As we have learned in this week’s material, training is important as it influences the performance of employees in a positive manner, it increases productivity, it helps to mitigate the liability of improper work habits, and is essential when it comes to changes being made within the organization. Knowing that training is important for an organization, the next step is to ensure that the training program implemented is reliable and valid to not only the employees, but the employers.
In some cases, training can be unnecessary, inefficient, or ineffective. One way training can be ineffective, is when the training gives the trainees an idea on how to do things but never allows the trainees a chance to practice or perform the training. For example, in construction workers are sometimes tasked with having to work in deep holes that are accessed through a ladder. In unfortunate circumstances gases such as exhaust can leak into these holes where the workers are and create unsafe working conditions. Now these workers are trained with all the precautionary measures on how to maintain a safe workplace when working in their holes and are given specialized equipment for working conditions. But things happen and if a situation were to arise where a worker is passed out, the other employees may have been told what to do but never been given hands on experience on how to emergency evacuate that worker. This training becomes somewhat ineffective as the best way to give that worker a good chance of rescue is to give the workers a simulation experience on how to perform the actions. We see this hands-on training being conducted when looking at fire, earthquake, and intruder drills that schools participate in to protect their students.
One great training that I have seen, and it turned out to be exceptionally effective, was traffic control training that took place during my internship. The company I was working for usually outsourced their flaggers to other companies, but due to lack of availability we kept the work within the company. The training took place in both the conference room and in the field. First, trainees were given visual instructions on safe traffic control practices. Then a video was played, and trainees were asked to identify faults that had taken place in the training video and how the flaggers should have handled situations. It was then time for in the field experience. To give them experience and practice for the task that was needed for, the flaggers-controlled traffic for a smaller task that was not time sensitive but would at some point need to be completed down the road. This training experience gave the employees a well-rounded experience that they were able to utilize in performing real tasks and keeping workers safe.
Lecture 1: Developing Training Programs (W6 Lecture 1 – Training.pptxActions)
Lecture 2: Evaluating Training Effectiveness (W6 Lecture 2 – Evaluating Training Effectiveness.pptxActions)
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