Q.3 Explain how to motivate employees to use their training on the job.
Ans. Motivating Employees to Use Their Training on the Job: -
Once employees have gathered knowledge and skills from a training program, it is essential that they apply their new knowledge and skills on the job itself. Perhaps the factor that plays the biggest role in employee motivation to apply training is the atmosphere set by management. That is, employees are most likely to apply their new knowledge and skills if supervisors encourage and reward them to do so.
A good example of the importance of management support can be found at a particular fast-food restaurant. The employees at three restaurants owned by the same company were given customer service training. At one of the restaurants, the training clearly had an effect, as customer complaints were down and secret-shopper scores were up. At another of the restaurants, there were no changes in complaints or secret-shopeer scores. What made the difference? At the one restaurant, the supervisor set goals, provided feedback to the employees, actively encouraged them to use their training, and herself modeled the behaviors learned in training. At the other restaurant, the manager hid in the back doing paperwork, a signal to employees that customer service was not important to their boss, regardless of what was emphasized in training.
Another important factor in motivating employees is the extent to which they are given the opportunity to apply their skills, This is especially true when an organization pays an employee’s college tuition but never provides the employee with an opportunity to use his knowledge or degree. In a study of over 9,000 employees, Benson, Finegold, and Mohrman (2004) found that employees who were promoted after receiving a graduate degree (given the chance to use their new knowledge) were less likely to turn over than employees who completed their degrees but were not promoted. Optimally, employees should be given the opportunity to use their newly acquired knowledge and skills immediately after completing their training.
The use of knowledge and skills learned in training can also be encouraged by having employees set goals. For example, tellers at a credit union received two days of training on cross-selling new productions training included information about new loans and new loan rates, types of retirement accounts, alternative savings plans, and the advantages of using a new “premium” credit card. Each teller might set a goal of daily asking four credit union members if they would like information about one of the new products. Goal setting works best when goals are individually set by each employee, are concrete rather than vague, and are high enough to be challenging but not so difficult as to be impossible.
Employees will also be motivated to apply what rather learned in training if the training program has a reputation among them as being effective and useful. This is not surprising given that employees talk with one another about training, and when employees find a training program useful (or not), they certainly pass that information on to other employees.
One other method for getting employees to apply what they have learned in training is to train all the employees in a work area (team) at the same time. One advantage of doing this is that because all employees have been trained, they can help and encourage each other. That is, if one employee is not properly performing a task, he or she can be coached by another employee. Further more, if all employees are applying what they have learned, it sets the proper atmosphere for new employees as well as for employees tempted to go back to the old way of doing things.
Q. 4 How distance learning program is advantageous?
Ans. Though distance learning has many advantages, it may result in increased working hours for employees who are already overworked and have family demands. With traditional on-site training programs, employees must take time off from work to attend. With distance learning, however, employees may feel pressured to put in their regular working hours and then engage in self-paced distance learning on their own time. The Tourist Bureau of the Bahamas provides an interesting example of distance learning. The Bahamian government ran a series of short television commercials showing the Bahamian people how to engage in better customer service when dealing with tourists. The commercials first showed a tourist being mistreated and the negative consequences of this treatment and then showed the proper way to treat the tourist and the positive consequences that resulted.
Most distance learning training takes advantage of the concept of programmed instruction. Programmed instruction, whether offered through books or through e learning, is effective because it takes advantage of several important learning principles, First, learning is self-paced—that is, each trainee proceeds at his own pace. You have probably been in classes in which the lecturer went too quickly and in others in which the lecturer went too slowly. When the presentation speed of the material does not parallel the comprehension speed of the learner, frustration occurs, and the material will not be learned as well as it might.
Second, each trainee is actively involved in the learning. This contrasts sharply with the lecture method, where the employee might sit through 2 hours of lecture without being actively involved. Think of your favorite classes: The instructor probably allowed you to become involved and actually do things.
Finally, programmed instruction presents information in small units or chunks because learning smaller amounts of material is easier than learning larger amounts. To demonstrate this point, think of the exam for this class. Would your score on the test be higher if you read and reviewed one chapter each week or if you waited until the night before the test to read five chapters? (The answer is obvious, and hopefully you did not answer the question from experience!). A meta-analysis by Manson (1989) concluded that programmed Instruction can lead to improved performance at relatively low cost, and a meta-analysis by Allen, Mabry, Matrey, Bourhis, Titsworth, and Burrell (2004) found that test scores for students in distance learning classes were no different than those earned by students in traditional courses.
