Reference no: EM133981637
Assignment:
Read Training for Change: the Australian Experience (p.369) and Research Report 21.1 Enterprise-level training in Australia.
Training for change: the Australian experience Studies in several countries have found that organizational change is closely associated with the level of training activity in organizations (Cappelli and Rogovsky, 1994; Oster-man, 1995). Smith (2005) reviewed two major studies of training at the level of the whole enterprise in Australia that confirm this relationship (Research reports 21.1 and 21.2). One new management practice that was not always associated with an increase in training activity was the introduction of lean production. Smith et al. (2003) found that lean production was consistently associated with cost cutting and this included meas-ures to cut the cost of training. Typically, the levels of formal training and training infrastructure (training facilities and dedicated training staff) were reduced. Most of the training that was undertaken tended to be on the job and skewed in favour of managers.
Research Report 21.1 Enterprise-level training in Australia.
Smith, A. and Hayton, G. (1999) What drives enterprise training? Evidence from Australia, International Journal of Human Resource Management, 10(2): 251-72. Smith and Hayton investigated the drivers of enterprise-level training. Their research involved 42 case studies in five industry sectors - construction, electronic manufacturing, food processing, retail and financial services - and a national survey of 1,760 organizations across all sectors. In terms of the systematic approach to training outlined in this chapter, they found evidence that organizations did adopt some form of training needs analysis and in many cases this was based on a system of performance appraisal. However, the evaluation of training was relatively underdeveloped. None of the case study organizations went much beyond the use of traditional end-of-course evaluation forms.
Senior managers in some organizations adopted a proactive strategic approach to training and viewed it as a vehicle for building skill sets that could provide the basis for sustainable competitive advantage, but attitudes towards training were often fragmented, and middle and junior managers tended to be more reactive and viewed training as a short, sharp, focused response to immediate operational problems. These included workplace change, quality improvement and new technology. Workplace change was the most important driver for training. New technology was less important than anticipated because the introduction of new products frequently required only minimum changes to existing production processes and could be introduced with little additional training.
New production processes, on the other hand, often involved fundamental changes to the way work was carried out and therefore triggered a more extensive need for training. However, the required training was often short and simple and was frequently outsourced to the vendors of the new process technology. New forms of work organization and structural change accounted for most of the increase in training activity and emphasized behavioural rather than traditional technical skills. Smith and Hayton suggest that this shift towards behavioural skills training reflects a growing concern in Australian enterprises to develop adaptability to changes in work organization.
Question:
How may this type of training be seen, as suggested, to benefit managers, more than employees? Should behavioural training outweigh the need for technical training? Consider any experience you may have had in the workforce; do you see any evidence to support the researcher's final sentence in the research Report?