HRM/326T: Employee Development Wk 5 Apply Assignment

Attendance was a problem for the swing shift at Avondale Industries' Long Beach, California, site during the summer. The supervisors asked for the training and development office to provide a training session on attendance and why it is important for the company. The trainer who designed the program included four parts

Because there are too many possible causes for the changes, it is impossible to say that the training was the sole cause of the improvements.

Most of the supervisors at Avondale Industries were promoted from within the company and were high-performing individuals in their previous positions. However, managing people requires a different skill set. HR wants to build new supervisors' skills to manage people, purpose, and performance and set them up for success right from the start, but the training is quite extensive and expensive. How can HR best identify which supervisors need the training and which do not?

Conducting a person analysis will help identify individuals whose behaviors do not meet standard performance requirements and then provide them with appropriate training.

Avondale Industries' training programs all include various types of evaluation that are administered at different times. Why should the training and development office go to the added effort of evaluating its training programs in multiple ways?

Conducting evaluations in multiple ways allows the company to measure that behavioral objectives have been achieved and that results are an actual outcome of the training. Section 10.1 Although great disparities show up in the kinds of training evaluation reported in the literature, there is general agreement on the following three principles: Evaluation should be planned at the same time as the training program and should be closely tied to the behavioral objectives established for the program. Evaluation should use several types of criteria and should be conducted on multiple occasions. Evaluation should follow the most rigorous experimental design possible in order to establish cause and effect relationships between the training and any observed outcomes.

Avondale Industries engaged the services of a consultant to help company executives as they developed the company's strategy plan for the next five years. The consultant, an expert in strategy, insisted that, as part of his assignment, he be allowed to visit the different departments in company headquarters where he could meet with employees and question them about job challenges, company culture, and work climate. The consultant spent two days with frontline employees before meeting with the executives. Which of the following best explains why it was important that the consultant familiarize himself with the company this way?

Familiarizing himself with the company helped the consultant understand the challenges the company faced and helped him feel more comfortable about providing guidance and direction. Section 9.4 Finally, as discussed in Topic 7, adult learners are most receptive to training programs where the applicability of the learning to their lives is direct and obvious. Therefore, trainers and training designers should work hard during the training to make sure participants see applications to the job, and, possibly, to their lives off the job (e.g., in the case of interpersonal skills training). Positive transfer is also facilitated when trainees feel the trainer fully understands their situations and job challenges and how they feel about their work. This is most likely to happen when the trainer is from inside the organization. So, when an external firm or facilitator is chosen to conduct the training, it is important to do everything possible to familiarize the outside trainer with the culture, climate, and job challenges faced inside the organization.

Avondale Industries engaged the services of a consultant to help company executives as they developed the company's strategy plan for the next five years. The consultant, an expert in strategy, insisted that, as part of his assignment, he be allowed to visit the different departments in company headquarters where he could meet with employees and question them about job challenges, company culture, and work climate. The consultant spent two days with frontline employees before meeting with the executives

Having been in the trenches, the consultant was able to express the feelings and opinions of the frontline workers more effectively to the executives.

The training and development office at Avondale Industries planned their yearly schedule of trainings in October. Because the different sites were extremely busy at this time of the year, the training topics were selected by site HR managers. Over the course of the next year, feedback on training was quite negative, and transfer of new learning back to the job was poor. Which of the following statements best explains why the training and development office saw such poor results?

Not involving supervisors and employees in determining what type of training was needed resulted in the wrong type of training being offered and low motivation to participate

Avondale Industries spent thousands of dollars for three of its business analysts to attend an off-site week-long training program. Their boss's expectations were high for what the analysts would learn and what improvements they would bring back to the company. The analysts came back to the office, reported they had learned a lot, had a good time, and jumped right back into work, which was extremely busy at that time. Their boss, because he too was busy, did not follow up with the analysts until several months later, at which time he asked the analysts to report on how they had implemented what they had learned. They reported that they had made no changes at all and had forgotten most of what they learned. The boss, greatly disappointed, said he was not going to waste resources like that again. How might the analysts have done better with the transfer of learning?

The analysts should have set goals to transfer learning and monitored their own progress—identifying and overcoming obstacles for meeting those goals. They would have then been more successful in transferring learning back to their jobs. Section 9.4 Research suggests that employees can learn to set goals for themselves, formulate a contract with themselves for meeting those goals, accurately assess and monitor their own performance relative to the goals, and then self-administer rewards or punishments as appropriate. One study, for example, found that self-management instruction increased the amount of transfer in the training of supervisors on negotiation skills. The self-management instruction in this case involved presenting examples of previous self-management programs, teaching proper approaches to goal setting, identifying potential obstacles to success and planning ways to overcome these obstacles, self-monitoring of progress, and the use of self-reinforcement techniques to encourage transfer. Self-management is important because no matter what the training involves, the trainee is likely to encounter obstacles to transfer back on the job. These obstacles are many and varied, but include things like time pressure, inadequate or outdated equipment, lack of peer or supervisory support, and so on. Being prepared to handle these obstacles without getting discouraged is an important part of successful transfer of training.

Avondale Industries' unmanned vehicle site in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, has been operating for two years with great success. However, the unmanned vehicle site in Denver, Colorado, which has been in operation for the same amount of time, has struggled with high turnover and a higher level of defective parts. Managers and employees at both sites were surveyed, and the results showed that the manager in Fort Lauderdale was very effective at motivating her employees, addressed issues promptly and appropriately, and set challenging but realistic expectations. However, the employees in Denver reported that their manager struggled with issues stemming from lack of communication and lack of support. The manager wants to keep his job and is willing to participate in training. Which of the following statements best explains what the trainer can do to help the manager improve?

The trainer should establish learning objectives with the manager that focus on changing his behavior so he can better communicate and support his employees. Section 7.1 In the end, the establishment of learning objectives helps trainers remain focused on the end result of training: behavior change in pursuit of organizational success. Of course, at higher levels of an organization, the exact changes in behavior desired of trainees may be difficult to pinpoint, as jobs are unstructured and unprogrammed, and thus identification of desired job behaviors is difficult and time-consuming. For example, we may not always be sure exactly what behaviors we would like managers to change as a result of a seminar on interpersonal skills training. However, analysis may produce specific behavioral objectives, even at this level. These might include a reduction of interruptions of subordinates when they are asking questions or giving verbal praise more often. Another objective might be having managers inquire how they can be of assistance to subordinates more frequently.

Avondale Industries' training and development office met with upper management to determine what next year's needs and goals of the company were. The office then went to work on designing and developing training that would help the company train its employees to reach the company's goals. The team was enthusiastic about its training courses and sent out an email listing the schedule and topics, but when the first two training sessions were offered, most managers chose not to send any of their employees. Which statement best explains what the trainers should have done that would have helped increase participation?

The trainers should have clearly communicated the purpose of training and how it ties to the company's goals and vision.