What is the main challenge faced by HR Managers with respect to Training & Development during an economic downturn?

ANS: Based on my recent experience over the last two years, the No.1 problem has to be finance. When you as a Company are struggling to meet the monthly salary bill, spending money of T&D is way down the Financial Directors list. The challenge then becomes to harness your internal Staff skills and develop in house trainning lead by the staff for the staff. This takes time and effort on behalf of the Managers presenting & preparing the training which makes it even harder in the current high pressure environments to deliver a 12 hour work day in 10 hours. I know because I spent the last 2 years trying to implement and manage such a programme.

left by employees who were let go. Thus, there is no allowance for employees to take time off from work and attend trainings. Sending them will interrupt their workflow.

It is very easy for training to fall off the agenda even in the good times. Therefore in my view the challenge is to make sure that training delivers appropriate solutions at a price the business can afford. But then again is that really much of a change from the usual challenge? Regretfully, HR is the first 'cost center' (pls notice the concept, opossed to what it should be: an 'investment center') to suffer from budget cut-offs. Then, reducing the availability of external courses. This leaves us with the need for looking into people inside our organisation able to lecture, to transmit knowledge to their peers; again, this shortcut called internal training turns 'nope' since no one has the time neither to attend neither to teach.

All a bit obvious I know but key particularly in the Gulf Region currently.

I am not an HR Manager, but based on my experience and observation, Training, most of the time, is viewed as an expense by the company. Because of economic downturn, companies are trying to reign in their expenses and Training is not given a priority and negatively affected. Downsizing, which is a result of economic downturn results in retained employees handling jobs that are

Please, take into account that some brave companies, those considering training as an investment, will carry on with the perfect external-internal training mix How about the rise in contract talent? Managing contingent workers is something that needs to be re-examined. In this economy, our business models have all been questioned- Here is a webcast from The Human Capital Institute that will feature HR leaders from three organizations, each of

whom have developed and currently lead successful contract talent management programs. Outcomes of HCI's recent research into the ROI in contract talent management will be introduced as well as a panel of senior practitionersAvailable funds would be an obvious answer, however, if an HR professional is willing to tie the downside of no training to turnover and lower performance, moral etc. a useful ROI can be obtained for management to realize the value. During economics down turns HR professionals may also have to push themselves to be the source from where that training flows - i.e. research and develop the training and resource tools needed for their teams instead of relying on vendors to deliver that content - and what a wonderful development opportunity for them! Much of our training is internal at the moment with very few approvals given for external training. Training is an excellent employee engagement tool especially when lay offs are occuring all around employees. Training should be much more to the forefront in times like these to make employees realize they are valued and provide them with at least a bit of motivation. Hi Oliver, our budget for training and development has remained unchanged, we had a team building event last year and we have a budget in place this year for another event, however we have not yet planned or booked an event as we are in the process of moving to a new office and having a new GM, therefore the reason not to have a team

building to date is not having the time to sit down, plan & organise an event. We have implemented and rolled out a lot of new training courses in Sudan and the economic downturn has not affected T&D, in fact the company has started a new L&D department within the group and recruited a few L&D specialists. The main challenge faced by Sudan is probably the lack of trainers and internal specialists who are unwilling to become trainers to deliver specific courses. Another challenge would be the requirement to implement E learning courses so they can be accessed by Dubai, Malaysia and Beijing. At the moment we only have 1 E learning training course available but we are in the process of implementing new E learning courses. How to zero in very quickly on aspects of business performance that can either be leveraged or improved with the training teams involvement whatever makes business sense and is sold as an easy, direct and practical solution to business managers.

The important and not urgent challenges are:

1. Selling the notion of moving training hours towards zero and learning towards infinity to the rest of training team. Business heads love this idea; its the HR/Training folks who resist the most. And I am not talking shifting to e-learning though that can be a first step.

The reason CFOs and CEOs are not so sold on training is because they know for a fact that learning and training hours (read costs) are not directly proportional. Check out some of the very successful people in your company or others; you should find that they have spent lesser hours in a training room than the average or the poor performer.

think that the main challenge is to get the understanding and belief of the role of T&D in the overall performance of the organization as well as the individuals, and not only and investment that has no return. If the HR manager succeeds in clearing this point with the executive management, then all what comes after is just process Actually this is the time that is being utilised by HR to impart training to enhance skills and fill the competency gaps.

