Records and Information Management Training

📄 Words:	1695
📝 Subject:	Management
📑 Pages:	7
✍️ Type:	Essay

Executive Summary

The changing face of every organisation is usually associated with the change in the working methodology of their various departments. The advent of technology and more especially in information Technology has brought rapid changes to the way and manner records management is done in our organisation. Management recognizes the importance of taking advantage of the new methods and records management and is accordingly deploying resources to support this sector.

The acquisition of new information management devises and the associated challenges in its implementation in order to derive the maximum benefit from its usage by the Records and Information Management staff is the basis for this proposal. This initiative would be implemented in-tandem with the framework of ‘Kirkpatrick’s (1959) “learning and training evaluation theory” (p1). This proposal provides a summary of the training strategies that is set to improve the efficient delivery of the Record and Information Management Staff.

Background of the Problem

As part of the Intra-departmental Capacity Building Project initiative by this organisation two year ago, the Director General requested the Records and Information Department to identify their specific needs and forward them appropriately for consideration. This proposal covers the needs identified and the training and implementation plan necessary to overcome these challenges.

Target Population

The target group is the officers of the Records and Information Management Department of the St Henry hospital. There are 35 people in the department and each has a different level of responsibility. 20 of them are female while 10 are male.

Analysis of the Problem

According to Miller and Osinski (1996, p1) ‘training needs assessment is a critical activity for the training and development function. Whether you are a human resource generalist or a specialist, you should be adept at performing a training needs assessment”. Training begins with the identification of needs of the appropriate area and then programmes are fashioned to solve this need. This section first discusses the components and tools used for the needs assessment and then later the training solutions.

The components of the needs assessment

In mobilizing the information about the training needs of the records and information management department staff some of these components were considered:

The Specific Job Requirements of the staff.
Current skills and characteristics of the staff.
The features of the newly implemented records and information management system.

The tools of the need assessment

In gathering information about the current skills level of the aforementioned staff, the following data collection instruments were appropriately designed to solicit the information:

Interview with the staff of the department on a one on one basis.
On the job trial evaluation of the new system.
Interview with the Coordinator of training and development.
The implementing committee of the new Records and Information Management System

While assessing the needs of the Records and Information Management Officer, We examined the functions and structure of a hospital and the role of the Records Officer within the structure. The health care centre is one of the most important social services that deal with different categories of people on a daily basis since it is an essential service. It enjoys a lot of patronage across the age groups and gender categories. One of its most crucial functions is the quantum of information that it processes daily and accumulatively. The department has thirty five members of staff. Out of this number, twenty five of them are support staff while the remaining ten have been divided into five groups of two members each and are assigned to manage each of the five classifications of client services namely; Child health, Aged health, Specialist services, General Services and Premium Services.

Brief task of the Record and Information Manager

To make accurate records of the profile of clients
To codify, classify and analyse, the records appropriately
To ensure data security
To ensure that records are updated accordingly
To report on any records as and when necessary.

Current Skills and Characteristics

Currently the staff:

are provided with a personal computer and each spends bout 6 hours a day behind the computer
The staff is aged between 23 to 30 years with an appreciable amount of education.

Task Analysis

We identified that the new system has features which requires a retraining on usage and report formatting. These includes the interface design, input of data, data processing, data reporting techniques and the incorporated customized data manipulation portfolio functions.

Rationale and Goals of the Proposed Training

The major reason for undertaking this task is to:

Develop the capacity of staff to uses compact and contemporary systems for information management
Decrease the time that is spent on maintain and accessing records

Learning Objectives and Topics

From the analysis the skills required for the efficient operation of the new record management system is categorized into the following:

How to input into the new system?
How to process data in the system?
How to store records with the system?
How to retrieve records within the system?
How to design specialized reports for management decisions?
How to retrain future staff of the department?

Considerations

The following consideration were made in designing the training programme:

All staff are computer literate
All staff have an appreciable knowledge of prior usage of a records management system
Staff are familiar with the functions of their position

Overview of the training Programme and Evaluation Strategies

The initial assessment of skills indicated that the officers who have been on the job for more than seven years have a lot of hesitation moving to the new system as compared to the newly recruited. Additionally, all the staff has relatively equal skills level as far as the new system is concerned. Therefore, we are recommending a flexible training program that will adopt a beginners approach to deliver and to evaluate performance in the six target skill areas, identify their areas of weakness” and train them in their weak areas. After the officers complete training, They will be given a posttest and continuous training in their weak areas until a proficiency level has been achieved. Carla McNeil (2000, p3) asserts that this strategy if strictly followed, will inure to the benefit of the organisation in three main ways namely; future protection of the human resource base, adaptation to change and self renewal of the staff.