CH9: Induction, training, and development

Why do we need training?

• Even valid selection systems don’t usually have Employees ready to go on day one
o Organizations must learn how to adapt KSAs to fit corporate culture
• Changing nature of work necessitates constant updating of knowledge and skills
o e.g., Computer Skills
• Important for continued development of Employees resulting more productive work force
o EE Org Com, Jsat, increased productivity, less absenteeism, and less turnover

Induction
• Process of welcoming new employees to the organization
o Learning organization’s goals
o Learning how to attain the goals
o Learning to ‘fit in’
o Mostly from coworkers
• Makes employees (if done well)
o Productive sooner
o Require less supervision later
o Less anxious, more satisfied, more committed, less likely to leave
• Responsibility of HR (general) and manager/supervisor (job specific)
o Buddy system – the new employee’s coworker guides her through the process

New Employee Orientation and Socialization

Training Defined
 Formal procedures that a company utilizes to facilitate learning so that the resultant
behavior contributes to the attainment of a company’s goals and objectives – strategic tool
(vs. simply an activity)
• Increase productivity, decrease costs
• Increase morale, loyalty
• Prepare employees for advancement

Content of Developmental Plan

1. Developmental objectives (organizational, departmental, individual performance and
growth)
• New skills or knowledge
• Timeline
2. How the new skills or knowledge will be acquired
• Resources
• Strategies
3. Standards and measures used to assess achievement of objectives
Based on needs of organization and employee
• Employee’s learning preferences
• Developmental objective in question
• Organization’s available resources

Types of objectives
Objectives – what should be achieved when training is completed
o Specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, time-bound
• Instructional – what is to be learned by whom, when?
• Organizational, departmental – what impact will learning have at each level?
• Individual performance and growth – what should she be able to do? What should be the
impact on attitudes? (commitment, self-efficacy, …)

Assessing Training Needs

• Must identify if a training need exists before designing and implementing training programs
• Training only effective if employee doesn’t have knowledge and skill
o Ineffective if low productivity due to lack of practice or motivation
o Or due to situational factors (e.g., equipment, unawareness of standards)
• Types of analyses:
o Organizational Analysis
o Task Analysis
o Person Analysis
o Demographic Analysis
Organizational Analysis
• Determine the organization’s short- and long-term goals and compare goals to current state
of performance
• Where organization is not meeting goals, training can be used to improve performance
• Examine organizational culture as potential obstacle to training

Task Analysis
• Examination of the specific task or job requirements that are necessary for the successful
conduct of each job (remember the JA!)
• Utilize SMEs to gather job-related info
• How job is currently performed vs. how it should be performed – where performance is
deficient, focus training energy
• Relationship between selection & training

Person Analysis
• Identifies which employees are most in need of training
• Often utilize performance appraisal data to determine which employees would most benefit
from training
• Employees may self-nominate for training or organizations will use tests to diagnose who is
in need of additional development

Demographic Analysis
• Consideration of the demographic makeup of the organization
• Assess the training needs of various demographic groups such as those covered under civil
rights legislation
o Older employees may need more technology training
o Disabled employees may require additional training as a reasonable accommodation or
training via different medium

Learning Context
• Instructional design
• Basic principles of learning
• Characteristics of the trainee and trainer largely determines the success of a training
intervention.

Instructional Design
• Set of events that facilitate training through their impact on trainees
o All activities that support the learning processes
• Learning can be: cognitive, psychomotor or social
• Learning conditions allow org to build an effective context for specific learning
o Providing feedback, informing trainee of goal
Basic principles of learning
• Learning – Relatively permanent change in behavior that occurs as a result of experience or
practice
• Training must make a difference in learning to be effective
• We draw on the learning literature

Principles of Learning, cont.

• Active learning
• Size of Unit to be Learned
o Whole vs. Part; Distributed vs. Massed
• Meaningfulness of Material
o Overview
o Job relevant examples
o Sequencing
• Practice and Overlearning
o Practice helps us avoid bad habits
o Continuing practice past the point at which participants have mastered behavior

• Feedback
o Timely and useful feedback about their performance
i. Adjustments
ii. More interesting and motivation
iii. Goal-setting and performance improvements

Individual Differences in Trainees

• Readiness: possessing the background characteristics and necessary level of interest that
makes learning possible
• Motivation to learn
o If employees are not motivated to be trained, the training will almost certainly fail
• Error training
o May be effected by Big 5 personality factors

Characteristics of the Trainer

• Establish specific objectives and communicate them clearly to trainees
• Solid understanding of how people learn and how this is affected by trainer’s approach
• Communication skills
o Rigid, closed, negative, condescending
• Different trainees may require a different style or different treatment

Transfer of Training
• The extent to which material, skills and procedures learned in training are then taken back
to the job
• Positive Transfer – what is learned in training will improve job performance
• Negative Transfer – what is learned in training results in performance decline
How to increase the likelihood of positive transfer
• Identical elements theory – maximize similarity between the training situation and job
situation
• Provide an adequate amount of active practice time
• Provide different situations or contexts in which the employees practice behaviors
• Trainer, trainee, and manager work together to set expectations and set up a maintenance
program to monitor job performance
• Social support