2. Giving up old world best practices of employee TNAs and stuff to move more towards developing learning strategies to improve business performance. E.g. if you have to improve productivity on the processing floor, what is it that needs to be done? Dont bother with Knowledge and Skills, they come much later. Improved processes, better management practices and smarter recognition plans will provide a more long lasting cure than sending them to training programs and assessment centers would.

Challenges that are faced are not pertaining to this specific downturn period but are more or less existent through out. These are: 1). Cost involved 2). Time of the employees especially those at the front end 3). Evaluating current proficiency levels 4). Measuring effectiveness of training 5). Ensuring implementation of objectives learnt

Of course you should have hired the best talent in the first place. But realistically the talent that you do have in your average company is not the worst. We just dont leverage the talent well all the time.

Hope this adds to your dissertation this topic has a lot more than worry about lost budgets. And like Iain Hasting says, does Training need to have a large budget?

Role of training and development in person and organizational development:

As with this website as a whole, this training guide is oriented chiefly around

what's good for people, rather than chiefly what's profitable for organizations.

traditionally 'belongs' to the trainer or the organization.

The reason for this is that in terms of learning, training and development, what's good for people is good for the organizations in which they work. What's good for people's development is good for organizational performance, quality, customer satisfaction, effective management and control, and therefore profits too.

This is a significant difference in attitude, explained in more detail on the training or learning? page.

Training should be about whole person development - not just transferring skills, the traditional interpretation of training at work.

This is central to a fairly balanced Psychological Contract in employment organizations.

Whatever your role and responsibility, you might not immediately be able to put great new emphasis on 'whole person development'.

Profit is an outcome of managing and developing people well. People and their development enable profit. Enable people and you enable profit.

Organizations which approach training and development from this standpoint inevitably foster people who perform well and progress, and, importantly, stay around for long enough to become great at what they do, and to help others become so.

Being realistic, corporate attitudes and expectations about what 'training' is and does cannot be changed overnight, and most organisations still see 'training' as being limited to work skills, classrooms and powerpoint presentations. However, when you start to imagine and think and talk about progressive attitudes to developing people beyond traditional skills training - for example:

Training is a very commonly used word, so it features heavily on this page, but learning is in many ways a better way to think of the subject, because learning 'belongs' to the learner, whereas training

'enabling learning' 'facilitating meaningful personal development' 'helping people to identify and achieve their own personal potential'

then you will surely begin to help the organisation (and CEO) to see and accept these newer ideas about what types of 'learning and development' really work best and produces class-leading organizations.

N.B. The UK (consistent with Europe) Employment Equality (Age) Regulations 2006, effective from 1st October 2006, make it unlawful to discriminate against anyone on the grounds of age. This has several implications for training, documents used, and the training of trainers and facilitators. For further guidance about the effects of Age Equality and Discrimination in training and developing people, (and in other aspects of managing people), see the Age Diversity information, which quite naturally relates to the subject of 'wholeperson' development, given its connections with diversity and taking proper care of people.

Conscious Competence learning model :Teachers and trainers commonly assume trainees to be at stage 2, and focus effort towards achieving stage 3, when often trainees are still at stage 1. The trainer assumes the trainee is aware of the skill existence, nature, relevance, deficiency, and benefit offered from the acquisition of the new skill. Whereas trainees at stage 1 unconscious incompetence - have none of these things in place, and will not be able to address achieving conscious competence until they've become consciously and fully aware of their own incompetence. This is a fundamental reason for the failure of a lot of training and teaching.

Learning evaluation methods - including training assessment tools

Kirkpatrick's learning evaluation model brilliant and simple Kolb's model therefore works on two levels - a four-stage cycle:

There are very many materials on this website with particular relevance to the design and delivery and management of learning and development. Here are some examples, which will lead you to others, aside from the general guidance on this page:

Concrete Experience - (CE) Reflective Observation - (RO) Abstract Conceptualization - (AC) Active Experimentation - (AE)

Experiential learning - and guide to facilitating experiential learning activities

Role-playing - principles and guide

Kolb's Learning styles model

Training or learning? - facilitating learning - rather than imposing training - ideas on whole-person development.

