Training Need Assessment and Provision Free-Samples for Students

Question: Prepare a Training andor Development Needs Assessment of an Organisational area that you are familiar with. Answer: Introduction: The assignment is a detailed study of assessment of training needs of the employees in a real life organisation. It presents before the Telstra board the need to train the customer care and the network employees to better their performances. The paper takes Telstra and points out areas of inefficiency of two departments, which are resulting in consumer grievances. The paper opens with a background study of the gap between the expectations of the stakeholders and the performance of Telstra. This requires a study of the training assessment need assessment of Telstra to understand the importance of performing according to stakeholder expectations. The subsequent section studies the external forces taking Telstra into account. It takes into account several articles from the leading editorials to authenticate the problems. Training and development need assessment forms the next section which also studies the need for the training keeping the articles in view. This is followed by an extrem ely small section merely mentioning the parties involved in the training needs assessment process. The study then selects observation as an appropriate method to assess training needs and evaluates it. The paper derives strength from theories of Kolb and other authors. There are also traces of organisation theories of Weber and Taylor in the work. The last section deals with the concept of organisation setting and takes the organisation setting of Telstra as an example. The paper has recommendations about assessing training needs through observation methods and its importance. The background: The reason for the training need assessment is the gap between the consumer expectation and actual performances delivered by Telstra customer service providers. Telstra is the biggest Australian telecommunication company, which provides mobile connection, internet services and online television viewing packages. The company has expanded its operations outside Australia into Europe and Asian countries as well. This international expansion brings it under impact of pressures from the external environmental forces like political, environmental and economical categories. The intense pressure of the consumers and government bodies on the operations of Telstra requires trained personnel who can provide uninterrupted service (De et al., 2013). Telstra has been the main service provider of telecommunication in the Australian backdrop. Such has been its work process in the past few years that people want to get associated with it. The customer base is gradually increasing for Telstra and to m aintain that in the best possible way, they need skilled people having best communication expertise. This is only possible through the conduction of trainings and assessing the need of the employees to better the service. Training need assessment: The training need assessment is the systematic process to identify the training needs of the employees. There are several processes to identify training needs like taking personal interviews, observation and meetings. The management and the senior managers participate in the training need assessment based on the business objectives, goals of the organisations and their achieved target. The training needs are assessed from time to time to ensure that the employees are efficient and capable of adapting to the changing expectations of the organisations. The analysis shows that government, an external and key stakeholder impacts Telstra by framing laws and codes of conduct for it and its competitors (aph.gov.au, 2017). The present day business environment needs employees to be skilful in ways of performing complicated tasks in the most efficient of ways along with being cost-effective and safe. At certain point of time, organizations need to arrange training for their employees when thei r performance are not resulting in the desired outcome. The classification of the needs for training is the foremost step in a uniform process of instructional plan. Analysis of a successful training need would identify the employee who requires training and the kind of training that is being required of. It is counter-productive in providing training to those individuals who does not require this or is being offered the wrong sort of training. Analysis of training needs assists in putting the resources of training to the best possible use. Types of training needs: The plan of the project is to assess the training needs of the employees at Telstra Communications Limited. There are several types of needs of training within an organization context. The management needs to determine the exact need or purpose of the training aligning with the need of the organization and the ways it would benefit both the employees and the organization in delivering quality service to employees. It is significant in understanding what exactly the organization is trying to accomplish, which in case of Telstra is offering a service that would be uninterrupted in nature. In case of person analysis, the management mainly deals with the probable participants and the instructors involved in the overall process. In this analysis, certain important questions are being answered like who needs training, what is their style of learning, existing knowledge level and certain other things. Another training need that can be taken into account is the task analysis. This mainly considers the job in hand and the requirements for performing the same. This analysis helps in seeking the specification of the key duties and the requirement of level of skill. This helps in ensuring that the developed training would be including relevant associations to the job context. For training suitability analysis the management generally analyses whether training is the only desired solution to the issue that has cropped up within the organization. Training can be considered one of the many solutions to the problems of employment, but not always the best one. Therefore, it is important from the organizations perspective to establish whether training would be effective in its convention. Organizations need to check the factor of cost benefit analysis. Effective training leads to return on the investment the company has made in scheduling of the training. The return value needs to be greater than the initial level of investment from the company. Resources Required: The department needs to consult with the HR departments to get the resources like finance, personnel and machinery, if required. The departmental heads first need to observe the employees and identify areas of weaknesses. Then they need