Training and Development in Small Business

Introduction

Bright Collection is a fashion and design store based in Los Angeles, California. It specializes in making and designing customized clothes based on the event customer’s taste, wants, and preferences. It has around thirty workers including designers, artists, technical specialists, and sewers who do the final making of the clothes. They are well known for their unique and modern styles to decorate events like weddings, graduations, burial attires as well as uniforms for specific Company workers. Due to the diverse pool of specialized employees in the company, management have a higher priority in managing and motivating the staff to keep working toward the set goal as a team. Fashions are very dynamic as each generation has a unique taste in their dressing code based on event therefore, frequent training and mentoring is critical.

Training and development is concerned the improvement and education of the organization employees. Although, training is more oriented in specific and quantifiable objectives like performing a certain process with great intelligence, operating a particular piece of machine, and understanding the procedure for carrying out a task (Caloghirou et al., 2018). Development concentrates on the soft skills that maybe necessary while conducting various activities such as goal setting, team cooperation, leadership, and choosing the best decision. A small business like Bright Collections may benefit a lot from the training and development of their employees to contribute directly to the business’s financial health and vitality. Training helps to improve employee skills leading to efficiency in production leading to job satisfaction and motivation when conducting their daily operations.

Training Proposal

Formal training and development program provides an integral element of strategy and distinction professional employees with the distinct highly skilled workforce. It ensures the business has the required to support the growth and expansion by reducing turnover, increasing efficiency, improving employee morale, and decreasing the need for supervision. In the training session, two techniques of training will be implemented that is, on-the-job techniques where the employee will be grouped based on their functional areas or based on professionalism. Where they will be trained on the procedure, techniques and tools used when performing their tasks.

Methods such as orientation, apprenticeships, job instruction training, and coaching will be used by the invited experts. As well as Off-the-job training this will be general training for all employees in the organization aiming to provide soft skills such as time management, conflict resolution, decision making, and leadership. During these session techniques like lectures, case studies, role-playing, films, and simulation will be used.

Training Schedule Details

  • Day: 30th November 202X.
  • Duration: 1Day (8 hours)
  • Venue: Bright Collection Company.
  • Instructor: Dr. Kyle Adams.
Time Topic Technique Outcomes
8:00 Am- 8:30 Am Introduction. An overview of the training procedure. Introduction of the invited training personnel and instructors by their names and the areas of specialization. Understand the schedule that will be followed throw out the sessions. Knowing the instructors who will be leaders in various teams.
8:30-11:00 Inauguration by the main instructor Dr. Kyle Adams. Commencement of on-the-job training sessions and grouping teams based on their functional areas.
Training on the tools and techniques used in operating on different work station and procedures on how to do them efficiently.
Participants get basic knowledge on the usage of the machines.
The strength and weaknesses of each tool are well understood.
11:00 am-Noon. Technical questions which include the what, how, and how? Participants to be given a chance to ask any technical question for clarity.
Various tasks were assigned to the group to test the mastery of the content.
An individual interview was done randomly to ensure total understanding.
To clear doubts and misunderstandings during the training.
The test is necessary to assure that the session was successful and the objective is achieved,
Noon-1:00pm Lunch break Offer refreshment and time for discussion among the participants. To refresh the energy and relax the mind for the next session.
1:00pm- 2:30 Off-the-job training.
All participants gather at the main hall.
Training on time management to assist the team to meet the objective within the estimated time.
Conflict management is how to interact with colleagues who have contradicting opinions.
Decision making the procedure to use when making a critical decision either personal or organizational.
To model the participants on the best approach on time management not to be caught up by deadlines.
To ensure that team members maintain a healthy relationship with each other to promote the corporation.
Ensure employee chooses the best decision always.
2:30- 2:45pm Break Simple physical exercise Prepare the participants for the next session and keep them lively.
2:45-4:30pm Build a plan for coordination to meet the objective set in the case study assigned to each team. Each team to analyze the case study.
Activity breakdown of the task in the case study.
Design a working best solution that could be implemented by the organization.
Each team will present their solution to the participants and answer the question that will be asked.
To test on the skills gained during the training session that is on technical skills by analyzing, designing the solution, and presenting it as a team.
4:30 – 5:00 Close and Adjourning Participants complete feedback assessment and suggestions from the instructors. Measure the achievements and the level of success of the training program.

