In M3: Assignment 2, (ATTACHED) you assessed the training needs for the situation in the scenario and developed a proposal to address the needs.For this assignment, you will create an organizational d

Training Proposal

Carla Fonseca

Argosy University

Professor Ballaro

February 20, 2019

Introduction

Training needs assessment is essential for the organization to identify the current competency levels, skills, and knowledge of the employees in different areas. This paper performs a training needs assessment for the organization in the case study. It also determines the appropriate training delivery methods and instructional designs that can be used in the case scenario. Then, it discusses the problems and indicators of the three stores using simple heuristics that can be resolved using employee training. It also designs a training proposal while identifying three training initiatives that can be suggested for the employees, the expected outcome of the training initiatives and the budget for the training initiatives in the case study.

Needs Assessment for the Organization

Identifying the Business Need

Developing a training needs assessment should be the first step in the training plan for the organization to ensure that the customers are satisfied, the inexperienced employees are coached and the productivity of the organization maintained (Alasadi, 2015). Providing employees with proper training is crucial in ensuring that the employees know their roles and responsibilities within the company. Training should not be a one-time thing but a continuous process it would continue to establish the skills of the new and inexperienced employees. Continuous training is the only sure way of ensuring that the new and the inexperienced employees improve their performance and therefore, customer satisfaction and productivity of the organization. As such, it is important for the managers of the organization to develop a training needs assessment or analysis to determine what parts or which employees need training on their roles and responsibilities. Performing this analysis will enable the organization to be determined in developing the areas of training that are pertinent for the inexperienced employees to successfully accomplish the goals and the objectives of the organization.

Performing a Gap Analysis

The second step in the training needs assessment if the conducting of a gap analysis. This step involves assessing the present state of the performance of the employees and the department and comparing this state to the desired level. The difference between the present state and the desired state is then considered to be the gap. The procedure used to identify the gap will highly depend on the organization and the ability of the employees to grasp the skills and the knowledge instilled on them. The gap is then filled by training the inexperienced employees on the roles and the responsibilities they ought to take as well as the skills they need to master to perform these duties.

Assessing the Training Options

After the gaps analysis, the organization will then have a list of training needs and options. These options can be assessed based on the priorities and the goals of the company. The options are then used to substitute for the already existing training plans if need be.

Reporting the Training Needs and Recommending the Training Plans

The last step in the training needs assessment involves reporting the findings from the assessment (Pérez Cañado, 2016). Then the team recommends on the short-term and the long-term training plans including their budgets. The report should comprise of the summary of the reasons for the completion of the assessment, the approaches used to conduct the assessment and the people involved in the process. This enables the trainers to easily identify the gaps in the training and train the employees appropriately.

Determining Appropriate Instructional Design and Training Delivery Methods

Choosing the wrong training delivery method can lead to misinterpretation of the messages by the employees. As such, it is important to determine the most suitable instructional designs and training delivery methods. The first most appropriate method is using instructor-led training programs. However traditional, this approach is still a valid approach to learning and developing skills necessary in the workplace. This company will use an instructional design strategy that incorporates both the real-time polling and individual learners to increase their motivation and participation through the creation of job applications and simulations. The second most appropriate instructional design is the blended learning solution. This training delivery approach turns the idea of training to a journey that the employees will employ and use blended solutions to solve their problems.

Indicators and Problems Experienced by the Three Stores that can be solved through Training

According to Pineda (2012), there are different key performance indicators that can be used to evaluate customer service and the effectiveness of the customer service plan. A poor customer service plan will always lead to low customer satisfaction. Some of the key performance indicators that can be used to improve customer satisfaction at the three stores include assessing the overall satisfaction of the customers. This can be achieved by conducting a survey on customer satisfaction. From the results of the survey, the company can then improve its training needs to fit the customer satisfaction level.

Secondly, the company can focus on improving the satisfaction of the customers. One way of evaluating customer service is by tracking the changes in the satisfaction levels of the customers. For instance, if customer satisfaction goes down, then this implies that the employees need to change the way they handle their customers. On the other hand, if customer satisfaction improves, then the company should continue working hard to be on track.

Another metric of determining customer satisfaction is through assessing customer retention within the organization (Alasadi, 2015). The customers who are satisfied with the services offered at the company will probably stick around to continue enjoying the services (Pérez Cañado, 2016). This implies that if the company brings a fair amount of customers then the organization is providing great customer services. Also, the net promoter score will help the organization to determine whether their customers are satisfied or not. This would enable the company to develop the strategies of improving customer satisfaction and retention.

Also, an employee from the customer service department should interact with the customers to discover how likely the customers can purchase and take some kind of actions. If the customer service is excellent, the number of customers should be relatively high. Also, the company should compare its customer service effectiveness with that of its competitors to determine the needs gap in the customer service department.

Finally, the company can improve its customer services by resolving the issues related to customer services. The company can similarly look at the issues that affect the customer service team that may hinder them from delivering the best services to the customers (Pineda, 2012). No matter how good the company may be, there must be issues and complaints coming from the customers concerning the delivery of services. If the managers have the capability of resolving these issues quickly, this will make the customers happy and therefore will imply great customer service.

