Employee Training Effectiveness

With the advent of Knowledge Economy, the economic form of society is characterized by globalization, information, networks and a knowledge orientation. Economic development and prosperity no longer hinges on the quantity, scale and increment of natural resources, capital or hardware technology; instead, it depends upon the accumulation and utilization of knowledge and effective information. Based on such industrial structure and production features, the demand of high-tech workers with consummate skills is increasing at a fast speed; and employees, as the"carrier"of knowledge, becomes the most valuable capital of the enterprise. It is due to this cause that highly-qualified human resource will be a crucial contributing factor to economic growth and sustainable development of society in the context where remarkable progress of knowledge creation is the daily fact.It is perceived that modern enterprises have four major goals at the organizational level, which are financial performance, customer satisfaction, the goal for management and operation, and the goal for study and innovation respectively. First, the enterprise needs to upgrade the level of employees'work-related knowledge and skills, exploit their potential of innovation; then, organize employees with relevant competence to produce products or deliver service, in the process of which customer value creation, customer satisfaction and customer loyalty are accomplished, achieved and built; finally, optimize financial performance by means of a reasonable rate of return. Undoubtedly, realizing the goal for study and innovation is the prerequisite and foundation of achieving other organizational goals. Being the most commonly adopted means to fulfill the goal for study and innovation, staff training serves as an essential element to promote sustainable development from the organization's perspective.However, despite the great effort that the enterprises have made to invest in training, the benefit that the investment can bring to the organization still remains a vague issue. In recent years, enterprises have set a higher level of requirements for the return of training investment, and the competition for limited resources within the organization among different functions is also getting more intense. Nevertheless, the lagging-behind of training evaluation has most seriously prohibited the improvement of training effectiveness. Such situation calls for the establishment of a scientific training system with advanced evaluation methods, providing objective and reliable information for future training investment decision making based on qualitative and quantitative analysis. In addition, it is the duty for the Department of Training in the enterprise to further upgrade the level of training effectiveness through a reinforced evaluation process.At present, the academic research of staff training effectiveness focuses on the establishment of a scientific training system which is able to objectively reflect the return of training investment, and to improve the effectiveness of training practices in a major way. Given that the research bears the nature of reality-caused complexity with numerous related aspects to take care of, this paper, based on the findings and experiences of former scholars and practitioners, aims at further identifying the key factors influencing staff training effectiveness, and setting up a training model that facilitates measuring, realizing and improving training effectiveness according to the reality and generally existing problems of staff training in today's domestic enterprises.To have a definite target in view with this research, the author adopts the analyses of staff training in a state-owned commercial bank as a case study to add gravity of all the viewpoints. From the perspective of training effectiveness, the study applies training evaluation tools to assess staff training of the bank, and explores into the ways of problem solution and improvement plans. The ultimate goal of this research is to clarify how to improve the training system at the organizational level, and to bring up constructive suggestions for the state-owned commercial banks in employee training and retention to combat the cruel competition for human capital advent with foreign banks'entry into the Chinese financial market.In the part of literature review,, this paper has discussed the connotation of training and training effectiveness, reflected on the milestone training theories, and pointed out the difficulties of training evaluation with an emphasis on the two fundamental conceptual models, Kirkpatrick's four-level evaluation model and Daniel Stufflebeam's CIPP model, plus the research findings of their successors respectively; and a specification on two quantitative equations: Sheppeck and Cohen's utility equation and"cost-return"equation integrated with Kirkpatrick's four-level evaluation model.Based on the related research findings and academic achievements in this regard from both home and abroad, the author designed survey questionnaires with multi-dimensional measurement to examine the effectiveness of staff training with a random sample of investigation objects from different branches and departments of the targeted state-owned commercial bank, collecting information of overall level of employee satisfaction towards key aspects of the training programs. In order to get more accurate data, the author also conducted interviews with employees, management and senior directors of the bank.Generally speaking, the following problems are pervasive in staff training of the current state-owned commercial banks: 1) Training programs serve more to meet organizational goals compared to that of the employees, which has largely affected the effectiveness of training; 2) A lack of training plan; 3) Skill oriented rather than quality promotion and potential exploitation oriented training contents with less focus on further education for mid-level to higher level management staff as well as professional technicians; 4) Weak training effectiveness evaluation system and inefficient feedback mechanism plus very little after-training evaluation efforts; 5) A lack of well-established training system which puts training practices at a passive position subjected to internal or external interrupting factors. In summary, the challenges facing staff training for domestic enterprises are: 1) Establishment of a correct training concept; 2) Realization of multi-dimensional planning system for training demand analysis; 3) Set up a more effective, more reliable and more practical training evaluation system; 4) Improve the guarantee system for standardized training programs.The author holds the view that the ultimate goal of training must be perceived from two aspects: the enterprise and the employees, and great efforts must be made to integrate the goals of both parties. A systematic training model is built in pursuit of a higher level of effectiveness. This model consists of the traditional procedures of training: training needs identification, goal setting, planning, course designing, training plan implementation and training evaluation. What's distinguishes it is the further detailed sub-models within the whole system, which defines much more clearly the actual must-to-dos in training demand analysis, target setting, content selecting and evaluation; the consideration of strategic orientation of the enterprise, the core need of the enterprise, multi-level and multi-facet training implementation and the employees'needs; as well as the integration of training goals at organization, operation and individual levels plus a dual-perspective to examine the effectiveness of training for both the enterprise and employees, which guarantees the objectiveness of the training evaluation process.In the end, this paper draws a conclusion that to achieve a higher level of training effectiveness, the following points should be taken into careful consideration: 1) The importance of training must be fully recognized; 2) A comprehensive training system must be established; 3) Training needs at individual, operational and organizational levels must be integrated; 4) A guarantee system for sound training must be established.