Employee Training and Development Models, Research Paper Example

Introduction

The business environment in the 21^st Century has become more competitive than ever before. In an age where information is virtually becoming currency, there is great need to employ the best and most efficient labor force in order to realize profitability and growth. However, this has also become a challenge to employers as skilled labor comes at a high cost. The high cost of living has pushed living standards higher than ever before, necessitating higher compensation levels. In order to keep up with the industry, most business, especially start-ups, opt to employ the most balanced and creative employee, and shower them with a high paycheck just to retain them. While this practice has been found to show success at first, most of the time it fails eventually. However, there exists an inherent relationship between employee development and training that can be used in the preparation of future leaders. This paper highlights a practical model that can be used to prepare future leaders.

Approach

This paper will focus on the creation of model that highlights the relationship between employee development and training as the optimal alternative to training future leaders within an organization. This model will entail specific elements of employee training that would result in optimal employee development. All facets of the model developed within this document are geared towards realizing the preparation of future leaders for any given business. This is crucial to in ensuring that information, skills and experience is passed on from existing corporate and business leaders to upcoming and new leaders within the organization.

Focus

Amid volatile and erratic economic cycles, organization in the 21^st century find themselves in greater need of positive and effective talent management strategies to ensure competitiveness in a rapidly changing market. In this rapidly evolving market, organizations will, in my opinion, remain as competitive for talent in the future market. This is because organizations have been increasingly creating and tapping into the readily available talent pipelines. These talent pipelines include both the internal and external avenues and pipelines.

Talent Pipeline

Internal talent pipelines are most commonly used as they require the company to identify highly creative, efficient and effective employees that show potential to be lead (Johnson, 2010). This makes the company’s offers very lucrative for employees allowing the company to retain highly skilled employees, ensuring competitiveness.

External talent pipelines mainly involve bringing in highly skilled individuals, or identifying individuals with potential and moulding them into highly efficient employees (Raedy & Conger, 2007). This mainly occurs through channelling tertiary education institutions. This has become a very competitive front as most organizations aim to hire the best students in the market.

The core principles that should be the basis for building a talent pipeline include:

1. Recognize that talent management is a fundamental business process
2. Measure the pipeline to recognize whether it makes the difference
3. It should support the business strategy
4. There needs to be a process that clearly distinguishes talent in leadership
5. It is pivotal to detect, improve and discourse about talent in leadership in the organization as a whole
6. It should identify and address the any and all existing gaps between current leadership capabilities and strategic needs. This is done via recruitment of external resources or focused internal development
7. It should provide for the re-evaluation of the need for talent and the existing talent on a regular basis (Silzer & Dowell, 2010)

Organization should align talent pipelines to their talent management initiatives by employing a competency framework that maps strategic objectives to the standards of performance as well as the whole Talent Development framework stream of the organization (Greenberg & Sweeney, 2010).

The systematic processes involved in building talent with an organization entails:

• Identification of the human resource needs within the organization
• Identification of the talent management strategy and approaches the organization can employ
• Identification of the resources available to the organization to pursue the optimal talent management strategy that best suits the organization. This will involve determining the scope of the talent management strategy, its limits and its capabilities based on the resources, financial and man power, that is available to the organization.
• Identification of the employees that poses the potential and talent that is required within the organization
• Execution of the desired talent management strategy
• Re-evaluation of the talent management strategy (Conger, 2010)

Mentorship

This is where employees who show potential are groomed towards a certain function or position within the organization (Yost & Plunkett, 2010). This can be done to ensure ease of change in the case where a senior manager either retires, leaves the company or is promoted to a higher position. This can also help motivate workers to bring out the best in them.

Academic Programs

This entails ensuring high performance and high potential employees receive the opportunity to further their education and increase their skills on the job (Conger, 2010).

Succession Planning

Succession planning is best managed under the talent management strategy an organization chooses to employ (Conger, 2010). This strategy will provide the organization with the direction as to which employee is best to succeed which manager, either middle or top management. Once the employees have been identified, then they can be groomed for the position to be vacated and succeeded.

