TRAINING AND DEVELOPMENT OF STAFF
In order to get the competitive edge in a highly competitive business world, organizations strive to equip themselves with the necessary skills and knowledge that give them the advantage. It is estimated that organizations in the United States of America spend an excess of $120 billion per annum on training and staff development. Training in this respect, refers to a systematic approach to learning and improving team, individual and group outputs in an organization. Therefore development refers to activities that lead to the acquisition of knowledge influencing growth. And organization that does not train its staff can be said to be non progressive and experiences a stalled growth. Firstly the training field, area or coverage of training has significantly grown when compared to years back. The change in growth is exponential and we can no longer rely on the psychological literature to be the only or even main source of knowledge that has been generated. In order to understand the effect and importance of training for individuals, teams and groups a multi-disciplinary approach is essential given the increased specialization in today’s organizations.
Secondly, although psychological research on training in the traditional sense is an independent field with a dedicated amount of study going into it at the individual level of analysis and more recently the team level of analysis. The third unique characteristic, thanks to cheaper faster more efficient ways of information / data acquisition and transfer using the internet, human resource development and training are now being taken on a global level. Thus human resource development and training cannot be limited to a particular region or country. There is documented evidence showing the positive impact of training on both individuals and team output in an organization. Training activities are beneficiary towards developing individual and team outcomes regarding attitude, motivation, and skill and management empowerment. Apart from job performance, training has other benefits. Although one must take note that these additional benefits of training are not totally disconnected from impact on job performance. As a matter of fact, in many cases they are indirectly related to job performance while in others they may be related to individual and team well being.