Essay Sample on Investment in Employee Training and Development

Introduction

Employee training and development is an inevitable practice, which all employers need to emphasize on, to accomplish their business goals based on the workers' performance. Training refers to the practice where employees are engaged in a learning environment to improve their skills and understanding and enhance an organization to grow. This is the process whereby employees are helped to gain knowledge about their career interests, strengths, weaknesses, and values. Sung and Choi (2014) state that employees are motivated in their career through some training programs. Worker training and development is a basic requirement in organizations, especially the moment of changes and when hiring new workers at the workplace. For employees to effectively perform a certain task, they require the necessary understanding and skills concerning the role to be played. Training is also essential in enabling workers to know the business processes and their duty. The moment workers are trained to perform a specific job, they tend to like their roles, therefore enhancing the growth of an organization. Employee development refers to the aspect of worker growth on the basis of skills and experience. Thus, organizations need to invest regularly in training and development programs, which enhance workers' productivity.

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Investment in employee training and development is beneficial to both the employer and the employee. Training, development, and learning are very important in strategic human resource development equally with strategic human resource management (Valerio et al., 2014). The training and development programs allow employees to gain more knowledge and skills in their roles and they manage to perform well for the success of the organization. Management of employees becomes easier because employees do as they get expected in the organization. Through training and development, workers gained skills applied in creative-thinking, problem-solving, and innovativeness (Albrecht et al., 2015). Development, training, and learning of employees enhance the growth of an organization since employees make the performance of the firm profitable with effective management. Indeed, training and development gives a worker some confidence, which aids in one's ability to face uncertainties and make successful decisions, therefore proving his/her competitiveness in the job market. Besides, after going through training and development programs, a worker identifies their value in the company, therefore gaining a higher morale to perform and accomplish the intended goals.

Asfaw, et al. (2015) argues that training and development has to be organized as it enables employees to learn more about their duties and gain more skills associated with their work; hence their development. Moreover, given that workers need to keep on testing their achievements and the progress they make in their career development, training would enable them to identify how much they improve and manage their career in a disciplined way. The successful organizations like Samsung appropriately use their finances in the development and training programs, thus improved development. Through personal experience, it is evident that training helps a worker to learn different things associated with their duties and roles in a particular organization.

Hence, this literature review seeks to explore the insights and findings of different scholars about the effectiveness of training and development programs on employee effectiveness. The chapter looks at what researchers argue about all factors leading to effective training of workers in an organization, such as leadership, organizational structure, and organizational culture or work environment. These factors feature on successful employee effectiveness which mirrors their conduct in training. The literature review reflects on several reliable sources. Then, there will be the generation of a hypothesis to be proved in the entire thesis.

2.2 Factors Connecting the Employee Efficiency and Need for Training

2.2.1 Leadership

In worker training and development of efficiency, leadership is vital. Leadership is a paramount aspect of the improvement of employee efficiency, as it improves communication between the management team and workers and among the particular employees. An organizational leader is required to have the appropriate skills and capacities to guide subordinate workers towards the accomplishment of business goals, vision and mission, and purposes. Albrecht et al. (2015) noted that that through the practice of effective leadership styles, organizational managers lead the practices meant to enhance the achievement of business goals. For the workers to gain adequate knowledge regarding their tasks, there is a need for conscious, compassionate, sensitive, principled, and competent leaders. Leaders are vital in all companies, as they play the role of guiding, inspiring, and influencing workers towards the conduct of their duties (Weber, 2015). Through effective leadership, it becomes possible to develop workers for their efficiency. Leadership qualities are essential in effective worker training and development. Leadership forms part of employee efficiency given that, business managers play the role of motivating, influencing, and directing workers to the conduct of different activities, which enhance the performance of employees in the organization. It is clear that the international organizations that have good leadership tend to have highly developed employees on the basis of knowledge and skills. The accomplishment of the organizational mission, purposes, and goals depend on organizational leadership. Effective leadership leads to improved employee efficiency (Eby, et al., 2017). Leadership involves authority, the realization of laid out goals and it takes place in a faction setting. Individual leadership styles vary depending on the acquired training and development programs. Some leaders are predominantly compelling and transformational and boast of individual influence through which they connect workforce, while others exercise the individual, justifiable authority (Haider, et al., 2015). Leaders are distinguished through their diverse morals, approaches, viewpoints, and behavior, and at some point dependent upon the managerial, professional or institutional culture. For instance, the charismatic leadership of Steve Jobs at Apple Company led to the transformation and success of the organization across the world (Ramdhani, et al., 2017). Effective leadership is considered as a major aspect of the administration of an organization's repute in assessment with its competitors as well as the outside environment. Thus, successful leadership is critical and imperative in enhancing effective training and development of workers.

