Learning and Development programmes
There are many companies which prefer to develop the newly hired talent to fit
into their future requirements for senior positions. It has been observed that
one thing which employees appreciate about being in a company is the continuous
learning opportunities they are given.
While establishing a company as the promoter of learning and developmental
opportunities sounds attractive, one also needs to understand the cost and time
factors involved in this. Whether a company should invest its resources in
learning and development opportunities or not is a strategic decision & the
HR manager of the company can play a crucial role in decision making.
So, if you are the HR manager of a company and you wish to propose to do some
talent development activities regularly for the employees, here’s how you
should go about it:
Make a business
case
Build the systems
and processes
Implement the
systems
Collecting and
assimilating feedback
Feedback to
senior managers
Coach individual
managers
Coach individual
employee and behave like talent hawks
1. Make a business case
While training and development is no doubt a useful exercise, there’s a cost
involved in it and when you take your proposal to the management, there will be
obvious questions like:
-
What are the advantages of carrying out these activities?
-
What are the costs involved?
-
Is it important to carry out these activities?
-
What will happen if we do not carry out learning and development activities?
In order for you to be in a position to answer these questions, you need to do a
lot of self study and make a business plan throwing some light on each of these
facets. A review of external trends and information about current capabilities
of the organization will help you write a good business plan.
When you are developing the business plan, you also need to bear in mind that
you can not adopt the actions taken by other companies as it is. So, customise
your plan to fit into the culture of your company.
2. Build the systems and processes
Once you have managed to convince everyone to carry out these activities in the
company successfully, you need to start getting your systems and processes in
place.
These include laying down the training plans, scheduling them, co-ordinating
with other department heads, taking feedback about the training sessions (from
employees as well as the department heads etc.). At times you will find
yourself stuck with finalising the training topics – in this case you can ask
your peers about the training requirements in their departments.
3. Implement the systems
Once you have developed the systems, you will need to implement them. Be
cautious about the culture of the company.
4. Collecting and assimilating feedback
Take feedback from department heads and employees about the trainings sessions
focussing on :
-
How was the training session?
-
Was it helpful?
-
What would they like to see in future training programmes?
-
Anything else they would like to comment on.
5. Feedback to senior managers
Once you have implemented the systems and started carrying out the training
activities, call for meetings to inform your peers about the progress. Analyse
the situation, talk about the gaps in plan and what will happen if you close/
do not close them.
6. Coach individual managers
One of the biggest qualities of a successful HR manager is to be a coach or
counsellor to his own peers. They should look up to you if they have a problem
with either their own performance or the performance of their team. If your
peers need to improve their own competence they should discuss it with you and
seek the help of your training programmes. It is not necessary that these have
to be official discussions, they can just be casual discussions over a coffee
table.
7. Coach individual employee and behave like talent hawks
When you run the training programmes, coach every individual on one or the other
aspect of business. Being a successful HR means being observant of the capable
people, developing them and proposing their names immediately as the
requirements come up.
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