Effect of Learning and Development for Performance and Productivity

Since rapid technological advancement in businesses take place in worldwide, regular learning and development process of human resources in an organization is vital and that would be the key factor in organization success (Laing, 2009). Effective trainings lessened the gap between achieved and desired performance of employees (Bossche, Segers and Jansen, 2010). Further, employees who have learnt, skilled and self-directed with enrich attitude are the key for organization’s performance (Hameed & Waheed, 2011). As according to a study carried out by Younas, Farooq, Khalil-Ur-Rehman and Zreen (2018) regarding identification of training, development and employee performance, they have been concluded a decision that training and development have positive impact on employee performance. As according to their conclusion trainings have positive influence on better employee performance in many aspects. Hence, organization investment on training and development is provide acceptable employee output through developed skills, knowledge and capabilities.

Onyango & Wanyoike (2014) expressed impacts of learning and trainings for organizations as follow.

• Improves morale of employees – Training support employees to feel job security and satisfaction. Hence, employee absenteeism and turnover will be lesser and satisfied employee with greater morale will contribute in their maximum in organization success.

• Less supervision – Since employees are well trained, they are able to carry the job with less supervision. Also fewer accidents and errors are likely to occur.

• Chances of promotion – As employees are more proficient and acquire skills and efficiency during trainings, they get high opportunity of getting promoted to next ranks within organization.

Further well trained and developed employees demonstrate high performance in both quantity and quality in work. There is less wastage in time, money and resources too. Therefore, it is important for organization to have skilled and capable employee base. Also as human resources is one of the major asset in an organization, if they are skilled and trained would perform better than those who are unskilled and untrained. Therefore, always learning and development contribute to improve both individuals and organizational productivity and performance while supporting continuous improvement of businesses process (Tahir et al, 2014).

It is an undoubtable fact that investment on learning, training and development of employees in effective manner provide both immediate and long range returns to organizations. However, invest on them is not enough, organizations require to manage learning and development activities more effectively, then they can obtain optimum returns from their investment. As ultimate objective of the investment is add value to human resources, it requires to post evaluate training outcome and take action accordingly. Further, any programme that would not provide value on people should be abandoned (Obi-Anike and Ekwe, 2014). In contemporary businesses, learning and development implemented in different varieties. It could be formal or informal and computer, network or web based. Whatever the method use, once multiple methods implemented, it increases effectiveness and encourage self-directed learning (Armstrong and Taylor, 2014).  Further its organization manager’s responsibility to identify learning style of their employees to provide them suitable learning methods to improve skills, knowledge and capabilities of individuals. Well organized and efficient development programmes help organizations to retain most experience and valuable human resources with them. If organizations are able to identify employees learning needs and support them, both employees and organization will get the immediate and long term benefits (Jehanzeb and Bashir, 2013). Also its important organizations to sponsor learning and development activities as a continues process which always be benefitted for continuous improvement and competitive advantage for both human resources and organizations.

List of References 

Armstrong, M.  and Taylor, S.  (2014) Armstrong’s Handbook of Human Resource Management. 13^th ed. New Delhi, Kogan Page Limited.

Bossche, Segers and Jansen (2010) Transfer of Training. International Journal of Training and Development 14(2), pp. 360-373

Hameed and Waheed (2011) Employee Development and Its Affect on Employee Performance. International Journal of Business and Social Sciences, 2(13), pp. 157-171

Jehanzeb, K., Bashir, N.A. (2013) Training and Development Program and its Benefits to Employee and Organization: A Conceptual Study. European Journal of Business and Management, 5(2), pp. 243-250

Laing (2009) Impact of Training and Development on Employee Performance, Institute of Distance Learning-KNUST

Obi-Anike, H. O. and Ekwe, M. C. (2014) Impact of Training and Development on Organizational Effectiveness: Evidence from Selected Public Sector Organizations in Nigeria. European Journal of Business and Management, 6(29), pp. 66-73

Onyango, J. and Wanyoike, D. (2014) The effects of training on employee performance A survey of health workers in Siaya County, Kenya. European Journal of Material Sciences, 1(1), pp.11-15.

