Training in Organizations

Training refers to activities designed to facilitate the acquisition of knowledge, skills, and attitudes relevant to performance in an occupation. Training is a major investment for many organizations, with developmental activities occurring at all levels of the organization and at various career stages. A major goal of training is often to improve organizational outcomes (e.g., efficiency, costs, turnover), but individuals engaged in these developmental opportunities also experience benefits that may extend beyond their current positions. Thus, workplace training can play an important role in individual career development.

Training activities in the workplace can range from informal exchanges among employees to formal programs developed or purchased by the organization. For example, for some jobs most of what is learned comes from informal on-the-job training, where more experienced employees take a primary role in explaining how to complete tasks. Informal training can also take the form of mentorship relationships that develop naturally rather than through formal organizational programs. On the other hand, many jobs require more formal workplace training, involving scheduled training programs or assigned mentorship roles.

Training also varies widely in terms of content and specificity. Many training programs focus on job-specific knowledge and skills. These programs are designed to teach newcomers how to perform the job or to update the knowledge and skills of more experienced employees given changes in the job. Other training programs have a broader focus and thus are more likely to result in individual capabilities that may apply across jobs. For instance, programs focusing on communication skills, diversity issues, managerial competencies, or executive development may enhance not only short-term performance, but also longer-term career development. This type of broader impact may also be seen with training programs explicitly designed to improve employee career management. These career self-management training programs are linked to an increasing trend in which organizations are taking a less central role in employee career management. The programs are intended to encourage employees to take greater responsibility for their career progression and to develop relevant behaviors such as those related to developmental feedback seeking (e.g., seeking feedback on performance) and job mobility preparedness (e.g., being proactive in identifying new career opportunities).

Training programs are more likely to be successful when developed, implemented, and evaluated using a systematic approach. Although a number of systematic approaches to training may be useful, a well-established general framework that often serves as the basis for formal employee development is the instructional systems design approach. This approach specifies an integrated set of processes for the systematic development, delivery, evaluation, and continuous improvement of instructional programs. Thus, the major components of this model consist of needs assessment, training design and delivery, and evaluation.