SWOT Analysis

Talent management has become such an integral part of organizations today that there is need for regular SWOT analyses (Silzer & Dowell, 2010). The use of SWOT analysis in talent management is to critically analyse the efficiency and effectiveness of talent management techniques that are being employed by any given company. In this case, we will look at the Coca Cola Company. Coca-Cola is the world most recognizable brand in offering soft drinks operating in over 200 countries around the globe. The company’s scope of operations in the soft drink industry and its global recognition, creates the need for the company to regularly conduct SWOT analyses.

The following is the SWOT analysis matrix.

Strengths

1. What advantages lie with the current talent management strategy employed in the Coca Cola Company?
2. What specific aspects of talent management does the company apply effectively?
3. What relevant resources doe the company have access to in order to ensure an effective talent management strategy?
4. What do the employees and other stake holders see as the company’s talent management strengths?

Weaknesses

1. What aspects of talent management could be improved at Coca Cola?
2. What negative aspects of talent management has the company employed?
3. What should the company avoid?

Opportunities

1. What are the good opportunities are underlying considering the company’s talent management strategy, available resources?
2. What are the interesting market conditions and trends that the company can take advantage of?

Threats

1. What obstacles does the company face in the short and long-term?
2. What is the strategy that the Coca Cola’s competition has employed in talent management?
3. Are the job requirements changing within the company?
4. Are technological changes threatening talent management in the company?
5. Can the weaknesses identified considerably threaten business operations for Coca Cola?

A SWOT analysis for talent management offers the opportunity for any given organization to comprehend the importance of talent management, identify any underlying potential loopholes and opportunities and take advantage of this information to develop a talent management strategy that considers competition and prevailing market trends and conditions.

Non-Monetary Retention of Employees

Henry Ford’s $5 Workday

Henry has a positive and precautionary way of handling the issue of the level of employee wages. He clearly draws his ideas and foundational logic from the Efficiency-Wage Theory. Henry Ford had the option to pay minimum wages to his employees, i.e. $2.50 per day. However, he opted to pay his employees $5 per day, increasing the appeal of employment with Ford. This move was supplemented by the announcement of the increase in pay. This attracted numerous potential employees this provided him with a variety of talents to choose from.

The company developed an effective strategy that increased output by motivating the employees. When employees are contented, they would tend to put in more effort in their work, producing quality in a sustainable manner. This also positioned the company strategically to outwit competition by increasing production at cheaper price owing to economies of scale.

Henry’s Ford’s increase of the daily pay-rate to $5 had a positive impact on employees’ performance and output. This can be described in four ways.

Worker Effort

An employee who is paid well is more likely to put in more effort in the daily endeavors and tasks within the organization (Mankiw, Kneebone, & McKenzie, Principles of Microeconomics, 2014). Compensation is directly proportional to the amount of effort an employee puts in their work.

Worker Health

An employee who is paid well is more likely to have a balanced and healthy diet. This is because disposable income determines an employee’s expenditure limits. Therefore by paying workers better, the company reduces incidences of sick leaves, ensuring continual production.

Quality of Labor

The better pay at Ford attracted high quality and even experienced employees. This availability of labor motivates the contracted employees to work at their optimal level as they can be easily replaced (Mankiw & Scarth, Macroeconomics : Canadian edition, 2004). This is known as adverse selection.

Henry Ford is largely renowned as the pioneer of this ideology. However, it is important to understand the financial and technological environment was different in his time. His ideology was specifically suited for the economic downturn at the time. In the 21^st century, performance is the key indicator of employee retention. The ability of the modern day human resource department is determined by its ability to keep its employees performing at the highest level, ensuring employee satisfaction and loyalty.

