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Many
organizations prefer to use the term "learning" rather than
"training" to describe the process of skilling, educating and
preparing employees for current and future roles within the organization.
Hence "life-long-learning" for employees has become a popular
management strategy and the increased importance attached to knowledge
management has broadened the traditional management practice of
"training" staff.
New technology has now made electronic learning (e-learning) an
integral part of learning programs. The traditional delivery method of
training has been enhanced by a new range of Internet-enabled products.
The requirement to record information related to the need and methods of
improving a person's skills and competencies, however delivered
(classroom, on-the-job, distance learning, self-paced programs, etc),
remains an important HRIS feature.
The training component can be used for two purposes.
1
As a training administration tool. It records training courses,
instructors, number of course attendees permitted, course nominations,
confirmations, and material tracking. It can automate the process of
sending confirmation letters to course attendees and store course
examination and attendance records.
2 To identify training needs and schedule employees on training
courses based on their performance appraisal results. There is often
uncertainty about using this component, due to the following issues:
-
Mere attendance at a course does not mean the skill is now acquired. It
still must be demonstrated on the job and assessed again as part of the
performance management process. Most companies do not do this well.
- Definition of "training" - there is external training,
internal classroom training and on-the-job training.
- Identifying the skills a course intends to address in order to
cross-check with the job requirements and the employee's measured skill
level. Maintaining that type of information is seen as bureaucratic. Not
many organizations are able to do a true skills inventory and cross-relate
the deficiency to training programs.
- Who performs "training"? Most training is now outsourced or
conducted within line units. Training is rarely an HR function. A
centralized role in HR sometimes exists to avoid duplication from
preparing identical training courses, or to maintain a preferred supplier
list for external training.
- Updating training information. An inhibitor here is that training
is not centralized - updating the training database is usually a
line management function and often does not happen. Therefore
training records are either incomplete or not updated.
Ownership
of the training component is hard to assign. If training is mostly a
line function, so should be responsibility for input of training
information, but system maintenance of the component is another issue.
Creation of training codes cannot be decentralized or duplicate codes will
occur and data integrity will break down. When ownership is part of HR for
system administration and granting security access, the perceived
responsibility for data maintenance is also usually an HR responsibility.
The training component came into prominence in Australia when the Federal
Government introduced the training guarantee levy legislation in the early
1990s. Organizations were required to spend a percentage of their
total staff costs on training and the component was used to track costs
associated with training. This legislation was later repealed, but some
Asian countries still have training cost reporting as a government
compliance issue.
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