important key in each training program (Blanchard & Thacker, 2007). In this plan, evaluation will be conducted before, during and after the training programme. By going through all the process of training, areas that might went wrong in planning the programme will be obvious. This training programme will be evaluated by usingthe Kirkpatrick evaluation model. To have a full and meaningful evaluation, four key measures need to be included which are reaction, learning, behavior and results (Guskey, 2000).

Reaction measures wither the trainee liked and enjoyed the training? Did he consider the training relevant? Did he like the venue, the style and timing? This can by measured by several methods. Happy sheets can be giving to the employee and he can rate the training. Moreover, reaction questionnaire is another method. It is Important to know that people were not upset or disappointed. Also, managers can set with the employee and measure the employee’s attitude verbally. However, employees might not say that the programme was not satisfied so they will not upset their managers. The reaction evaluation is done immediately when the training programme ends (Foreman, 2008).

Learning evaluation is the measurement of the increase in knowledge or intellectual capability from before to after the training and learning programme. It measures wither the trainee learned what the programme aimed for or not? What learning was accomplished?  To measure that, online tests can be giving before and after the training so how much knowledge the employee gain is measured. This type of tests is highly relevant for technical and quantifiable skills. However, it is not easy to measure complex learning such as attitudinal development (Foreman, 2008). For example, the employee will be asked to write a business report, which will be evaluated by the line manager.

Behavior evaluation measures wither the learning is applied and the trainee’s behavior changed or not. Is also measures the trainee awareness of the change in behavior and wither this change is sustained or not (Foreman, 2008). To assess that, interviews will be conducted to measure the behavior change. These interviews will be conducted three times a year after the programme to see wither changes are sustainable or not. For example, the employee will be interviewed with the team he works with to see how is this employee work as a team member which evaluate the first objective of the programme. In addition, the trainee will present a report to the Accounting manager to indicate his opinion of the behavior of the trainer over the training programme.

Results evaluation measures the value of training and how improved performance of the trainer effect the organization (Business balls, n.d.). Cost/benefit evaluation will be applied. The HR department will measure the monetary cost of the training and compare it with the benefit that the trainer got such as attitudes and working relationships. This will demonstrate how the training programme worth the cost of it or the training programme needs to go through corrections (Blanchard & Thacker, 2007).

In summary, a three-month training programme for a recent graduate accountant was planned. After conducting a TNA and going through the organizational, operational and personal analysis, four objectives were set. The first objective was to be able to work effectively within a team, which was counted for the first six weeks of the three-month training programme. From week 7 to week 10, training will be on diversity where the employee will learn how to deal and work in a diverse workplace. The third objective is to learn business communication skills where the employee learns how to write, speak and present effectively (Drummond, 2008). The final objective is to introduce the ELearning facility that Aramco provides which encourages the continuous self-development. All of these objectives were aligned with Aramco’s business and HR strategy. Kirkpatrick evaluation model will be used to measure the effectiveness of the programme.

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