Handout 1:

High Leverage vs Continuous Training - Essay

High Leverage Training: It is linked to business goals and objectives, uses a process to ensure
that training is effective, and compares the company’s training programs against training
programs in other companies.
High leverage training practices help to create working conditions that encourage continuous
learning
Continuous Learning: Requires employees to understand the entire work system including the
relationships among their jobs, their work units, and the company. Employees are expected to
acquire new skills and knowledge, apply them on the job, and share this information with
other employees. Managers take an active role in identifying that employees use training in
their work and also ensure that employees share that information with others. Training is
becoming more performance focused, that is, training is used to improve employee
performance, which leads to improved business results.

DESIGNING EFFECTIVE TRAINING - Short answer

• Conducting needs assessment
• Ensuring employees’ readiness for training
• Creating a learning environment
• Ensuring transfer of training
• Developing an evaluation plan
• Selecting training method
• Monitoring and evaluating the program

Assumptions of Training Design Approaches - Short answer

• Training design is effective only if it helps employees reach instructional or training goals
and objectives.
• Measurable learning objectives should be identified before training.
• Evaluation plays an important part in planning and choosing a training method, monitoring
the training program, and suggesting changes to the training design process.

FORCES INFLUENCING WORKING AND LEARNING - Short answer

• Globalization
• Need for leadership
• Increases value placed on knowledge
• Attracting and retaining talent
• Customer service and quality emphasis
• Changing demographics and diversity of the workforce
• New technology
• High-performance models of work systems
• Economic changes
Handout 2:

THE ROLES AND DUTIES OF MANAGERS IN COMPANIES THAT USE HIGH-PERFORMANCE

WORK PRACTICES
1. Alignment
• Clarify team goals and company goals.
• Help employees manage their objectives.
• Scan organization environment for useful information for the team.

2. Encouraging Continuous Learning

• Help team identify training needs.
• Help team become effective at on-the-job training.
• Create environment that encourages learning.

3. Coordinating Activities
• Ensure that team is meeting internal and external customer needs.
• Ensure that team meets its quantity and quality objectives.
• Help team resolve problems with other teams.
• Ensure uniformity in interpretation of policies and procedures

4. Facilitating Decision-Making Process

• Facilitate team decision making.
• Help team use effective decision-making processes.

5. Creating and Maintaining Trust

• Ensure that each team member is responsible for his or her work load and customers.
• Treat all team members with respect.
• Listen and respond honestly to team ideas.

THE IMPORTANCE OF TRAINING COMPARED TO OTHER HRM PRACTICES: The type of training
and resources devoted to training are influenced by the strategy adopted for two HRM
practices:
1. Staffing
2. Human Resource Planning

STAFFING STRATEGY INFLUENCE ON TRAINING: Two aspects of a company’s staffing strategy

influence training:
• The criteria used to make promotion and assignment decisions (assignment flow)
• The places where the company prefers to obtain human resources to fill open positions
(supply flow)
Handout 3:
PERSON ANALYSIS Helps to identify employees who need training:
- Person characteristics: refer to the employees’ knowledge, skill and attitudes
- Input: Relates to the instructions that tell employees what, how and when to perform
- Output: Refers to the job’s performance standards
- Consequences: Refer to the type of incentives that employees receive for performing well
- Feedback: refers to the information that employees receive while they are performing

Competency models are useful for training and development in several ways:
• They identify behaviors needed for effective job performance.
• They provide a tool for determining what skills are needed to meet today’s needs as well as
the company’s future needs.
• They help determine what skills are needed at different career points.
• They provide a framework for ongoing coaching and feedback to develop employees for
current and future roles.
• They create a “roadmap” for identifying and developing employees who may be candidates
for managerial positions.

Factors that influence employee performance and learning:

Personal Characteristics
• Ability and skill
• Attitudes and motivation
Input
• Understand need to perform
• Necessary resources (equipment, etc.)
• Social support by managers and peers
• Opportunity to perform
Output
• Poor performance can occur on the job because employees do not know at what level they
are expected to perform.
• So the standard to judge successful performers should be clear to all trainees
Consequences
• Positive consequences/incentives to perform
• Few negative consequences to perform
Feedback
• Frequent and specific feedback about how the job is performed
Handout 4:
Learning Outcomes
Verbal information
• Includes names or labels, facts, and bodies of knowledge
• Includes specialized knowledge employees need in their jobs
Intellectual skills
• Include concepts and rules
• These are critical to solve problems, serve customers, and create products
Motor skills
• Include coordination of physical movements
Attitudes
• Combination of beliefs and feeling that pre-dispose a person to behave a certain way
• Important work-related attitudes include job satisfaction, commitment to the organization,
and job involvement
Cognitive strategies
• Manage one’s own thinking and learning processes

Learning Theories - Short answer

1) Reinforcement Theory 5) Expectancy Theory
2) Social Learning Theory 6) Adult Learning Theory
3) Goal Theories 7) Information Processing Theory
4) Need Theories

1) REINFORCEMENT THEORY
• Emphasizes that people are motivated to perform or avoid certain behaviors because of
past outcome that have resulted from those behaviors
• Suggests that for learners to acquire knowledge, change behavior or modify skills, the
trainer needs to identify what outcomes the learner finds most positive or negative, then
the trainers need to link these outcomes to learners acquiring knowledge, skills or changing
behaviors

2) SOCIAL LEARNING THEORY

• Emphasizes that people learn by observing other persons whom they believe are credible
and knowledgeable
• Processes
3) GOAL THEORIES
• Assumes behavior results from a person’s conscious goals and intentions
• Goal orientation refers to the goals held by a trainee in a learning situation.
• Mastery orientation relates to trying to increase ability in a task
• Performance orientation refers to a focus of learners on task performance and how they
compare to others

4) NEED THEORIES
• Help to explain the value that a person places on certain outcomes.
• A need is a deficiency that a person is experiencing at any point in time, a need motivate a
person to behave in a manner to satisfy the deficiency.
• Suggest that to motivate learning, trainers should identify trainees’ needs
• Providing employees with a choice of training programs to attend

5) EXPECTANCY THEORY
Suggests that a person’s behavior is based on 3 factors:
• Expectancy: the link between trying to perform a behavior and actually performing well
• Instrumentality: a belief that performing a given behavior is associated with a particular
outcome
• Valence: is the value that a person places on an outcome

6) ADULT LEARNING THEORY

• Adults have the need to know why they are learning something
• Adults have a need to be self-directed
• Adults bring more work-related experiences into the learning situation
• Adults enter into a learning experience with a problem-centered approach the learning
• Adults are motivated to learn by both extrinsic and intrinsic motivators

LEARNING PROCESS
Mental and Physical Processes
• Expectancy: mental state that the learner brings to the instructional process
• Perception: ability to organize the message from the environment
• Working storage: rehearsal and repetition of information occur, allowing material to be
coded for memory
• Semantic encoding: actual coding process of incoming messages