Development of a Training Program

Development of a training program is the next step after the training need analysis has been conducted and there is a clear consensus on the need of training within the organisation. The next vital question to answer is whether the training should be conducted by an in house expert or from a consultant outside.

Many of the fortune 500 organisations around the world have their in house learning centers and many have even gone ahead to have their own training universities where they train people onboard and those who aspire to join in the future. Companies like Xerox, Good Year Tyres, Kodak, Mahindra and Mahindra, Birla etc have such setups for generating prospective employees with the requisite skills and also for training the existing employees. There are other organisations too that have tie ups with the best academic institutions for employee exchange programmes.

Nevertheless the prerequisites for development of a training program remain the same. We start with the development of a conducive learning environment, followed by a choice of the training methods and techniques.

Designing the Environment - every individual is unique. One style of learning may not be applicable to each of the participants in a training program. Therefore ‘how do various individuals learn’ is what should be kept in mind while designing the training program. There are certain who learn the experiential way by doing and yet there are many who like the lecture based learning method. There are however pros and cons of both and the appropriate learning style is generally the discretion of the trainer/facilitator.

Establishing the Variables - trainability is one factor that must be taken into consideration before developing any training program. It is the duty of the trainer to ensure that the employees are actually willing to sit and learn something in the training program. This is especially very true of sensitivity training that is not viewed positively by many. Trainabality also implies that the employee is sufficiently motivated to learn apart from just the ability to do so. Before any training program sets off, it is the responsibility of the trainer to build hype about the event and such that it attracts all types of employees from target audience within the organisation.

There are both formal and informal ways of doing the same. Formal ways would be by sending mails to the employees who are supposed to attend the program. Informal ways would be just creating conditions for discussion in the cafeteria or the lounge where employees sit together, discuss and hear things on the grapevine.

Finally, once the training program has been delivered the evaluation of the same provides inputs for improving the process of training. These are called as the ‘post learning inputs’. This evaluation which is conducted at various levels may be utilised accordingly. Most of the organisations evaluate training on the basis of Kirk Patrick Model. The feedback at each level - learning, reaction, behaviour and results can be used for effective design of training in future.