Potential Challenges Faced by Managers

Managers perform a very crucial role of managing the workloads, motivating employees, and meeting the set organization goal. To ensure objectives are met performance management must be conducted regularly this becomes a challenge to managers as some roles played by employees cannot be measured. Therefore, confronting the performance problem of such an employee is a tricky job to find the required result without damaging the relationship of the team member. Therefore, if a manager identifies a problem it should be addressed immediately in constructive feedback by clearly outlining the target and the expected result from the underperforming team.

Another challenging decision is on hiring and firing of the employees. Many candidates present themselves with highly qualified skills and experience where all are capable of doing perfectly. So choosing the best candidate to join the team becomes challenging since a wrong choice could affect the team morale and performance. Also, managers do not get comfortable when deciding to lay off some staff as most managers develop a mutual relationship with their staff with time. To overcome this challenge of hiring and firing managers should have a structured strategy, rules, and policies to use in making this decision to prevent biasness and favoritism that negative impact on the workplace.

Maintaining a healthy working relationship in a company among the staff is the obligation of every manager to ensure they collaborate and work as a team. The challenge arises when complaints about an employee are reported that could result in conflict. Some conflicts may be due to tasks or personal issues, hence putting the manager in a puzzle on how to handle such complaints. Before taking any action it is necessary to understand the nature and the cause of the conflict as it may lead to top performers leaving the company. As a manager always conduct a fair and open discussion with the concerned parties and be there as a voice of reasoning to ensure the employees come to a resolution.

Detecting Organizational Gaps in Small Business

A gap is the deviation of the company’s performance from the set standards or the objective of the business and reaching its full potential. To detect a gap in the organization a gap analysis has to be done be conducted on the whole organization or a specific business area. It alerts the cause of the underperformance which can be internal or external inefficiency (Min & Oh, 2020). The internal gaps may be as a result of incompetency of the employees, poor communication, or using faulty machinery and tools. To close the gap in skills of the employee regular training is necessary or taking the employee to another organization for benchmarking and learn how things are done there.

External influences to create business gaps seem to be the hardest part to manage and crucial as it could to an organization being kicked out by rival organizations. It may be as a result of the product range that limits the organization from serving a certain market segment. This can be as a result of employee perception of management, general working condition, and competition in benefits and compensation (Min & Oh, 2020). Therefore, management needs to provide better working conditions and satisfy their employees as satisfied employees produce better results and reduce turnover.

Peer to Peer Training Strategy

Peer to peer is an on-the-job training strategy that is very effective as the experienced employees are allocated a duty to train the junior inexperienced employee. It is very effective as the peer trainer develops a step-by-step program to bring the basic job task proficiency to the new employee by conducting hand-on training. The peer becomes the mentor of the new employee to ensure growth, set a positive attitude, and a new relationship with other employees for future collaboration (Shen & Guo, 2019). Coaching ensures that the employee is up to the task by possessing the necessary skills, information, and the necessary support. They monitor as the employee is working and give continuous feedback to help them to improve and focus on the main goal.

In addition, peer-to-peer training promotes a culture of teamwork and collaboration. This promotes a strong career development to the whole organization resulting in having competent human labor in the organization. The trainer is also responsible for the solid follow-up of their trainee developing the moral of consistency and responsibility maintaining a competitive edge in production. According to Shen & Guo (2019), this is the most cost-efficient training strategy of the employee to bridge the gap that may be there on skills by leveraging the existing knowledge in the workplace. It provides a platform to ask questions employees feel more freedom to challenge ideas with their peers. They are more likely to raise concerns with a colleague this results in invention and innovation as peer engagement is a positive conflict and competition.

Conclusions

Due to the recent rapid changes occurring in the business environment frequent training and development of employee is crucial. To ensure employees have the required skills, increase their motivation, to provide the spirit of innovation and acceptance to change so as to increase productivity, and the rate of return. For an effective training the manager has to assess the needs and the resources available, motivate the participants, design the training techniques, conduct the training program and finally evaluate success of the training.

References

Caloghirou, Y., Giotopoulos, I., Korra, E., & Tsakanikas, A. (2018). How do employee training and knowledge stocks affect product innovation? Economics of Innovation and New Technology, 27(4), 343-360.

Min, B. H., & Oh, Y. (2020). How do performance gaps affect improvement in organizational performance? Exploring the mediating roles of proactive activities. Public Performance & Management Review, 43(4), 766-789. Web.

Shen, B., & Guo, J. (2019). Efficient Peer-to-Peer Content Sharing for Learning in Virtual Worlds. JUCS-Journal of Universal Computer Science, 25, 465. Web.

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