The Impact Of Training And Development Commerce Essay

Human resource management plays an important role in the success of a company. Most of the companies are very keen to pay attention towards their employees. Mainly HRM (Human Resource Management) is all about managing people at work. The most important part of human resource management is Training and Development. It plays a key role in every organisation though few people disagree about the importance of training and development in the success of organisation. Appointing the right person at right time at right place needs more care and attention on the part of personal manager. A clear set of goals and well defined path should be needed for good training. Training changes attitudes, knowledge and skills of employees and also the way they work. A report published by workforce in May 2006 explains that despite focus on efficiency and cost control, companies are spending more and more on training and development. It is reflection of the fact that companies are keen about training and development to gain competitive advantages. Most of the companies clearly understand that if workers are smarter and better trained they can achieve their goals easily. In any organisation the central factor of Training and development is the human resources or the human capital. Human capital is viewed as the driving the force for the success of the organisation because of their skills, competencies, knowledge and experience (Becker, 1975; Schmidt & Lines, 2002; Harrison & Kassel, 2004).

Background for research Area

As researcher wrote in research aim and objectives and according to the topic of research the background of research is Training and development. I will focus on some critical issues regarding to training and development programmes. As Macdonald’s is already a world famous food chain so they already using very well Training and development methods but still they need more and more research on training and development processes. Employees are the main assets of all companies. Every company want his employees must be energetic and effective so that the company can lead to the success. Organisational goals are always achieved by employee’s efficiency so it is an organisational need that their employees must be well trained. (Torrington et al, 2005). Organisations are taking great interest regarding their employee’s performance in these days. All organisations make sure that their employee’s are getting good and up to date training and development programmes. Although there are many types of training and development programmes some give more effective and energetic employee’s to organisation (Sun, 2003; Skinner et al, 2003; Lee 2001).

Human Resource Management has a key role to play in training the employees. Cowling and Mailer (1998) suggests that basically training is given to both new employees and to employees who recently moved to a new work area. They also said that in change process training is also very necessary. That’s y training and development becomes one of the most important tasks which HRM manager has to look at. The amount and kind of training is very important for manager they should be aware of this. A manager should always focus firstly on type of training methods they are using and then it is also very important for a manager to make sure that those training methods are being put in practise through a proper channel. A proper method of training in a proper channel makes an employee more effective and efficient (Bratton and Gold, 2003).

This research paper aims to identify the training needs of suggested organisation. The method of training needed and the benefit of training to the organisation will be be discuss in this paper. This report will also tell that weather organisation achieved its Goals and aim by the help of training and development. McDonald’s Restaurants Limited has been selection for research because it is very easy for me to get information because the management is very friendly to academic research. And they can also learn new things from research. The Most important reason for choosing McDonald’s is that I myself am the Employee of McDonald’s.

Company Background

McDonald’s is one of the famous global brands that have spread its presence over the last 52 years. The company was started in 1955 by Roy Croc with the first restaurant being opened in Des Plaines, US. This restaurant is no longer in operation now and has been turned into a museum. McDonald’s brand mission is to “be our customer, favourite place and way to eat”. The company’s worldwide operations are bounded by a global strategy called the “Plan to Win” which concentrates on the five basics of an exceptional customer experience, people, products, place, price and promotion. The company is committed to improving their operations and thereby enhancing the customer’s experience (McDonald’s 2010).

McDonald’s is the leading global foodservice retailer that has more than 32,000 local restaurants in more than 117 countries. According to the company reports these restaurants serve approximately 50 million each day. McDonald’s is one of the world’s most well-known and valuable brands. It holds a leading share in the globally branded fast-food restaurants segment in virtually every country in which they do business. The company is proud that it serves the world some of its favourite foods like French Fries, Big Mac, Quarter Pounder, Chicken Mc Nuggets and Egg Muffin. The procedures followed by the company have been developed over the years. This is one area that differentiates the company from other fast-food restaurants. The attitude of the organization towards work and standards is evident from the words Roy Kroc who stated that “if you have got time to lean, you have got time to clean” (McDonalds, 2010).

The company has procedures in place to ensure that the right candidates go through the system and attain higher positions if they can prove their abilities. It is worth noticing that the company claims that 20 out of the top 50 management staff started in McDonald’s restaurants, including the CEO, Don Thompson and also 67,000 McDonald’s restaurants managers and assistant managers started as restaurant staff (McDonald’s 2010). This is significant considering that some take as long as 10 years to get to assistant manager position (McDonald’s 2010). The organization has ensured that people with potential are spotted and retained. In hospitality and fast-food industry, the attrition rate is high and, despite this, the organization to ensure that it motivates its staff and also to keep on motivating them to put in a better performance. It is therefore of very high importance for the organization to ensure that it motivates its staff and also looks after their satisfaction with the job that they are doing. The company uses different approaches at different levels in the organization. The responsibility of motivating staff at the restaurant level is given to the restaurant manager and the assistant manager who use promotion as a tool to achieve this. They have to ensure that they can attain lower rates of attrition and also motivate the staff so that they are satisfied by both the job as well as the organization. This is achieved by the organization by using structured training and development programme besides the use of many other tools.

