Learning And Development: The Need Of The Hour

The corporate arena has been under constant evaluation due to its volatile nature, which makes the ability of un-learning and re-learning as a key requirement in any manager. HR recruiters have designed tests to scrutinize the learning ability of a candidate, and base their recruitment process around the results so obtained. Multiple colleges have included Talent Management as a part of their curriculum, looking at the increasing need for trainers.

Learning and Development is an arm of Human Resources that deals with identifying training needs and formulating training strategies that are in sync with the needs. In the wake of changing consumer choices and cut-throat competition, every manager is expected to fabricate a plan of action that is customized for a situation. Such fabrication is only possible when the manager has in-depth knowledge about the up and coming things in the market, and the proficiency to see right through them.

Usually, L&D is practiced in companies with major hierarchical divisions – to cater to the learning needs of each department, but looking at the current market scenario, medium-scaled business agencies must implement such a practice as soon as feasible.

Training is an expensive process. There goes a lot into training a set of employees, and if such an expenditure is not met with satisfactory returns, then the whole process could seem futile. If you are in the field of L&D, then it is your top-most job to identify if the training needs of an organization before plunging into the process.

The training needs analysis can be broken down into three parts:

• From the Organizational Point-of-View,
• From a Job Role Point-of-View,
• From an Individual’s Point-of-View.

These three stages, chronologically, represent a consolidated need for training. One must always begin with the organizational need for training and the benefits of holding the training.

Now, as a new trainer one might have a plethora of questions about how to hold effective training sessions? To answer this question, we must go back to the fundamentals of Management – everything begins with Planning. Once you’ve identified a need for training, you need to plan the flow of the training down to the flow of each session included in the training. Here are a few basic steps that various organizations follow to ensure effective training sessions

1) Formulation of a Training Curriculum:

Whether it is technical training or non-technical, formulating a curriculum is like creating a blueprint. It enables a trainer to decide the flow of the training and also intimates the trainees about the course. So after you have surveyed – in the form of a test or consent – you must begin formulating the curriculum based on the results obtained.

2) Training Module:

You can’t have a learning session without reading material. For effective sessions, having a printed manual enables the trainees’ to increase their capabilities which increases their productivity. Years later, these handbooks will also help them recapitulate on all that they have learned within the training. A training module can be interactive with some work that the trainees’ could solve after the session, on their own.

3) Pre-assessment and Post-Assessment:

After need analysis comes employee level analysis. A pre-assessment is conducted before the training and a post-assessment is conducted after the training. This enables a trainer to set a standard based on the results of the pre-assessment. Later, when the training comes to an end, a trainer can always compare the two results.

The aforementioned is a basic approach to training. Learning and Development are as wide as the ocean itself, and there are a plethora of things that are not yet discovered. If you are an active member of the corporate arena and with a substantial employee base, L&D is the need for your need of the hour. You want your employees to be up-to-date with everything up and coming in the market.