Managing the Training Function

Using Instructional Technology and Systems Concepts

Christopher Gane

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781351719469
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

The effective development of human resources within the organisation is one of the most powerful contributions to the long-term growth and survival of the enterprise. This systematic and practical approach to training principles and practice, first published in 1972, provides a unifying framework as a guide to problem solving and action by executives. This step-by-step account, illustrated by case histories, shows how to apply the principles to analysing and solving varied training problems within organisations. This title will be of interest to managers, executives, and students of business studies and human resource management.

Chapter 1

The Job of the Training Manager – seven steps

Though the job of the training man appears to vary so much, depending on the size of company he works for, and the kind of business they are in, it is the theme of this book that certain common elements run through it, and that the main job can be analysed into a cycle with seven main steps, as we shall see.

First of all, who is the Training Manager? This job title is growing more common, especially in the larger firms. Diverse Holdings, for example, advertised for a Training Manager in these terms:

… the successful candidate will be responsible to the Personnel Director for the organization and administration of the complete training function, covering a wide range of occupations. He must be capable of advising and consulting all levels of management in identifying training requirements and personnel problems, and in formulating and implementing training policies …

In this book the term ‘Training Manager’ is reserved for a role rather than a specific job. The role is that of the person or persons who decide on the detailed allocation of resources, to achieve the objectives of the training function. This role may have any number of titles – it may be discharged by a line manager or a personnel manager or a full-time training man; the incumbent may be called Senior Training Officer or Training Advisor, or Chief Instructor, or Head of Education, or Employee Resourcing Manager or Head of Education and Training. He may only be in the Training Manager role part-time, combining it with the roles of Personnel Manager or General Manager. The role may be, and often is, split between two or more managers. Large companies may have Training Managers for each category of employment, for example, Manager of Apprentice Training or Manager of Management Development. But whatever the job title if, given resources allocated to training, a man makes the strategic and tactical decisions which determine how the resources are used to achieve the objectives of the training function, then, for our purposes, he is in the role of Training Manager, and this book is an attempt to help him. Note that, by this definition, the Training Manager does not allocate resources to training. That is the Chief Executive’s job, helped and persuaded, of course, by the Training Manager. Nor does the Training Manager generate the objectives of the training function; they arise because of the requirements of operating management. Note also that every company has a Training Manager, whether they recognize it or not. Even if the Chief Executive takes the decision that training will consist of sending his son to Harvard, he is in the Training Manager’s role while making that decision.

THE SEVEN STEPS OF THE TRAINING MANAGER’S JOB

It seems useful to think of the Training Manager’s job as having seven basic steps which form a cycle. These steps are repeated again and again with variations (see opposite).

The seven steps are summarized here, and in later chapters each one is examined in greater detail.

Step 1 Define the problems

The training function may be fed problems by line management (‘Lay on a course for foremen on cost control’) and required to solve them, or line management may invite the training function to say what problems it thinks it should be dealing with (‘Let me know what you think we ought to be doing about technician training’), or training management may go out and persuade line management to let them tackle some problems (‘We think the company ought to revamp its graduate training scheme’).

Often, if not usually, these problems are not what they seem. Before they can be analysed (and this book will have a lot to say about methods of analysis), they must be stated properly. As we shall see, a well-stated problem is a problem half solved, more often than not.

There are also problems which the training department set themselves, without reference to line management. This is a risky thing to do because the training function is always in danger of drifting out of touch with business reality. The Training Manager should only do work ‘on spec.’ with reluctance.

Step 2 Arrange the problems in order of priority

This is a difficult but important step. Line management may indicate which problems are crucial and which are not, but often the Training Manager must try to work out for himself what are the relative payoffs, in different areas, in the short and long term for the company. A continual dialogue is needed between training management and line management to establish and modify priorities. Obviously, a superb operator-training programme based on extensive skills analysis is a fine thing, but if operator training is eleventh on the list of priorities, the resources might be put to better use elsewhere.

One of the possible breakdowns in understanding between training management and line management occurs when training management solve, with superb efficiency, a low-priority problem. Training management feel hard done by because their work appears unappreciated, and line management feel that they are keeping a bunch of long-haired educators with no grasp of commercial reality. More of this later.

Step 3 Taking the problems in order of priority, analyse each problem to determine the combination of organization change, selection procedure and training process, which will solve it best

This is a step of crucial strategic importance. The book will have a great deal to suggest about procedures for deciding on the best mix of measures. One of the errors which training men fall into, or are pushed into by line management, is ‘training for training’s sake’ which may be taken to mean accepting the situation as presented by line management, accepting the people presented, and trying to solve the problem as presented by training means. All problems must be looked at not as training problems, but as performance problems; for instance, the performance of people on the job may be out of line with what is required. Put in this way, the issue of whether training is needed is not prejudged. Within the limits of overall company policy, the Training Manager is free to consider whether changing the organization, the equipment, or the job itself, or changing the people concerned by the selection, would ease the problem, before the expensive, uncertain process of training is embarked on to change people’s performances directly.