Tahir, M., Yousafzai, I. K., Jan, S., Hashim, M. (2014) The Impact of Training and Development on Employees Performance and Productivity A case study of United Bank Limited Peshawar City, KPK, Pakistan. International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences, 4(4), pp. 86 - 97

Younas, W., Farooq, M., Khalil-Ur-Rehman, F. and Zreen, A. (2018) The Impact of Training and Development on Employee Performance. OSR Journal of Business and Management, 20(7), pp. 20-22

Learning Organization

Learning organization is an organization that helps the learning of its employee and regularly changes itself. These organizations allows them to persist or succeed competitive advantages in the business environment (Farrukh and Waheed, 2015). Learning organization is an outcome of enabling holistic learning at all level of the organization, it’s impossible to construct learning organization by providing employee trainings only. It is something beyond the training of the individuals (Pedlar et al., 1991).  Learning organizations itself have collectivism and shared values of themselves (Watkins & Marsick, 1993). As Bratianu (2015) the classic example for learning organization would be an orchestra performing a symphony. No musician able to play the symphony by himself, each member of the orchestra learns the individual part of the symphony. Then whole orchestra can play by integrating each part of the individual. Such a way organizations need individuals learn and integration of them for overall success in business. Such organizations are identified as learning organization.

Toyota Kata of Organizational Learning

Toyota’s process of continuous improvement is a great demonstration of organization learning. They introduced it as “Toyota Kata” which means way of designing and implementing a successful management based on the concept of continuous improvement (Bratianu, 2015). According to Rother (2010), Toyota has exploration and experimentation operation process which can be expressed by the well-known Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) cycle. The four stages of this process are as follow:

·         Plan. Define what you intend to do, based on the previous experience. Define your target condition and you’re working hypotheses.

·         Do. Try to implement your plan and test your hypotheses.

·         Check. Compare your outcome with the expected one.

·         Act. Standardize and stabilize what works, or begin the PDCA cycle again. 

Toyota added the words “Go and See” for above cycle, since it is important to identify the actual condition at all stages of the PDCA. If an error occur in the operations, Toyota’s culture isn’t penalizing their employee. Instead it become as an essential point for organizational learning and continuous improvement. Hence, employee always try to do their best and when a problem generate they identify it as a failure of the systems (Bratianu, 2015). Its shows that Toyota provisions the concept of continuous improvement or evolutionary learning can be applied to any kind of problem. So, Toyota PDCA process prove that learning organization culture is be benefitted to business strategic achievements (Starbuck & Hedberg, 2003). 

As author emphasized learning organizations are provided main six benefits to the organization to gain competitive advantage in terms of organizational human resources. The first is “An open culture” that’s allow share information, admit mistakes and learn through mistakes. Since the constructive criticism is encouraged, once a problem arises they mainly focused on find the root cause to find permanent solution. Next is “Feedback loops”. Here employees are assessed in 360 degrees approach, hence they can optimally find out their good and bad. “Personal mastery” is the next feature. Always employees are encouraged to masters in their profession as well any area where they interest and capable. This make employees into experts who are working with motivation. Also these organizations are planned for “Intelligence fast failures”. Rather wasting time for planning these organizations are implementing products in proto type to get feedbacks from test user groups. The goal is fail fast and acquire the necessary changes to bring success product to the market soon. Learning organizations are follow “best practices” do by other companies and use them for the betterment for the company. Finally, learning organizations are cultivated “common vision”. All employees in the company precisely aware where they want to go and how they should go. Since goals are clear, everyone knows their contribution to the organization. Hence, regulations, authority, and corruption can be reduced. In order to achieve all these, companies need to integrate above features to the company’s business operation appropriately. 