to ask the HR department to provide them with the resources and assistance for training. Vodafone, the British telecommunication assesses the training needs of its employees and trains them to enhance their efficiency (vodafone.com, 2017). The concerned department should inform the start date and the end date in writing to the trainees, the departmental heads, the apex management and the HR department well in advance. However, the main resource of the training program is the training room that has all the equipments of an effecting training program, a trainer who is well versed with the objective of the training and the group of people who requires training for bettering their overall performance. All the people who are associated with the process of training should be well aware of the training need and objectives the things that the company wants to achieve through the successful completion of the overall training process.l completion of the overall training process. Feedback of the project managers: The project managers should assess the monitor and evaluate performance of the employees at work against set targets. The project manager must judge the performance based on organisational need analysis, person analysis and task analysis (Hunt, 2017). The analysis should be done on customer service offering power as well (Chang, 2017). The employees to be assessed must know that the process is to assess their training needs to offer them training to better their performance. It will only better their capabilities to compete with players like Vodafone (Coyne, 2017). Employees should be let known where they are lacking and why they need training and what benefit would they cater from such a training program. Understanding the overall process would make things a lot easier for both the management and the employees in successfully going through with the scheduled training. It has been found that employees feel de-motivated when being send to training, signifying their perception that tra ining is for poor performers. That is not always the case, as training provides more opportunity to learn and understand things in a friendly environment. The motivation level, attitude and skills of the employees will be judged. The need is to assess the training needs and create a positive and effective learning environment. The assessment can be made more fruitful and accurate by using material, processes, feedback and programme administration. The training assessor should also encourage peer participation and e-learning method to make the process more productive. Training and Development needs assessment: The above three articles point out that Telstra needs to train its employees dealing with network and customer complaints. The third article clearly pointed out the failure of the customer care department of the company to handle customer grievances. The fourth article pointed out the concern from the TIO which clearly pointed out the potential threat to the market position of Telstra. The TIO pointed out that Vodafone has bettered its services and the number of complaints against the company has fallen. This clearly shows that the competitors are strengthening their market positions to provide Telstra a stiffer challenge. The failure to provide with uninterrupted network and restore blockages questions the commitment of the company to serve consumers, one of the most important stakeholders category. The increasing consumer issues and the failure of the customer service department make the consumers switch their service providers. A reduction in consumer base will start affecting the revenue generation of the company, which will in turn reduce the market position. Given the strong impact of external stakeholders like government and mighty competitor like Vodafone, the company must train and upgrade its network and customer care employees. The company needs to train these people to ensure stakeholder satisfaction and retention of strong market position. An understanding has to created among both the departments along with proper communication that would make things more easy. Proper communication and cooperation would lead to generate possible solutions in dealing with the lessening of the customer issu es. A big company like Telstra certainly has the capability of finding solutions to issues like this. Reason for undertaking training need assessment: The reason for training needs assessment is to find out performance problems, failure to adapt to new market situations and customer service gap which in the long will affect the company. The failure of the network personnel to establish uninterrupted network facility and manage stoppages is liable to result in loss of consumers. They need be trained at functional and departmental level to manage heavy information traffic. Their training needs should incorporate training in new technology to increase their efficiency and performance. Telstra caters to a huge consumer base which necessitates it to have a customer assistance department which is capable of handling several types of customer complaints and providing them with practical solutions. The customer service department receives complaints related to network and service issues. Hence, they have to work in coordination with the network personnel. The training need here is to train both the departments on modern technology to handle consumer problems so that they can provide uninterrupted service. Participants: The training needs assessment and subsequent training should happen at three stages and engage three levels. The senior managers, middle level managers and the training and development practitioners should participate in the training. One main training need: The main training and development need is to train the two groups of personnel to cooperate with each other. The need is to help them to provide better service to the customers and handle their complaints to provide practical solutions. Cooperation and coordination are important factors for any group within an organization for bettering their service to customers. Lack of these sometimes jeopardize the overall organizational working process and provides an opportunity to the rival companies in marching ahead. Customers do have lot of options these days, which does not provide the companies with any window for relaxation or miscommunication within the internal departments. A little slip up in the process would lead to tarnishing of the goodwill created by Telstra over the years. The flow of information should be smooth so that every employee related to Telstra should know and understand the path on which the organization is moving. Recommendations: The management should first observe the performances of the network personnel and customer care employees. They must point