Competitiveness through training

Md. Abul Hasnat

2/27/2011

ContentsIntroduction.......................................................1

What is Training?...............................................2

Importance of training.......................................3

Competitiveness and training............................5

Factors of business competitiveness.................6

Competitiveness through training.....................7

Conclusion.........................................................9

Appendix.........................................................11

Introduction

Training is a means of communicating new knowledge and skills and changing attitudes. It can raise awareness and provide people with the opportunity to explore their existing knowledge and skills. There are many different kinds of training for many different audiences, including service providers and service users. Teaching and training are about communicating information and facilitating learning. Learning is what people do when they receive that information. But learning is more than collecting information — it must also involve a permanent change in behavior, attitude or understanding. Training and Development is the framework for helping employees to develop their personal and organizational skills, knowledge, and abilities. The focus of all aspects of Human Resource Development is on developing the most superior workforce so that the organization and individual employees can accomplish their work goals in service to customers. All employees want to be valuable and remain competitive in the labor market at all times.

Trainings in an organization can be mainly of two types; Internal and External training sessions. Internal training involves when training is organized in-house by the Human resources department or training department using either a senior staff or any talented staff in the particular department as a resource person. On the other hand External training is normally arranged outside the firm and is mostly organized by training institutes or consultants. Whichever training, it is very essential for all staff and helps in building career positioning and preparing staff for greater challenges.

Critical to a corporation's growth and prosperity is gaining and retaining competitive advantage. Although corporations may pursue many paths to this end, one that is frequently not recognized is capitalizing on superior human resource management. Currently, many companies recognize the growing importance of their human resources, but few are conceptualizing them in strategic terms-in ways to gain a competitive advantage through learning and training. As a result, many companies forego the opportunity to seize competitive advantage through human resource practice initiatives. However, there are a few companies that do not forego the opportunity. Training is the Classic artillery of companies to achieve manage and excel the business competitiveness.

What is Training?One definition of training is ‘the process of bringing a person to an agreed standard of skill by practice and instruction’. Another definition is ‘a trainer and participant working together to transfer information from the trainer to the participant, to develop the participant’s knowledge, attitudes or skills so they can perform work tasks better’. Taken together these definitions say two things:

1. Training is directed towards agreed standards or objectives. These are sometimes called learning outcomes — what you want people to learn from training.

2. The person being trained participates with the trainer in the training activity, rather than simply receiving instruction. Training usually involves participation. This means that a person being trained has an active role in the training process, rather than a passive role. Also it often takes place in the workplace or community where the skills and knowledge being communicated will be used.

Overall from the business training perspective we can conclude that, “Training refers to a planned effort by a company to facilitate employees learning of job related competencies. These competencies include knowledge skills or behaviors that are critical for successful job performances that eliminate the gap between actual and expected performance of individual, team and departments”.

Training is a means of communicating new knowledge and skills and changing attitudes. It can raise awareness and provide people with the opportunity to explore their existing knowledge and skills. But, to be effective, training should be based on the needs of the people who are being trained (the participants). Training needs should be identified by both participants and their managers. Training should not only meet the needs of people being trained, but should meet the needs of the organization or project they are working for, and contribute to better services or standards for service users. A training need is the gap between what somebody already knows, and what they need to know to do their job or fulfill their role effectively. By identifying training needs trainers can decide what the objectives of the planned training should be. The first step in identifying training needs is to assess the current level of knowledge and skills of the participants. The second step is to clarify what skills, knowledge and attitudes people need to do their jobs or tasks.

Importance of trainingTraining employees do have a significant role in modern business era. Not just to equip them with latest tools your company has implemented, there is a lot more to it. I have sorted down them in a list. This is a must read if you employ or mean to employ in future at least one person.

Training in an organization is mainly being conducted for three reasons:

Improving the quality or the business excellence

Improving the performance

Developing the human capital for future growth to achieve the vision through employee satisfaction.

The training importance is focused on below discussions:

Optimum Utilization of Human Resources – Training and Development helps in optimizing the utilization of human resource that further helps the employee to achieve the organizational goals as well as their individual goals.

Development of Human Resources – Training and Development helps to provide an opportunity and broad structure for the development of human resources’ technical and behavioral skills in an organization. It also helps the employees in attaining personal growth.

Development of skills of employees – Training and Development helps in increasing the job knowledge and skills of employees at each level. It helps to expand the horizons of Human intellect and an overall personality of the employees.

Productivity – Training and Development helps in increasing the productivity of the employees that helps the organization further to achieve its long-term goal.

Team spirit – Training and Development helps in inculcating the sense of team work, team spirit, and inter-team collaborations. It helps in inculcating the zeal to learn within the employees.