List of References 

Bratianu, C. (2015). Organizational Knowledge Dynamics: Managing Knowledge Creation, Acquisition, Sharing, and Transformation. Hershey: IGI Global. 

Farrukh, M. and Waheed, A. (2015) Learning Organization and Competitive Advantage-An Integrated Approach, Journal of Asian Business Strategy. 5(4), pp. 73-79

Pedlar, M., Burgoyne, J., and Boydell, T.  (1991) The learning company: A strategy for sustainable development. Maidenhead: McGraw-Hill.

Rother, M. (2010) Toyota kata. Managing people for improvement, adaptiveness, and superior results. New York, NY: McGraw Hill.

Sprouts (2017) The Learning Organization: Characteristics of a Modern Enterprise [online]. Available at: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40meQNZl3KU.>. [Accessed on 15 December 2019].

Starbuck, W.H. and Hedberg, B. (2003) How organizations learn from success and failure. In M. Dierkes, A. Berthoin Antal, J. Child & I. Nonaka (Eds.). Handbook of organizational learning & knowledge. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

Watkins, K., and Marsick, V. (1993) Sculpting the learning organization: Lessons in the art and science of systemic change. California, Jossey-Bass publishers.

Learning and Development Methods

A successful training programme should focus on employee’s orientation, management skills, and operational skills (Kleiman, 2000). In this manner. Key objective of develop programmes are to convey the organizational mission and teach the organizational culture to the employee (Gerbman, 2000). So, these objectives support to implement strategic business goals and learning opportunities to develop organizational culture too (Kottke 1999). Apart from that, technical training programmes for employees build job satisfaction and help employees to understand the culture, which ultimately lead to the business success (Jehanzeb and Bashir, 2013). Armstrong and Taylor (2014) have been introduced following learning and development process, which general to contemporary organization scenarios.

Figure 2 – Elements of Learning and Development

Source: (Armstrong and Taylor, 2014) p. 319

Further, as Armstrong and Taylor (2014), to achieve above learning and developments, there are several methods available. Its responsibility of the organization to chooses right method with right people. Some methods and activities are as follow. Informal learning, Workplace learning, Formal learning, E-learning, Self-directed learning, Personal development planning, Trainings, coaching and mentoring.

These training and development activities are objected to implement strategies for organizational level and as well individual level in order to developed capabilities required in goal attainment (Armstrong and Taylor, 2014). Those can be further elaborated as follow. 

Organizational learning strategies

Organizational learning strategies target to improve operational effectiveness through the acquisition and development of knowledge, understanding, insights, techniques and practices. This is in accordance with one of the basic principles of HRM, specifically that it is essential to devote in people in order to develop the human capital required by the organization and to increase its knowledge and skills (Reynolds, 2004).

Individual learning strategies

Individual learning includes the processes and programmes used to increase the capabilities of individual employees. Strategies for individual learning are driven by the organization’s human resource requirements, which are expressed in terms of the skills and behaviours required to accomplish organizational goals (Aragon and Valle, 2013).

List of References 

Aragon, I B and Valle, R S (2013) Does training managers pay off? The International Journal of

Armstrong, M.  and Taylor, S.  (2014) Armstrong’s Handbook of Human Resource Management. 13^th ed. New Delhi, Kogan Page Limited.

Gerbman, R. V. (2000) Corporate Universities 101. HR Magazine, 45 (2), pp. 101-106. Human Resource Management, 24 (8), pp 1671–1684

Jehanzeb, K., Bashir, N.A. (2013) Training and Development Program and its Benefits to Employee and Organization: A Conceptual Study. European Journal of Business and Management, 5(2), pp. 243-250

Kleiman, M. (2000) What happens if you don’t train them and they stay?. Occupational Health and Safety, 69 (1), pp. 18 -70

Kottke, J. L. (1999) Corporate universities: Lessons in building a world-class work force (revised). Personnel Psychology, 52, pp. 530-533

Reynolds, J (2004) Helping People Learn, London, CIPD