Learning and Development of Employees in Organisations

One important factor that is extremely important and essential for the growth of a company, its productivity and its ability to retain its employees successfully is, Employee Development.  The Development of an employee is considered as the utmost importance almost universally. In case the employer does not pay attention to the changes and challenges faced by the employees, a stage may come when the development of the employee is interrupted and this becomes a big bump in the growth of the company as well as the employee, where the employee is left frustrated and finally the outcome of this frustration is seen in the productivity of the company.

In today’s market scenario it is ideal for an employer to retain the already existing employee and developing him/her rather than look for a new substitute in the market. In order to encourage your team to develop and progress within the company, make sure you set a clear and transparent business process management system. One of the main reasons that organizations emphasize on employee development are:

1. Remaining competitive: It is not only the organisations that are finding a prominent place in the market today but also the employees that are always on a look out for a better company that not only values them but also constantly upgrades the skill set of its employees so that they are efficiently placed with the other peers in the competitive markets.

2. Mapping the skill shortage: Very often it is found that HR recruiters feel that there is a shortage of employees in the market for the type of job opening they are offering. It is sometimes also believed that the skills required for a particular job are almost 75% missing in the candidates. For working this out, it is important that the organisations understand and work closely with the entry level trainings and a long term solution for this concern is participation and partnerships of the companies with communities that work towards building the broken talent creation system.

3. Investing in training: in the previous scenario it was seen that companies would refrain from employee development based on the factors like limited budget, shortage of time, lack of senior management support and several other factors. In today’s labour market it is seen that organisations are investing in employee trainings in order to build a talent system that makes them competitive in the current market scenario.

4. Increasing the worker’s productivity: It is clearly seen that employees who receive formal trainings and opportunities would perform better and in a more productive manner as compared to others.

5. Reduction in turnover: For organisations it has become a huge concern that after they have invested money in the development of employees by providing them trainings, they would take the skill set to another organisation. Contrary to this it is seen in research that an employer’s investment in the employees’ development actually reduces turnover and absenteeism.

6. Synchronising employee development with the organisational needs: It is important that the employer understands that strategic needs drive development. for example in a company where elderly are constantly leaving jobs it is seen that investing in employee development would give them new variety of skills and thereby making them capable of taking on more responsibilities than before.

Importance of HR in employee Learning and development tool

The role of an HR is very crucial as it is the HR that needs to strike a balance between both by encouraging the employee to work on career development and still ensuring that the organisation provides certain ways to make the employee even more effective in his/her role. An HR professional may use several learning and development tools available.

Certain methods that should be used for effective employee Development are:

1. Coaching: This method involves a much more experienced and skilled individual in the following field to mentor and provide guidance to the other employees and help them improve performance and gain new skills.

2. Mentoring: This method involves matching a less experienced employee with a more experienced one, under a certain program. This method has shown good results in a way that it reduces absenteeism and turnover. Matching of these employees should be based on the criteria skills and needs, relationships, the business strategy and goals with mentoring and accountability of both the employees.

3. Individual Development plan: To speed up the process of employees learning, organisations use the Individual development plan. This plan outlines an employee’s intentions and the outcome and the necessary support required to meet the growth

4. 9 Box grid: a very commonly used method by an organisation to identify its talent pool and select a potential leader is this. This employee assessment tool evaluates the current contribution to the potential contribution an employee makes to the organisation.

5. Cross Training: Under this method employees are trained to perform a certain job duty other than those that would have been normally chosen to do so. This way might not give immediate results but in long run this has shown to increase the skill sets of the employees. The Cross training is done under 2 stages

                a. working out the skills needed for a certain job

                b. referring to the list of skills that the current employees have.

6. On the job Training: This method is a great way for the employees to learn while they are actually doing work. The assignments given during the job allows them to learn new skills and acquire more knowledge.

7. Job Enlargement – Expanding the employees’ job by adding to it more duties and tasks working with the same complexity in the job.

8. Job Rotation– A systematic movement of the employees within the organisation from one job to another is job rotation. This rotation gives an opportunity to the employees to learn and grow.

9. Online Programs: Apart from the usual classroom online programs give the employee a flexibility of learning at their own convenience.

There may be several issues that the organisations face in implementing these tools but never the less once these have been successfully implemented it only leads to successful growth of the employee and the subsequently the organisation.