Step 4 Taking the training problem as redefined by Step 3, produce a target population analysis, a task analysis, and a performance analysis

A target population analysis specifies who is to be trained, how many of them there are, when and where they will need training, and their important and relevant characteristics. This analysis is often taken for granted in training exercises, and a lot of time and money is wasted at later stages as a result.

A task analysis specifies the tasks which make up the job or jobs for which the target population are to be trained, and usually specifies the relative difficulty, importance and frequency of each task. Complex tasks may be broken down into sub-tasks or into parts to show where common elements enter into ranges of tasks. Broadly, a task analysis gives details of what a man does to the necessary level of detail. Detail unused is detail wasted.

A performance analysis specifies how a man does the tasks which he does, and details the critical skills (of all types) which are involved. The term ‘skills analysis’ has come to be applied to the detailed method of analysing perceptual-motor performance developed by the Seymour brothers and others. A more general account of performance analysis is developed in this book.

Though this may sound a formidable step to take, a training man still goes through these steps even if he gives a course on Monday which he was told to give on the previous Friday. It is far better that he should do it consciously and systematically. Even writing down what is known about the target population can improve a course enormously.

Step 5 For each training problem, using the analysis developed in Step 4, design the training process (which may or may not be a course) and produce the training plan

The old equation of ‘training equals courses’ is dying, kept going in part by the neatness and certifiability of a course as a subject for grant, but dealt, we hope, a fatal blow by the Mant report on management training (1).^* In the chapter examining this step in detail, we shall see at least fifteen types of training process of which only four are recognizable as ‘courses’.

Step 6 Assemble the training resources (including training materials) and implement the training process

Training premises, workshops, tools, equipment, books, training packages, slides, manuals, films, visual aids, video tape machines, have to be evaluated, chosen, justified, fought for, procured, stored and maintained. Instructors have to be justified, fought for, selected, trained and supervised. Courses have to be scheduled, publicized, administered, and accounted for. This book maintains that this step, which in real life occupies so much of a Training Manager’s energies, is far easier if the previous steps have been done thoroughly. The training designer has then done all he can to make sure he is teaching something which is needed to the people who need it: he knows who they are, and what they will do with what they learn on the job. He or his manager can show the person who signs the cheques that he is tackling a problem of some priority to management in a way which has been thought out as being the most cost-effective.

Step 7 Evaluate the results of the training process, and feed back the information to the people who need it

Generally speaking the training process should be evaluated immediately, at the end of the process (e.g. the course final test), and also later on the job. There are, of course, a number of difficulties in this which will be considered later. The Training Manager should then go back to Step 1 and see if the problems or priorities have changed, pick another problem and work through the seven steps with that. Of course, several problems are always being worked on at once. Even so, it pays to have an idea of the relative priorities and to check these priorities with management whenever possible.

^* Full references will be found on p. 179 et seq.

Chapter 2

Theory 1: Training systems and instructional technology

At this point we introduce a number of terms and concepts which will be used in the more detailed discussion of each step in the Training Manager’s job.

TRAINING SYSTEMS

The systems approach to training has been a fashionable catch-phrase for some time now. It is not always clear what its advocates mean by it, nor is there any very clear idea of what a training system looks like. There is, however, some value in the idea of trying to describe training activities as though they were systems, since several very important things come out of the attempt.

What is a system? A good definition for our purposes is ‘a set of elements which, with some objective, uses processes to transform inputs into outputs’.To define such a system we need to define four things – the inputs, the outputs, the processes and, most importantly, the objectives.

Thus an engineering system, say a generating plant, has coal as its principal input, and transforms it into electric power as output. The objective is to do so with the greatest possible efficiency, and the processes may be burning the coal to raise steam and using the steam to turn the turbine, which rotates the generator armature.

A data processing system may have inputs of rates of pay, hours worked, and tax rates and produce outputs of payslips and cheques using electronic computing processes. The objective may be to produce accurate and timely payrolls and reports.

A navigating system has inputs of position desired and present position, and produces outputs of desired courses, leading to later positions.

Faced with any complex entity, it is often very useful to simplify thinking about it by asking:

‘What are the objectives?’

‘What are the outputs?’

‘What are the inputs?’

‘What processes are used to transform the inputs into the outputs?’

Like all simplifications, the advantages of clarity are gained at the expense of some loss of detail, and common sense must always be applied to any conclusion...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1 The job of the Training Manager – seven steps
• 2 Theory 1 – Training systems and instructional technology
• 3 Step 1 – Define the problems 42 Step 2 – Arrange the problems in order of priority
• 4 Step 3 – Analyse each problem to determine the best mix of organizational change, selection and training
• 5 Step 4 – Produce a target population analysis, a task analysis and a performance analysis to the relevant level of detail
• 6 Theory 2 – More instructional technology
• 7 Step 5 – Design the training process and produce the training plan
• 8 Step 6 – Assemble the resources and implement the training process
• 9 Step 7 – Evaluate and recycle
• 10 Assessing new developments
• References
• Index