Performance Management

Management of performance is equivocal in the establishment of shared understanding regarding approaches required in meeting these goals. This also provides a means of leading and developing manpower to ensure they meet the goals as expected.  The R&D department works best when handling problem-solving issues to meet the company’s need for innovation (Foot and Hook 43). The future requires people with better technological advancements to create an atmosphere where essential elements of the organization develop. This is one of the most significant departments in the company as it allows for the growth of the company. The engineers working at this level have little knowledge regarding management. They spend most of their time working on the future generation technological advancements that align with the goals of the organization (Cokins, 2009, p. 45). When required to act as managers of the same, they have more technical knowledge cupped with little management skills. However, the office of the HR has to work on meeting these goals to help regulate the timeframe of achieving essential deadlines.

As such, some end up feeling lowly motivated and this affects their performance because they feel undermined for their lack of management knowledge. Once an employee feels demoralized, their work output drops relatively. The affected employee may transmit the same to the other employees, and this will affect the flow of work in the organization. Maintaining this flow could be quite tedious as they have to get the essence of working in liaison with other departments to accomplish their goals (Foot & Hook, 2002, p. 44). Nonetheless, the key assumption here is that the organizational performance will improve when the management monitors individual and team performances. This is true because any neglect in the performance that employees offer could be disastrous amongst the workers who view the workplace as a routine rather than an occupation (DelCampo, 2011, p. 88).

Comprehension of the intricacy of management will allow employees to handle performance easily. It also allows management to work on growing motivational activities that encourage an energized workforce that meets the company’s standards.

One of the essential tools of performance management is the measure of productivity. Labor productivity is an essential tool towards analyzing the efficiency of labor in any given economy and in this case in any given company. As such it is calculated by dividing the total amount of input over the total number of labor units in the given economy. GDP can be used as a measure of productivity. Here the total units of capital inputs are divided by the total number of units of labor employed in the production process. Productivity is a tool of measure that can be employed to derive different meanings and inferences in a given sector of a given economy. This varies from one country to another and even in different regions.

Leadership Pipeline Model

The final ingredient in the creation of an effective employee development and training model is the leadership model. All training and development within an organization is geared towards the development of a constant flow of leadership talent within the organization. The process through which leaders develop and progress within the organization is defined by the leadership model, which entails six distinctive levels depicted in the figure below.

In conclusion, businesses can employ training and development to ensure that future leaders within the business are adequately equipped to manage the business effectively. In the 21^st century managers are required to effectively manager every aspect of a business’ operations while ensuring cost efficiency and increased profits. The creation of talent pipeline while implementing aspects of mentorship and academic programs are essential in succession planning. These facets essentially lead up to the development of a leadership model.

References

Cokins, G. (2009). Performance Management – Integrating Strategy Execution, Methodolies, Risk, and Analytics. London: John Wiley & Sons Inc.

Conger, J. A. (2010). Developing Leadership Talent: Delivering on the Promise of Structured Programs. In R. Slizer, & B. E. Dowell, Strategy- driven talent management: A leadership imperative. Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

DelCampo, R. G. (2011). Human Resource Management Demystified. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Foot, M., & Hook, C. (2002). Introducing Human Resource Management. Harlow: Finacial Times/Prentice Hall.

Greenberg, H., & Sweeney, P. (2010). Invest in your Best. T+D, 64(7), 56-59.

Johnson, M. (2010). Honing a talent for retaining talent. Financial Executive, 26(5), 20-24.

Mankiw, G. N., & Scarth, W. (2004). Macroeconomics : Canadian edition. New York: Worth Publishers.

Mankiw, G. N., Kneebone, R. D., & McKenzie, K. J. (2014). Principles of Microeconomics. Toronto: Nelson Education.

Raedy, D. A., & Conger, J. A. (2007). Make your company a talent factory. Harvard Business Review, 85(6), 68-77.

Silzer, R., & Dowell, B. E. (2010). Strategy-driven talent management: A leadership imperative. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Yost, P. R., & Plunkett, M. M. (2010). Developing Leadership Talent through Experiences. In R. Slizer, & B. E. Dowell, Strategy-driven talent management: A leadership imperative. Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.