Organization Culture – Training and Development helps to develop and improve the organizational health culture and effectiveness. It helps in creating the learning culture within the organization.

Organization Climate – Training and Development helps building the positive perception and feeling about the organization. The employees get these feelings from leaders, subordinates, and peers.

Quality – Training and Development helps in improving upon the quality of work and work-life.

Healthy work environment – Training and Development helps in creating the healthy working environment. It helps to build good employee, relationship so that individual goals aligns with organizational goal.

Health and Safety – Training and Development helps in improving the health and safety of the organization thus preventing obsolescence.

Morale – Training and Development helps in improving the morale of the work force.

Image – Training and Development helps in creating a better corporate image.

Profitability – Training and Development leads to improved profitability and more positive attitudes towards profit orientation.

Training and Development aids in organizational development i.e. Organization gets more effective decision making and problem solving. It helps in understanding and carrying out organizational policies

Competitiveness and trainingTraining aimed exclusively at entrepreneurial management is directed toward reaching the proposed objectives and, in most cases, constitutes a preliminary step in consulting or is an explicit component of it. Emphasis is placed on training managers and contributing to consolidated strategic thinking that can guide business development. Such training is needed, given the changing characteristics of the SME environment, where competitiveness and success are associated with the ability to adapt to such change.

For more than 50 years researchers have been working on the progress of competitiveness. After that in the 21st century they have decided that competitiveness comes from the enrichment of the asset and utilization of the asset to maximize the profit level. That asset is Human asset of the organization. The more efficient is the workforce the more efficient is the organization to maximize profit. The way to make them efficient is the increasing KSA of the employee. And that comes from training.

Competitiveness can be defined: Competitiveness is a comparative concept of the ability and performance of a firm, sub-sector or country to sell and supply goods and/or services in a given market. For the company, competitiveness is the ability to provide products and services as or more effectively and efficiently than the relevant competitors. In the traded sector, this means sustained success in international markets without protection or subsidies. Although transportation costs might allow firms from a nation to compete successfully in their home market or in adjacent markets, competitiveness usually refers to advantage obtained through superior productivity.

Productivity comes from efficiency of the producer. Overall the producer is the organization and the organization comes combined with employer and employee.

Factors of business competitivenessA nation's standard of living is increasingly dependent on the competitiveness of its firms. Competitiveness is vital if the nation's firms are to take advantage of the opportunities presented by the international economy. World trade and foreign investment have grown faster in the last several decades than world output. Competitiveness in industries subject to international trade and foreign direct investment can therefore provide substantial leverage for economic growth. This is especially true for small nations, where competitiveness can allow firms to overcome

Competitiveness

Institution

Higher education and training

diversity

Technological readinessBusiness

Sophistication

Innovation

the limitations of their small home markets in order to achieve their maximum potential. Competitiveness is also vital if a nation's firms are to guard against the threats posed by the international economy. International competition has become fiercer than ever before. Lower costs for transportation and communication, reduced trade barriers, and the spread of technology have combined to sharpen international competition. This competition has put unprecedented pressure on all a nation's economic factors, including management, labor, and government. In an environment in which the nation's firms must continually improve in order to meet the threat from an ever wider array of competitors, the failure of management, labor, or government to meet the challenge can spell disaster for the nation's firms. There are 12 factors to gain the competitive advantage, among them below are for the organization that can be achieved through training:

Figure: Pillars of business competitiveness

These factors or pillars of competitiveness comes and relates directly the employee with the strategic goals of the organization. These are the latest business trump cards to win the game from a numerous number of competitors. And it is possible through effective training.

Competitiveness through training Through the history of mankind, people were interested in how to gain more advantage or profit, and how they can be successful among their competitors. In the recent times

with the intensification of competition, with the fastened business life, with the exhausting of natural resources more and more researches deal with the topic of competitiveness. Some of the aspects of these researches are common. identify those factors which the literature considers to be the most important regarding competitiveness. We created our questionnaire based on these factors,which was built up from the following modules:

• Management and strategy

• Marketing

• Finance

• Controlling

• Taxation

• Innovation

• Environment-consciousness

• Labor market

Further specialized modules for the non-profit and local government organizations, since they were included in the survey as well. A formula of competitiveness has been formulized by a researcher team of University of Pecs is as below:

I = 0.31 X K + 0.42 X V + 0.349 X M + 0.289 X F + 0.325 X S + 0.295 X C

Where the values stand for:

• Research and development (K),

• Changing of target markets (C),

• Adaption to changes (V),

• Rate of marketing budget (M),

• Participation in strategic alliances (S) and

• Workforce fluctuation (F).