Training Delivery – Overview

• Traditional approaches
• Technology-based approaches
• Employee development

Traditional Approach: Lecture

• Lecture to teach trainees important work-related information
• Does not have many important principles of learning (like active practice) built in
• Good for teaching facts, but not effective for developing problem-solving skills and
interpersonal communication
• May be boring (never in this class, of course!), but effective

Traditional Approach: OJT

• Most widely used training technique
• Underlying assumption: the new employee can learn the job by watching and talking with
experienced employee, and by working with the actual job materials
• Potential weakness: Dependent on skills and motivation of trainer
• Apprentice training: training period consisting of combination of on-site (OJT) and off site
(technical training institution)

Traditional Approaches: Self-directed techniques

• Use self-instructional materials for training purposes, trainees go at own pace
• Uses learning principles
• Programmed Instruction: present material broken down into small elements in a logical
fashion; test performance and give feedback
• May not be effective: learner strategies may be counterproductive

Computer Assisted Instruction (CAI)

• Basically - PI involving trainee interaction with a computer
• Learners can move at their own pace and get as much or as little practice as desired
Traditional Approach: Vestibule training
• Work Simulators designed to be realistic in order to facilitate transfer of training
• Especially useful for jobs where it would be too dangerous or costly to train on actual
equipment (pilots)
• Physical Fidelity – mimics real world
• Psychological Fidelity – essential behavioral processes match

Technology Based Approaches: Audiovisual Techniques

• Multimedia techniques: video, CD, computer presentations
• Very flexible training method
• Greater trainee interest and satisfaction
• Push to use these in academic settings

Technology Based Approaches: Distance Learning

• Delivery of educational or training materials usually through electronic means to people at
different locations at the same time
• The most efficient use of high quality instructors and instruction
• Learners taking more responsibility for personal success
• Clear cost savings

Technology Based Approaches: Web-based learning

• Employees can work at remote sites
• Easy to update and change information
• Training can be set up so that trainees can share information with each other via discussion
groups, chat rooms, or bulletin boards
• Good for training delivery across large corporations.

Employee Development: Coaching

• Motivational technique used to improve performance
• Lets employees know how well others think they are doing
• Encourages employees and supervisors to work together
• Improves communication and collaboration
• Establishes a framework for developing both short- and long-term career goals
• Feedback orientation of the employee & feedback culture of the organization affect
coaching effectiveness

Employee Development: Behavioral Modeling

• Based on theory that most of social behavior learned through observation
• Mimic the behavior of an exemplary model – self-efficacy (confidence in ability to apply
skill)
• Especially effective for interpersonal skills training
• Ex: Training modules designed to help supervisors interact with subordinates

Employee Development: Business Simulations, management games

Learning by doing
• Role-playing games similar to case study approach
• Managers presented with organizational situation, asked to make managerial decisions, and
these decisions subsequently affect the situation
• Sometimes set up to be competitive
• Liked by trainees since they can be quite interesting and fun and are perceived to be
realistic and relevant
• Have to be careful not to introduce so much competition to the game that trainees lose
sight of general lessons

Employee Development: Corporate Universities

• Continuous training and development
• Modern facilities with up-to-date technology for effective learning and transfer on-site
• Exs: McDonald’s Hamburger University, Xerox’s Document University in Illinois, and the
Caterpillar Training Institute
• 1800 corporate universities in the USA

Sexual Harassment Training

 Sexual harassment has 3 dimensions of consequences:
• Widespread implications for work outcomes – Relationships and Career Direction
• Psychological/somatic outcomes – Reduction of Self Esteem and increased occurrence
of Ulcers
• Organizational consequences – Turnover and Absenteeism
 Training can prevent the occurrence of unwanted behavior
• Common method is to use videos to model acceptable and unacceptable behavior
 Research suggests:
• Behavior Modeling sensitizes some individuals to sexual harassment behaviors
• Males and females view behaviors differently as to their potential for harassment
(jokes)

Diversity Training
• Changing nature of the workplace requires new HR management need for training
• $10 billion a year industry
• 3 primary objectives:
o Increase awareness about diversity issues
o Reduce bias and stereotyping that interfere with effective management
o Changing behaviors to more effectively manage a diverse workforce
Training Evaluation
• Criteria should be relevant, reliable, sensitive, practical, and fair
• Kirkpatrick’s Taxonomy – Four types of criteria should be used to evaluate training
o Reactions – trainee attitudinal reactions
o Learning – how much actually learned
o Behavioral – changes that take place on job
o Results – ultimate value of training to company
• Training effectiveness ranges from .60-.63

Training Criteria
• Most training evaluations focus on Internal Criteria (Reactions and Learning) because they
exist within the training program
• Organizations should take great interest in the External Criteria (Behavioral and Results)
since they are most relevant to the conduct of business

Evaluation Designs
 Quasi-Experiments are most viable alternatives to use for evaluating training
 Types of Designs:
• Pre/Post – Measure criteria before and after training, changes reflect training
effect
• Pre/Post with Control Group – Able to compare scores on criteria between
groups to determine effect – stronger internal validity
• Solomon 4-Group – Best for internal validity because it includes two
experimental groups and two control groups, but very impractical