Modern control technologies are fully updated every 5-7 years. Therefore, the company’s personnel requires continuous training and retraining, and the main thing in this process is to understand what and how to teach employees.
The main, and perhaps the most difficult, preliminary task is to correctly evaluate the company’s personnel. Alexander Solyanik, Head of Consulting Department at LiCO Training and Consulting Company, comments: “There are different methods of assessing the company’s personnel, and each of them is effective in each specific case. Thus, it is necessary to evaluate a salesperson and a manager using different methods. In the first case, testing, expert evaluation or the opinion of a mystery buyer will be appropriate. Assessment Centers are most often used to evaluate managers. However, at all advantages (the highest objectivity of the received estimations) Assessment Centers technique is expensive enough and takes a lot of time from the personnel of the customer. Probably, the client, depending on its actual needs and possibilities will approach less expensive technique of 360 degrees which will allow to estimate the concrete head from the point of view of its heads, clients, partners, employees and subordinates”.
However, even having correctly estimated the personnel, the potential customer of training should not think that “it is already in a hat”. “Wishes of potential participants of training, certainly, important information at drawing up of programs, but, alas, not exhaustive”, considers Ksenia Shilova, the adviser on management and organizational development, business trainer of IP&C “Harmony”.
Any training should meet the needs of the organization, which are born out of the mismatch between the real results of employees’ work and the standards of their activity, as well as the company’s goals.
“In order to identify the lines of discrepancy, it is necessary to not only assess the staff, but also to identify the problem field of the organization, and then to start working together with management to address the root problems of the organization. Training should be preceded not only by an assessment of labor indicators, but also by an assessment of the potential of employees. Training on development of general competencies in combination with a career development program will help to implement it to the fullest extent.
One of the difficulties of HR development specialists is the assessment of training efficiency. And although there are no ways yet to reliably assess the contribution of training programs to the overall success of the company, but, for example, the levels of Kirkpatrick’s assessment used allow us to get closer to it,” continues Ksenia Shilova.
There are two general areas of training for corporate customers. These are open trainings, where representatives of different companies participate, and trainings, designed for employees of one or more companies in a certain business area.
“One of the advantages of open trainings is cost saving, as in this case the company does not pay for expensive corporate training, but sends for training exactly those who need it, – says Lyudmila Gavrilova, Head of Training Department of “BusinessLink Personnel”. – The second one is motivation of the participants. Usually, having ordered the training “for yourself”, the company fills the group on the principle of “once paid, you have to use as much as possible” – here comes the training for “salespeople” and marketers, and sometimes the accountant. The third advantage – at such trainings representatives of different companies with absolutely different management styles and approaches to business conduct meet and communicate with each other. This allows participants to assess their own company as if from the outside, which helps to “patch up” in assessing the potential of their company and themselves”.
“Industry-specific training is becoming more and more popular,” says Yulia Merkuryeva, director of the Business Training Studio of St. Petersburg State University of Economics and Finance. – Working with corporate customers, before developing a training program, it is necessary to consult with the customer’s managers and, if possible, diagnose the problem, allowing both managers and coaches to agree on a vision of the upcoming training. The more precisely the trainer and manager views are agreed upon, the more adequate forms and technologies will be developed for working with the customer’s problem.
We often work on this scheme with representatives of the automotive industry. The rapid growth of this market requires improving the quality of service, now “technicians” have to go out to the client and explain, and sometimes to calm him down. However, many service technicians do not have the necessary communicative competence. Coaches of the Studio have to solve such problems”.
The right to choose a training course always remains with the company. However, it is not always just the right, sometimes it is a very difficult duty.