Importantly however, the most effective way to develop people is quite different from conventional skills training, which let's face it many employees regard quite negatively. They'll do it of course, but they won't enjoy it much because it's about work, not about themselves as people. The most effective way to develop people is instead to enable learning and personal development, with all that this implies.

The group selection recruitment/assessment centre design guide also contains some useful information for training and assessment design, especially the need to establish a clear specification (development/assessment criteria) before beginning to design training concepts, content, delivery and methods of assessment, incidentally illustrated by this outline process diagram:

So, as soon as you've covered the basic work-related skills training that is much described in this section - focus on enabling learning and development for people as individuals - which extends the range of development way outside traditional work skills and knowledge, and creates far more exciting, liberating, motivational opportunities - for people and for employers.

training, coaching, mentoring, training and learning design - developing people

Rightly organisations are facing great pressure to change these days - to facilitate and encourage whole-person development and fulfilment - beyond traditional training.

Conventional 'training' is required to cover essential work-related skills, techniques and knowledge, and much of this section deals with taking a positive progressive approach to this sort of traditional 'training'.

As with this website as a whole, this training guide is oriented chiefly around what's good for people, rather than chiefly what's profitable for organizations.

The reason for this is that in terms of learning, training and development, what's good for people is good for the organizations in which they work. What's good for people's development is good for organizational performance, quality, customer satisfaction, effective management and control, and therefore profits too.

and developing people, (and in other aspects of managing people), see the Age Diversity information, which quite naturally relates to the subject of 'whole-person' development, given its connections with diversity and taking proper care of people.

This is central to a fairly balanced Psychological Contract in employment organizations.

Profit is an outcome of managing and developing people well. People and their development enable profit. Enable people and you enable profit.

Organizations which approach training and development from this standpoint inevitably foster people who perform well and progress, and, importantly, stay around for long enough to become great at what they do, and to help others become so.

There are many different training and development methods. On-the-job training, informal training, classroom training, internal training courses, external training courses, on-the-job coaching, life-coaching, mentoring, training assignments and tasks, skills training, product training, technical training, behavioural development training, role-playing and role-play games and exercises, attitudinal training and development, accredited training and learning, distance learning - all part of the training menu, available to use and apply according to individual training needs and organisational training needs.

N.B. The UK (consistent with Europe) Employment Equality (Age) Regulations 2006, effective from 1st October 2006, make it unlawful to discriminate against anyone on the grounds of age. This has several implications for training, documents used, and the training of trainers and facilitators. For further guidance about the effects of Age Equality and Discrimination in training

Training is also available far beyond and outside the classroom. More importantly, training - or learning, to look at it from the trainee's view - is anything offering learning and developmental experience. Training and learning development includes aspects such as: ethics and morality; attitude and behaviour; leadership and determination, as well as skills and knowledge.

Development isn't restricted to training it's anything that helps a person to grow, in ability, skills, confidence, tolerance, commitment, initiative, inter-personal skills, understanding, self-control, motivation (see the motivation theory section), and more.

team, or your organization. If you want to make a difference, think about what really helps people to change. All supervisors and managers should enable and provide training and development for their people - training develops people, it improves performance, raises morale; training and developing people increases the health and effectiveness of the organization, and the productivity of the business.

If you consider the attributes of really effective people, be they leaders, managers, operators, technicians; any role at all, the important qualities which make good performers special are likely to be attitudinal. Skills and knowledge, and the processes available to people, are no great advantage. What makes people effective and valuable to any organization is their attitude.

Attitude includes qualities that require different training and learning methods. Attitude stems from a person's mind-set, belief system, emotional maturity, selfconfidence, and experience. These are the greatest training and development challenges faced, and there are better ways of achieving this sort of change and development than putting people in a classroom, or indeed by delivering most sorts of conventional business or skills training, which people see as a chore.

The leader's ethics and behaviour set the standard for their people's, which determines how productively they use their skills and knowledge. Training is nothing without the motivation to apply it effectively. A strong capability to plan and manage skills training, the acquisition of knowledge, and the development of motivation and attitude, largely determines how well people perform in their jobs.

Training - and also enabling learning and personal development - is essential for the organisation. It helps improve quality, customer satisfaction, productivity, morale, management succession, business development and profitability.