The final metric that can be used within the company to ensure customer satisfaction is the use of employee productivity assessment. Different businesses today use different approaches to evaluate the productivity of their employees. Employee productivity is a significant factor when it comes to ensuring customer satisfaction. Employees need to do their jobs effectively for the customers to be satisfied and their issues are resolved in a timely manner.

Training Proposal and Three Training Initiatives that can be recommended to the Employees

The training proposal aims at boosting the morale of the inexperienced employees and motivating them to give the best they can give (Pérez Cañado, 2016). The proposal recognizes the individual contributions and the achievements of these employees to determine their needs as well as encourage them to strive towards improving their productivity within the organization. The training proposal also aims at finding out the reasons why the employees are underperforming and customer satisfaction is low. It is very rare for an employee to decide to do a bad job. The main reasons for underperformance could be as simple as not have adequate resources required to perform the assigned duties or lack of proper training (Pineda, 2012). The training proposal will, therefore, focus on the goals of the company in employee engagement and participation to improve the productivity of the organization. The underlying reasons for the underperformance of the new employees will then be discovered and addressed appropriately.

Three Training Initiatives for the Inexperienced Employees

Encouraging Communication

The managers of the organization should clearly communicate the underperformance of the employees to make them aware of their need for training and development. The executives should similarly open the doors to the inexperienced employees to state the blockages that hinder them from being productive. The performance of the employees can then be improved by both the manager and the employees who understand their needs for training and development of the relevant skills needed to drive the organizational activities. Besides the employees and the managers having open communication, the whole team should be motivated to communicate everything ranging from the deadlines, progress, resources and the expectations of their employees. This strategy would make it easier to navigate through the objectives of the organization and improve the performance of underperforming employees.

Creating a Positive Work Environment

After developing open communication between the employees and the employers, it is important to next review the working environment (Alasadi, 2015). It cannot make sense to foster effective communication in a work setting whereby the employees are intimidated by their bosses and leaders, arbitrarily scolded and their concerns dismissed. Instead, the organizational leaders should work towards developing a work culture that enables the employees to voice out their opinions and strengthen their views. Giving employees an enabling, happy and a healthy work environment are necessary for fostering better results. This is because the employees will be more likely to contribute their perspectives to the benefit of the organization.

Providing Effective Training

Providing employees with proper training is crucial in ensuring that the employees know their roles and responsibilities within the company (Pineda, 2012). After recruitment, the new and inexperienced employees will know that they need to contribute their ideas and be productive enough to get things done. Training should not be a one-time thing but a continuous process it would continue to establish the skills of the new and inexperienced employees. Continuous training is the only sure way of ensuring that the new and the inexperienced employees improve their performance and therefore, customer satisfaction and productivity of the organization.

Expected Outcomes for the Three Training Initiatives

The three training initiatives are expected to gain several benefits to the organization. The training initiatives are expected to have a greater value of returns on investment (Pérez Cañado, 2016). The three training initiatives are expected to make it easier for the organizational leaders and managers to secure funding for the future improvement of employee performance. It also helps the employees to understand the real impact of the initiatives on the major business accomplishments as well as help develop support for the leadership and future projects (Pineda, 2012). Also, the three training initiatives have organizational benefits such as time savings, increased output, improved quality control and reduction in the rates of error. These benefits can still be transformed into dollar value as they show the value of the organization.

The budget of the Estimated Costs of Implementing the Training Initiatives

The cost of the training will be measured in dollars or translated to a value in dollars (Alasadi, 2015). This is an influential measuring scale used to evaluate the budget of training initiatives as it has huge emotional appeal to the organizational leaders. Questionnaires and assumptions cannot be effectively used to determine the costs of implementing the three training initiatives. As such, there is a need for appropriate methods of evaluating the value of training in terms of monetary benefits of training.

Various methods have previously been used to evaluate the financial benefits of training initiatives. Some methods look at the consequences of failing to train employees while others focus on analyzing the records of performance or estimating the training curve under certain conditions. The most common method of estimating the cost of training initiatives is performing a cost/benefit analysis. A cost/benefit analysis involves the calculation of the training costs and the performance values that result from the assessment of the training needs.

The company reports a total expenditure on the training for the new and the inexperienced employees to be 55,000 dollars. The total amount of dollars budgeted for the training of the employees who are formally employed is 54,000 dollars. The corporate electronic-learning market is estimated at 1,100 dollars and the figure is expected to reach 11,400 in the next few months.

Conclusion

Training needs assessment is essential for the organization to identify the current competency levels, skills, and knowledge of the employees in different areas. A training needs assessment for the organization in the case scenario has been developed. The appropriate training delivery methods and instructional designs that can be used in the case scenario have also been clearly developed. The problems and indicators of the three stores have been discussed using simple heuristics that can be resolved using employee training. A training proposal has been developed while identifying three training initiatives that can be suggested for the employees, the expected outcome of the training initiatives and the budget for the training initiatives in the case study.

References

Alasadi, R., & Al Sabbagh, H. (2015). The role of training in small business performance. International Journal of Information, Business and Management, 7(1), 293.

Pérez Cañado, M. L. (2016). Teacher training needs for bilingual education: In-service teacher perceptions. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 19(3), 266-295.

Pineda, P. (2012). Evaluation of training in organizations: a proposal for an integrated model. Journal of European Industrial Training, 34(7), 673-693.