Unit 23 Human Resource Development Assignment

Introduction

Various individuals in the organization need to be trained in order to develop suitable or desired behaviors and outcomes in a particular working environment of an organization. As the individual show differences in the learning behaviors thus the learning theories help the managers to understand the use of various learning styles in designing of an effective training program (Mark, 2014). Thus Unit 23 Human Resource Development Assignment basically throws light on the various learning styles as per the Kolb’s learning cycle and Honey- Mumford model of learning. The effectiveness of the training program is decided by the desired outcomes in the employees and their level of enthusiasm in the training event. Also the study aims to discuss the design of a training event and taking the case of Marks and Spencer’s. Marks and Spencer’s is a leading retailing giant established in UK and operating in various countries around the globe. Also a light is thrown on the initiatives led by the government at UK in contributing to the development of skills and competencies of the employees in both the public and private sectors. Also how the companies are basing their successful performance through the use of  contemporary hospitality training events in contributing to the growth of the economy and gaining a competitive edge in the industry.

Lo 2 Be able to plan and design training and development

2.1 Compare the training needs for staff at different levels

At M&S, the training styles used are different at the various levels of the organization and thus the company has generally done this at Operational, management or manager level and in the friendly working environment at the level of Customer service. Thus the company uses various methods to enhance learning and performance as the performance appraisals of the operational and customer service staff by the managers allows in bridging the gap to desired performance and behaviors. All the levels of management are allowed to develop a practical approach or pragmatic style of learning to improve their skills and decision making capability in the challenging work situations. Workshops and of job training helps them to advance their skills and expertise. The customer service levels are trained for Queue management in order to minimize waiting time and to provide the help to customers in order to locate what they want. The managers are trained to develop decision making skills and involve in performance appraisals of the lower level of staff (Mark, 2014).

2.2 Assess the advantage and disadvantage of training methods

At M&S, the performance appraisals are used to identify the gaps between the actual and desired performance and the needs for development of skills accordingly and the managers provides for development of career paths. The performance appraisals help the employees in determining the performance improvement and motivation of the low performing employees. The company uses role play, workshops, etc and this helps the employees to understand how to act in different roles and situations at M&S. Discussion with the managers and coaching helps the new recruits to understand their responsibilities and the working patterns in the organization. Workshops provides the employees with the development of the skills and provides the necessary learning material however one of the disadvantage of using workshops include the costs and its reception is dependent on the cognitive processes of the participating employee. Also the coaching of the employees may sometimes lead to decrease in the confidence and decision making power of the employees due to biased or stringent nature of managers (Manolis, 2013).

2.3 Use a systematic approach to plan training and development for a training event

In any organization say ABC, the need for training and development and the development of an effective training program is consisting of a systematic approach as including following stages:

• Organizational objectives: the organization ABC, the aim is to lead the markets through cost differentiation and provide the best quality goods with low prices. Thus managers must be good at decision making while dealing with the uncertainties in the markets.
• Setting need for training: for ABC, in order to attain market leadership, development of the decision making and the skills of dealing with a problem situation in the organization is necessary (Gilmore et al, 2010).
• Design or strategy in training program: the production department managers must be good at decision making in order to achieve minimum cost of production along with the decision making of the marketing managers in dealing with market forces and situations. The employees must be trained by giving a real life situation and development of alternative solutions by the learner (Willingham, 2015).
• Implementation: The scenario or problem situation must first be well understood by the participants and then the participants would be invited with solution on the next working day.

The staff or participants will be encouraged and motivated to participate in the decision making by generating new and fresh ideas in tacking particular real life business situations. This training event requires a team of management and then involving a group of staff to develop their decision making skills. The assessment of the final solution in the particular situation by a learner will be done by various mangers. This will also help the organization by improving the performance and involvement of its staff employee. Thus this kind of the group learning activity can help the company to develop pragmatic learning style in the employees and develop a practical approach in employees.

