Designing an Effective Training Program

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Designing an Effective Training Program
Introduction
Recruiting new employees fresh from college is a strategy employed by many organizations. However, these recruits often lack the basic skills needed to work in a professional setting, making on-the-job training a necessary step to equip them with the necessary skills. Besides, there is a rapid change in technology and strategies applied in workplaces, making training a necessity to align the employees with these changes. Training can also be applied as an act of gratitude and appreciation to the employees as well as preparing them for even more demanding responsibilities. Training employees just for its sake can be detrimental to the organization, necessitating the management to craft an effective training program to reap the maximum benefits. There are specific steps that need to be followed to come up with an effective training program. These are needs assessment, design, implementation, and evaluation.
Steps
1. Needs Assessment
The needs assessment is included as the first step in developing an effective training program to avoid the gamble of undertaking training that does not have clear goals and objectives. At this phase, information from the different stakeholders that are anticipated to be part of the training is gathered and analyzed. Numerous information gathering techniques can be deployed in this phase, including interviews or study of existing documentation such as job descriptions followed by a careful analysis by experts in the specified domain area to establish the specific needs of the training. Failure to undertake a needs assessment before the commencement of the actual training, the organization is more likely to come short of the expected outcome of the training. It can even derail the subsequent steps in the design of an effective training program.
The needs assessment can be broken down into three distinct levels: organizational, occupational, and individual levels. The organizational level of needs assessment takes a broader perspective of the training needs while considering all the different elements of an organization. The occupational level narrows down to specific skills, tasks, and capabilities necessary to accomplish specific tasks. On the other hand, the individual level assesses the needs of each individual who will be part of the training.
2. Design
Soon after the needs assessme...