2.2.2 Organizational Structure

This is a vital factor in enhancing employee efficiency. Organizational structure refers to the arrangement of an organization in a hierarchical way. A strong organizational structure contributes towards the development of workers. Organizational structure entails the distribution of authority in a company from the top management to the junior leadership. There are different departments and divisions that are connected to each other from the senior one to the junior department or division. The company is led normally by the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) in the headquarters. There are other departments under the CEO, such as the finance, internal audit, and production, operation support unit, human resource division, and marketing and sales among others. The power hierarchy, the lower departments are normally answerable to the top unit (Hanaysha & Tahir, 2016).

The purpose of an organizational structure is to enhance the use of power and authority in different departments within an organization and making the delegation of duties to workers effective. An organizational structure is essential to maintain the effectiveness in the coordination of workers and enhancing their development through training programs (Noe, et al., 2014). Through an organizational structure, it becomes possible for a company to accomplish its worker training and growth goals.

Different types organizational structures are followed in organizations including functional, divisional and matrix. Functional organizational structures are organized based on the different functions within the company. Divisional structures follow the different products or projects. Matrix structures combine both functional and divisional structures in managing of the business operations. It is vital for a company to identify an effective organizational structure that would enhance the development of its employees. According to Asfaw et al. (2015), the company's selection of an organization structure determines its ability to make workers more knowledgeable and skilled. Through an organizational structure, it becomes possible for a firm to adopt the upcoming changes even in the workforce. The structural form of an organization is implemented and designed to help in the development of workers as per the organizational needs (Ramdhani et al., 2017). Nevertheless, the leadership process applied in a company is based on its organizational structure. Indeed, organizational structure determines the performance of a business based on employee effectiveness.

2.2.3 Organizational Culture

This is the working environment and is essential for employee efficiency. Organizational culture refers to the general behavior of those people who are part of the organization as well as the meaning of their actions in the organization (Coculova, 2017. These are the norms, values, symbols, visions, habits, beliefs as well as working language which give the organization a psychological and social environment. As a leader in an organization, one needs to express good relationship and experiences and they have to be conversant with the culture of the entire organization. Positive and effective organizational culture helps in the successful worker efficiency development. Organizational culture is termed as a pattern of various assumptions, norms, beliefs, traditions, values, artefacts, customs, rules, and structures being shared among members of a group with an aim of solving the external adaptation problem together with internal integration issues (Ramdhani et al., 2017). It is apparent that organizational culture provides a visible shape to the skills and knowledge of employees in implicit and explicit ways even when an organizational change occurs.

To enhance worker development, organizations require some adaptive culture for them to respond effectively to the changing and emerging environmental development. Organizational culture should provide the identifying values and attributes for the members to learn and appreciate them (Bell, et al., 2017). The strong organizational culture of companies is a culture that makes basic assumptions valid for new workers to perceive and feel like part of the company; hence the employee development. In successful companies, the organizational culture has values, basic assumptions together with artifacts that are used to communicate it also motivate workers. The organizational culture of a company needs to be strong because employees are involved in the leadership meetings and leaders lead by examples. It creates an operational environment in which every employee strives to achieve the goal that was set by the company (Cloutier, et al., 2015). Most of the time, the culture that exists in a company is deeply rooted, meanin...