LO 3 Be able to evaluate a training event

3.1 Prepare an evaluation using suitable techniques

The evaluation of the training program is done by the high level managers in terms of the cost, effectiveness and benefits in order to understand that whether the training event was able to deliver the expected outcomes and should it be continued in future also or not. The evaluation of a training event is done by matching the desired and the actual outputs of such an event and this is done by using a five category based evaluation as follows: (a) Need for the training program, whether and for what purpose training is required in the organization.(b) Responsibility of the participants involved like the customer services, etc. (c) Progress of the employees on attaining the training events in organization. (d) Clarification in terms of need at various levels of the management and their training needs (e) Impact on participants include the evaluation of the training program in terms of its long term benefits to  employees skills  and organization (Manolis et al, 2013). Thus the training event could be evaluated through use of observation in the working patterns of the employees or through the feedbacks from the customers of the organization. Also the feedback on such training events could be obtained from the trainer and the participants in order to determine how far have the training program been able to develop the skills and decision making of the participants.

3.2 Carry out an evaluation for a training event

The training event was successful or not depends on the enthusiasm and feedbacks from the employees can help to understand the effectiveness of the training event. In case of the training event, the participants were given an elaboration of the problem situation and were allowed to develop creative solution and present their solutions in the discussion with the management team. This helped the employees at customer services level to develop the skills related to problem solving and decision making while facing the real life situations. Entering in to discussion with the management teams can help the employees to develop more logical solutions to the problem scenario. Also this has helped the management and the employees to provide innovative solutions and help to identify the problems in tackling the customers and providing them with the services (Grimley, 2013).

3.3 Review the success of evalutaion method used

The method of evaluation of the training event involved the assessment of the training event on a five categories method and this helped the evaluation of the training program in developing the problem solving skills at the customer services and operation levels. The defining of the needs of the training event helped in effective designing of the training program. Through the use of the cost and benefit analysis, it was made sure that the training program will be continued in future as it helped the managers and employees to bridge the gap between the desired and actual performance levels. Also the evaluation of the training event is done in terms of the desired and the actual results of participating in the event (Kirkpatrick, 2009). The employees and the managers were able to discuss upon the problems faced by the customer services and lower operational staff and the managers were able to build reasonable solutions to such real life situations. Thus it helps in improving the overall performance of the organization by making improvements in the training events in order to deliver more effectively and also in the working patterns of the staff in dealing with the real life situations as faced by the customer service employees.

LO 4 Understand the government led skills developing initiatives

4.1 Explain the role of governmnet in training and lifelong learning

The government of the United Kingdom pays due attention to the employees working in the private sector and arranges for the training of the employees by arranging training events mediated by the experts (Budhwar, 2010). The lifelong learning is a type of learning in which the individual accumulates the experience gathered on the job for use and application in future. Thus the contribution of Government towards the training and lifelong learning includes:

• Generation of culture or norms: the role of government is important in driving the culture amongst the citizens and businesses towards the training and development.
• Hr policies formation: the policies are being formulated by the government thus affecting human resources management in all the organizations operational at UK.
• Funds provision: As the firms may not be investing in training needs of the employees thus the government involves by providing necessary funds and thus making the employees gain knowledge from their environments and thus the government at UK provide due support for development of the human resources at standard levels (Mark, 2014).
• Promotion of researches in the field: by involving a complete syllabus of HRD in the curricular parts nationally the government at UK can help researches and study in the field.
• Affecting environment at workplace: The government through laws in favor of rights of employees and punishments for organizations can improve the overall work environment and promote the development of employees

Also as the Marks and Spencer’s operates in UK, so the government is concerned about the performance of the employees as well as company policies in providing development to its employees. Also the initiatives of the government are helpful for the organization by provision of high performing employees which enable them to beat the competition in the highly competing players in the industry. Thus the role of the government at UK in providing training, skills development and lifelong self learning to the employees is commendable.