out the gap between their expectations and the achieved level of performance. This model of the Learning Cycle (LC) was first proposed by Kolb and is used effectively in real life organisations to assess training needs (Kolb, 2014). The customer service employees should be provided training on modern communication tools to cater to the customer complaint in a more efficient way. For example, they should be trained to accept complaints over the phone and internet and to provide solution to both the types. The network employees should be trained to handle heavy network traffic and restore the system as early as possible in case of an interruption. They should trained in the modern telecommunication technology like new software to handle a huge network of data. They can also be trained to locate stoppages and act promptly to solve issues. Method of need assessment: Observation: The supervisors or a designated person should observe the employees of the two departments and measure their performances against the targets. This will allow the employees to continue their work which ensure continuous productivity. The observer compared to personal interview or questionnaire method can get to an actual view of their deficiency. He can also judge the level of coordination between the two departments. This justifies that observation method is the best method to assess the training needs. Assessment of Observation method: Advantages: Reliable data- The data obtained from observation is reliable and can be counted on for action. The observer observes the trainees at work and collects the data, hence collects authentic and actionable data. Direct practice for action- The employee demonstrates the actual performance which makes it easier for the observer to find out the gap in his performance. He can suggest or implement to improve the performance of the employees which saves both time and cost. Immediate results- The identification of performance gap helps the observer to take immediate actions in the workplace itself. The employees in question can rectify their mistakes and errors to better their performances. Disadvantage: The observer should be good and experienced to evaluate the performance of the employees. He should be able to recognise the faults of the employees and point out ways to improve them. Silberman Biech (2015) in their theory state that training activities should be designed to facilitate rectification of present performance gaps and increase productivity. Observation technique allows the observer to observe the employee and recognise their training needs. This also helps them to plan the training programmes to be followed. For example, in case of Telstra the network and customer care employees need to take both management and technical training. The above evaluation shows that the trainer can form an appropriate training schedule if he uses the observation methods. Kolb (2014) in his model of learning cycle (LC) described that work experience helps in learning while working. This proves that observation is the best way to assess training needs of the employees. Possible outcomes of improper training assessment: Goetsch Davis (2014) in his literature states that quality is a state where the products and services meet customer needs to increase their value. Kum, Cowden Karodia (2014) state that training is indispensible to get an efficient and target oriented workforce. This shows the need of accurate assessment of training needs. The possible outcomes of improper training needs will once lead to lack of efficiency and productivity. An article shows that the outrage of customers against Telstra is increasing due to its lack of services (Carter, 2017). Customers these days want better service quality along with new services that would benefit them immensely. Organizations like Telstra having huge customer base should from time to time come up with new strategies and policies for attracting new customers and keep satisfying the old ones. It would not take much time for the customers in swapping over to a different service provider if they are not happy or satisfied with the present. Organisational setting of Telstra: The organisational setting of Telstra is extremely complex because it is an international company. The board of directors is headed by the CEO who controls CFO, COO, Marketing Media, Procurement, Sustainability, Secretary, Channel Management, Business, International and new business and other second line management. The third level management departments consists of departments of critical importance which is report to the second level managers. For example, the MA, Treasurer, IR, Strategic finance and Telstra Retail directly report to the CFO. The organisation structure of Telstra is empowered to bring about continuous innovation and ensure high quality products. The structure also reflects the international presence of the company and has departments assigned with the responsibility of dealing with international business (theofficialboard.com, 2017). The companys business structure consists of eight subsidiaries which add to the complex but powerful organisation setting. The organisation structure of Telstra has the strong bureaucratic style of Weber which allows the heads of the departments to assess the training needs of the employees. The company manages its human resources aligned to the business needs in a scientific manner. The managers follow participative modus operandi to ensure that the employees get involved in the decision making process. This makes it easier for to observe the employee and recognise their training needs. Conclusion: The assessment of training needs is a very important way to recognise the deficiency in a companys work force. The need of the company requires the employees to update themselves with new technology and methods. Failure to do so results in inefficient performance and customer grievances which lead to competitive loss in the long run. The supervisors should observe their subordinates at work to recognise any training need. They must assess the training needs of the employees accurately to ensure that the latter receives the right training. The training needs of the employees should be regularised because it helps them to deliver high quality products as per customer expectation. This helps the company earn huge revenue and strengthen its market position. References: 8681.0 - Information Media and Telecommunications Services, Australia, 2013-14. (2017). Abs.gov.au. Retrieved 9 May 2017, from https://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats%5Cabs@.nsf/0/4177B59603527529CA257E70001BE9E6?Opendocument Carter, L. (2017). Telstra outage continues as internet service complaints rise. abc.net.au. 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