Concern, these all are the factors of competitiveness to grow up the business by employees. And every each of them can be developed by strategic training planning. The more effective will be the training programme the more it will be helpful to develop these factors.

Figure: Investment relation of Effective training programme for organizational growth and competitiveness

Monitoring the training outcomes for better jobEvaluation and improvement of trainingINVESTMENTTrainingTransfer of Training

Organizational goal achievement and growth

Conclusion Just as it is important to understand what competitiveness is, it is important to understand what competitiveness is not. Consistently subsidized exports are not evidence that a firm or an industry is "competitive." Although there are infant industry arguments that might support some level of subsidies in an industry's early stages, exports that depend on ongoing subsidies are more evidence of the nation's ability and willingness to subsidize than evidence of firm or industry competitiveness. Subsidized exports of agricultural goods from developed nations, for example, do not provide evidence of competitiveness. Unless the firm or industry is self-sustaining and can compete successfully on its own without subsidies, it is not truly competitive.

The whole Training and Development function has increasingly acquired status as the instrument for breaking new ground and bringing about change through its developmental activities. Training managers must provide expert advice to top level management, usually about the value to the organization of a particular kind of training. Furthermore, they must have the means to persuade management as to a systematic approach to training outlining for example, the extent to which changes in structure and procedures will be necessary to support training. The training must take place within a framework of partnership between the trainer, employer and employee. This relationship must be characterized by trust between all stakeholders so that training does not simply reflect the views of the employer. This commonality of interest must be identified and worked towards. Training and development is about making a difference to the bottom line, both in terms of how people feel about their jobs as well as in the area of performance and productivity. Ultimately, it is about adding real value to the organization and those who comprise it.

Appendix

Survey on Business Competitiveness through TrainingQ 1 Do you conduct training programmes in your organization? (If No Jump to Question number 4)

Yes...........................................................................

No............................................................................

Q 2. How frequently do you conduct training programmes?

Daily.........................................................................

2-3 times a week.....................................................

Once a week............................................................

2-3 times a month...................................................

As per management need.......................................

Q 3. How many methods do you follow to train your people (employee)?

Single ......................................................................

Multiple methods....................................................

Methods need for the respective programme........

Q 4. What methods do you follow to train your people (employee)?

Off the job training ..........................................O

On the job training...........................................O

Methods need for the respective programme. O

Computer based training..................................O

Q 5. How do you describe your company’s Competitiveness in comparing the respective market?

Less competitive Moderate Highly competitive

Weak = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = Strong

10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100

Q 6. In dealing with Strategies like training employees, do you think employees develop their skills in their job through learning from training?

Agree strongly……………………………………………………

Agree a little............................................................

Neither Agree nor Disagree.....................................

Disagree a little........................................................

Disagree strongly.....................................................

Q 7. In selecting a employee, how important is his skill development to contribute to the organization through achieving better goals?

Extremely important --:--:--:--:--:--:--:-- Less Important

Q8. What attributes you will prefer while making the employee’s development to increase your competitiveness?

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

Q9. Mark your opinion on the statements below:

Strongly Agree

Agree Neutral Disagree Strongly Disagree

Training employees is to gaining the capital

Competitiveness means to increase the market share by increasing the revenue

Better skilled employees means higher standard of goals

The only guaranty of quality is proper knowledge and delivery of that knowledge into the work.

Here are a number of statements that people have made. For each one please say how much you agree

Or disagree with the statement.

Strongly Agree

Agree Neutral Disagree Strongly Disagree

I believe knowledgeable employees are the reason for development.

Better training methods are effective to develop the skills of people

Training cost is higher than the capital gain

Competitiveness are achieved by developing the employees

Q10 . In this Question, there are five attributes of Competitiveness that can be achieved by training. Please allocate 100 points among the attributes so that your allocation reflects the relative importance you attach to each attribute. The more points an attribute receives the more important the attribute is. If an attribute is not at all important to you please assign zero points. If an attribute is twice as important as other it will have twice points than others.

Attributes PointsInstitution

Higher education and training diversity

Technological readiness

Business Sophistication

Innovation

Sum 100

Q11. Do you think Business strategic training programmes are adequate enough to develop the human capital for any organization?

Yes...........................................................................

No............................................................................

Don’t Know……………………………………………………………

Q12. Do you have access to the Internet at home or at work? (Preferable to contact)

Yes - at home........................................................... 1

Yes-at work.............................................................. 2

Yes-both.................................................................. 3

No............................................................................ 4

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Email address:

Cell phone no. :

*Thank you very much for your time and support*