4.2 Explain how the development of competency movement has affected the public and private sectors

To gain a competitive advantage there is a surge among the competencies to increase the level of competencies and skills and therefore they are getting more concerned about the bridging of the performance gaps between the actual and desired levels. Among the private players there is a trend in UK in investing more amounts in developing of the competencies apart from the Government initiatives (Mondy et al, 2014). The companies had been realizing the importance of the development of the competencies of their employees which could otherwise lead to low productivity and efficiency and effected customer services for the company. The steeper learning curves at big companies like represent the concerns of the company in developing the completion advantage through training the human resources. As the economy of a country is equally affected by the performance and competency levels of its organization in both the public and private sectors thus the public sector is also getting more and more concerned about their competencies development and improvement in performance levels. The public companies at UK like the East Coast Trains are continuously making improvement in order to reach the standard performance levels though the efforts of the government are also commendable. Thus the process of learning and competency development is never ending process and the organizations at UK and elsewhere are more and more getting used to it and thus all the organizations have been developing their own patterns of working and competency development to support the nationwide movement for competency development. Also the employees are being motivated at higher levels and getting more inputs including training in order to contribute to the high performance of the organization.

4.3 Assess how temperory initiatives introduced by uk government contribute to hrd

To bring the stability and growth in the UK economy, the government initiated contemporary training and development initiative in order to improve the performance of organizations and contribution to the country’s economy through development of medium and large scale industries (Nath, 2010). The UK government designs and develops different training programs in accordance with the needs of different industries and program differs in the qualitative patterns. The Government had realized the effects of the performance of the employees in all the organizations at UK on the economy and hence been putting up the best designing efforts to yield high performing individuals contributing to the national economy. UK government initiatives include:

• Sector skills Council promoting the business networking capabilities
• Learning Councils providing education relevant to business plans and funds raising
• Small and Medium scale Enterprise promotion and providing Business opportunities to those in need
• Standards applicable to the conduct of businesses
• University of Industries dedicated to improving the skills and knowledge of people operating in various industries at UK
• National Vocational Qualifications promoting the development of skills and promoting sector wise businesses.

As seen in Marks & Spencer’s this contemporary and government led initiative had been very crucial in gaining a competitive edge over other retailing giants globally. The contemporary training efforts has helped the employee at the M&S to respond to the changes in the environment in a very effective manner and thus the company had been realizing the importance of the special training efforts for the best development of the skills and competencies of its employees to gain a global position in the industry. The training is designed in the company by placing due focus on the needs assessment, market factors, industry position, customer feedbacks, adaptation to changing environments, etc. Thus the firms can be performing high and responding to the changes in the environments through the effective design and implementation of the learning events and gaining active participation of the employees and doing all such thing in a cost effective manner.

Conclusion

The human resources development deals with the training and development of the employees in order to improve the performance of the overall organization. The various individual working in an organization have different preferences to the various types of learning styles and thus the organization, while planning and designing of a training event must be able to use a mix o the learning styles that are most effective in delivering the desired outcomes to the organization (Gilly et al, 2009). As in case of M&S which has a significant contribution to the economy at UK, the company had been training and developing the skills of the employees to gain a competition edge globally and it uses the cost and benefits analysis while deciding the feasibility and continuation of a training program. Also the company uses various types of training events for the different levels of management including customer service, operations staff and the managerial levels. The company makes use of performance appraisals as this helps in identification of the gaps between actual and desired outcomes from the employees. The company makes use of workshops, role plays, coaching, mentoring by attaching staff with managers, etc. All such effort of the company are aimed at developing the performance of the employees and improving their practical or pragmatic approach to learning and thus develop the skills and competencies of the employees. The Government at UK had made significant contributions in the development of the skills and competencies of the employees in the both public and private sectors and this had made contributions to the growth and stability of the national economy. Through the efforts of the UK government, the companies like M&S are getting more and more dedicated in development of the competencies of the employees to yield the best performance outputs.

References

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Honey, P.; Mumford, A. (2006). Learning styles questionnaire: 80-item version. London: Maidenhead. 
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Grimley, B. (2013). Theory and practice of NLP coaching: a psychological approach. Los Angeles: Sage Publications
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We are posting units solutions so scholars can explore the our  Assignment Help UK  and get review the quality of our work. ,Thus Unit 23 Human Resource Development Assignment basically throws light on the various learning styles as per the Kolb’s learning cycle and Honey- Mumford model of learning.