Employee training is an important factor in improving the performance of an organization since employees get to understand their responsibilities and the organization’s ethics. Training can be offered in various forms ranging from on-the-job training, team building, and behavior modeling.
On-the-job training is that training, which is carried out while employees are on the work. It, therefore, means that expertise is gained while the employees are doing their duties. The customer service department, for example, would find on-the-job training very effective in training their employees.
Given the problem of inadequate number of employees faced in Binz Inc Company, on-the-job training offers a suitable ground of perfecting the employees’ service delivery without compromising the much required manpower in the company. Trainees, learn in the real work situation and acquire necessary skills required in dealing with a customer service delivery and challenges they will face in the course of their work. It is beneficial to the business in that the training is explicit to the job and, therefore; the company is not under the obligation of incurring additional expenses in providing off-the-job training or wasting working time.
There are different methods used in providing on-the-job training. Binz Inc customer service may consider coaching their employees using a skilled member of staff to assist trainees learn new skills in their places of work by providing guidelines and demonstrations. Another method of on-the-job training that can be deployed in Binz Inc is mentoring. Here, each trainee will be assigned to a proven staff member who play the role of a guide or helper. According to Noonan (2009), a mentor usually provides more of personal assistance than a coach, although the two terms are interchangeably used. Job rotation could be another option of offering on-the-job training. In this method, the staff members will rotate roles or tasks in order to gain experience of a variety of jobs.
On-the-job training would offer Binz a significantly low cost of training its customer service employees since it higher its own skilled workers to offer the training service to the junior employees. The company will spend relatively lower to higher its own employee than taking its employees for external training. On average, taking an employee for external training would cost $ 500 per employee while on-the-job training would only cost about a quarter of that price per employee.
Despite the benefits that come with on-the-job training, there are many problems or challenges associated with it as well. Since Binz Inc customer service department is experiencing inadequacy in a number of employees with the available number having limited skills, involving the few skilled members in offering training activities may result into low productivity in the sense that available few are taken from the actual work for training; therefore, they are engaged in the process of imparting skills but not the actual service delivery; consequently, the organizational production rate will go down. It may cause many disturbances in the workplace as the trainees are taken through their learning phase. The established workers can feel disturbed by the trainees and the supervisors.
In an organization, people are considered the basic asset for the organizational growth. The success of the organization heavily depends on the people and therefore team building and bonding is inevitable for any company seeking to succeed in its core businesses. For the success of the company, workers in the sales department need to harmonize their activities and work as a team with the aim of achieving a common goal. Poor interrelation among the customer service employees could be the factor pulling the department apart. Team building can therefore be an excellent tool in Binz customer service department for breaking down barriers and solving conflicts among employees. Team building workshops will assist the department develop cohesion among its employees and maintain a cordial relationship that will extend to the customers. The interesting and enjoyable team building activities will inspire workers and improve their skills, and hence the motivated and focused workers will be geared to creating an enjoyable working environment and deliver to their best.
Binz Inc could consider designing team building workshops for its employees on a regular basis with training duration taking a duration of approximately four hours to two days. The workshops should be a mixture of indoor and outdoor team bonding activities, which are learning based and full of fun as well. This will ensure that the employee leave the training bonded as one family further enhancing their service delivery. In addition the participants learn new ways of interacting with each other as team members, managing conflicts, discharging their roles, building trust and ability to attract high performance within the team. Among the various methodologies that could be used to inculcate, team spirit among the employees are; experimental games, group work, role plays, discussions, and videos.
Binz Inc customer service department would prefer a group of employees who work in collaboration while discharging their duties and have proper skills in serving the customers in a friendly and satisfying manner. Team building is therefore a suitable method of training especially for sales department employees where members are expected to discharge their duties with a lot of courtesy and considerations towards the customers. The team building activities will create a healthy relationship among the workers, develops a smooth flow of communication within the department, and help in breaking the ice for new members and, therefore, creating confidence within the team. The training session also gives the members opportunity to interact with their colleagues in different ways, understand each other personally and helps them to realize and appreciate the importance of collaboration in achieving their objectives.
Research has indicated that team building offers the most effective method of enhancing collaboration among workers (Alexander, 2009). However, it also has its own drawbacks as well. Cost is among the biggest drawbacks or setback of corporate team building. The monetary cost varies depending on the type of team building in consideration. Averagely, the cost can range from under $ 100 per employee for outdoor training to huge fees for the seminar held by prominent public speakers. It also carries the overhead time spent out of work-related tasks and additional time needed for follow-ups in ensuring that the entire team building process achieve its objectives. It can also result into unintended impact on the business's bottom line. For employees who have a unique experiences that seem fit for their jobs, but do not transform well into the social atmosphere, team building might turn out ineffective and possibly stalemate interaction among the team members. For instance, a sales worker with technical skills who finishes most duties individually in time might find a bit of a rough time in team building session that includes employees who interact with each other on a regular basis.
The training must be conducted in a procedural manner that creates a vivid description in the mind of the workers. First, the required skills should be defined and then a brief indication of the theory is shown to the trainees. The trainees are then provided with instructions on what particular learning points or behavior to look out for and thereafter the expert model the desirable behaviors. The trainees should be urged to simulate the desirable behavior through role play or by other kind of simulation. They will then be given opportunity to demonstrate reinforcement for the right imitation of the expert's behavior. Finally, the trainer will be under obligation to ensure that the trainees correctly reinforce the learned behavior in their workplace.
Behavior modelling as a training method is very useful in situations where mistakes are costly or might have gross harmful outcome on job (Burress, 2010). Binz Inc Company in its effort to maintain a healthy relationship with its customers would not want to experiment with the unskilled employees in discharging services to its potential customers. The customer service department therefore should consider individuals with skillful performances to provide experienced models, which display the desirable skills and how to offer customer services in the required manner. Complex behavior that requires much expertise regarding customer service delivery should also be conveyed through behavior modelling, therefore, shortening the process of acquisition of skills by employees under training.
Behavior modelling costs friendly as it may involve a single model with a wide range of skills demonstrating to a group of employees on the various means of delivering services to customers. The employees can simply sit round a table and observe a model display to them the suitable skills. The company therefore would not incur additional costs on travelling as well as save the company’s business time.
Behavior modeling, though effective as discussed above, has some draws as well. It assumes that the behavior is the ultimate decision-making process without considering its possibility of changing over time. The trainees are merely made to learn by what they observe from the models but are not equipped with skills of coping with unique cases in line of their work when such arise. The whole process is narrowed down to memory in the sense that if the behavior observed from the model cannot be remembered appropriately, and then modelling does not occur, and the training process goes into a mess.
References
Alexander, M. (2009). The team effectiveness critique. The Pfeiffer Book of Successful Team Building Tools. San Francisco, CA: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Burress, M.A. (2010). The relationship between leader behavior and team performance and satisfaction. The Pfeiffer Book of Successful Team-Building Tools. San Francisco, CA: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Noonan, T. (2009). The search for balance: Team effectiveness. The Pfeiffer Book of Successful Team-Building Tools. San Francisco, CA: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