This is why training and learning must extend far beyond conventional classroom training courses. Be creative, innovative, and open-minded, and you will discover learning in virtually every new experience, whether for yourself, your

As regards conventional work-related training planning, and training itself, these are step-by-step processes - see and

download a free training process diagram. More free training tools are available for download at the free training tools and resources page.

New employees also need to understand the organisation's mission, goals and philosophy; personnel practices, health and safety rules, and of course the job they're required to do, with clear methods, timescales and expectations.

See for example the training planner and training/lesson plan calculator tool, which are templates for planning and organising the delivery of job skills training and processes, and transfer of knowledge and policy etc. See also the training induction checklist and planner tool.

Use these tools and processes to ensure that essential work-related skills, techniques, and knowledge are trained, but remember after this to concentrate most of your 'training' efforts and resources on enabling and facilitating meaningful learning and personal development for people. There is no reason to stop at work-related training. Go further to help people grow and develop as people.

Managers must ensure induction training is properly planned - an induction training plan must be issued to each new employee, so they and everyone else involved can see what's happening and that everything is included. You must prepare and provide a suitable induction plan for each new starter. Here's a free induction training checklist.

Having said this, we do need to start with the essentials, for example induction training for new starters. Induction Training is especially important for new starters. Good induction training ensures new starters are retained, and then settled in quickly and happily to a productive role. Induction training is more than skills training. It's about the basics that seasoned employees all take for granted: what the shifts are; where the notice-board is; what's the routine for holidays, sickness; where's the canteen; what's the dress code; where the toilets are.

These induction training principles are necessarily focused on the essential skills and knowledge for a new starter to settle in and to begin to do their job. However there is great advantage in beginning to address personal development needs, wishes, opportunities, particular strengths, abilities, talent, etc., during or very soon after the induction process. The sooner the better.

An organisation needs to assess its people's skills training needs - by a variety of methods - and then structure the way that the training and development is to be delivered, and managers and supervisors play a key role in helping this process.

People's personal strengths and capabilities - and aims and desires and special talents (current and dormant) - also need to be assessed, so as to understand, and help the person understand, that the opportunities for their development and achievement in the organisation are not limited by the job role, or the skill-set that the organisation inevitably defines for the person.

As early as possible, let people know that their job role does not define their potential as a person within or outside the organisation, and, subject to organisational policy, look to develop each person in a meaningful relevant way that they will enjoy and seek, as an individual, beyond the job role, and beyond work requirements.

Are your own your own skills adequate? Do you need help or training in any important areas necessary to train, coach, mentor others? What is your own style? How do you you communicate? How do you approach tasks? What are your motives? These all affect the way you see and perform see the training, coaching or mentoring role, and the way that you see and relate to the person that your are coaching, or training, or mentoring. Your aim is to help the other person learn and develop - not to create another version of yourself. When you understand yourself, you understand how you will be perceived, how best to communicate, and how best to help others grow and learn and develop.

If possible 'top-up' this sort of development through the provision of mentoring and facilitative coaching (drawing out - not putting in), which is very effective in producing excellent people. Mentoring and proper coaching should be used alongside formal structured training anyway, but this type of support can also greatly assist 'whole-person development', especially where the mentor or coach is seen as a rolemodel for the person's own particular aspirations.

And it's vital you understand the other person's style and personality too - how they prefer to learn - do they like to read and absorb a lot of detail, do they prefer to be shown, to experience themselves by trial and error? Knowing the other person's preferred learning style helps you deliver the training in the most relevant and helpful way. It helps you design activities and tasks that the other person will be more be more comfortable doing, which ensures a better result, quicker. Various models and tests are available to help understand learning styles look at the Kolb model. Look at multiple intelligences and the VAK learning model and free learning style tests.

It's important that as a manager you understand yourself well before you coach, or train or mentor others:

See also the Johari Window model

johari window four regions

(what is known by the person about him/herself and is also known by others open area, open self, free area, free self, or 'the arena' what is unknown by the person about him/herself but which others know - blind area, blind self, or 'blindspot' what the person knows about him/herself that others do not know - hidden area, hidden self, avoided area, avoided self or 'facade' what is unknown by the person about him/herself and is also unknown by others unknown area or unknown self and adapted theory unknown area or unknown self

it's a useful explanation of the importance of open communications and strong mutual understanding among staff in organizations, and for all situations where people work together. It's also a useful model for personal awareness and self-development.)