McDonald’s opened their first UK restaurant in Woolwich, London in 1974, today the company has over 1,250 restaurants across the UK McDonald’s (UK) employs over 67,000 people, 43,000 within the company restaurants and a further 24,000 are employed by the franchisees. On average the company serves over 2.5 million customers every day. According to Peter Beresford (McDonald’s 2006) people in the organization are very important, and so is their continuous development. There are different approaches that organization uses to train their staff at various levels of employment. This research has been started to identify how the staff are trained and developed at the restaurant level. The research is based in Charing Cross restaurant to conduct the research the reason for choosing these have bee mentioned in upcoming chapter. In the attempt to gain insight into the practices followed by the organization at restaurant level.

Statement of Problem

The core problem of this study is: Why training and development policies should be implemented by McDonald’s and what is the role of the line managers at restaurant level in achieving better training for the employees?

The main concern in this study is behaviour of company or an organisation which they show towards their employees. Organisation should ensure that their staffs are well trained in most aspects of their businesses (Torrington et al., 2005). Training and development of the chosen organisation is of interest with respect to the current studies.

Statement of purpose

As for as statement of purpose is concern the topic which writer have chose is very much interesting for me. Researcher is an employee of McDonald’s and researcher really wants to search about training and development processes in McDonald’s. Another reason for choosing Training and Development is because it is very important part of Human Resource and Management which is a also a subject of writer specialization and in future writer would love to research more about HRM and Training and development. In almost every organisation HRM is very important for a company so this is also a reason.

Significance of the problem

This topic is a very broad topic and very much important in any organisation. Every organisation admits that employees are the main assets so their top priority is to train the employees to achieve their goals. The main object of a manager is to discover a problem in an organisation and after that he decides which type of training is required for which employer. In general training and development helps increasing productivity of the employees, team spirit, organisational culture, organisational climate, quality and health and safety.

Research Aim and Objectives

The aim and objective of this project are as following:

To identify the strategies available for training and development.

To identify if there are any training and development programs in place in the organisation.

Ti identify to what extent the program has been successfully implemented and if it is improving employee productivity as well as organisational productivity.

To make recommendations for the future training and development programs so as to increase the benefits for the research organisation.

Research questions

What HRM practices are usually implemented in McDonald’s Charing Cross?

What HRM practices are usually implemented by other fast food in retail sector?

Why training and development is important in the fast food in retail sector?

What other HRM strategies could McDonald does adopt to enhance employees training and development?

How employees are trained for modern technology?

Chapter-2 the Literature Review

Human resource management is one the major area of research in the business studies. There are many sub topics like recruitment, selection, induction, employee retention, and training and development. Training and development is the topic on which writer will research that how it is being applied in current research organisation. A discussion is raised about human resource development, organisational development, and organisational learning to understand how training and development fits into the whole picture for the success of any company/organisation in business world.

Human Resource Development

There are different types of HRD definition. The definition which is provided by UK Human resource development Council which is follows as “Human resource development is basically a part of Human Resource and Management (HRM) which specifically deals with the training and development of employees. HRD would include training an individual after he or she is hired, providing opportunities to learn new skills, distributing resources which are beneficial for the employee’s task, and any other developmental activities.” Human Resource Development is used for supporting employees to improve their personal and organisational skills, knowledge and abilities. HRD includes opportunities like performance management and development, employee training, employee career development, coaching, mentoring, succession planning, key employee identification, tuition assistance, and organisation development. Human Resource Development can be formal such like class room training or a college course or an organizational planned change effort. On the other hand HRD can be informal as a manager coaching his employee. The main focus of all aspects of Human Resource Development and training the most senior management so that organizations and individual employees can together achieve their goals in customer service (Susan et al.,2010).

Many people say that there is a difference between HRM and HRD. According to them Human Resource is a major management activity and Human resource development is a profession. They might think HRM in HRD because in their point of view HRD involves in many activities to develop personnel inside of organisations, e.g., training, carer development, organisational development, organisational learning,

etc.

In most of the organisation the focus has moved from piecemeal training activities to more systematic human resource development. Organizations are changing their priorities. Organizations are becoming learning organizations and they are keeping them away from training individual employee. The competitive advantage of any firm comes from development of an organization’s human capital. This is helping in learning experience of an employee and as a whole. According to Sloman (1994) the systematic training model depends on a series of a logical steps define as a training policy, a method for identifying training needs, the formulation of training objectives, the development of a training plan, the implementation of a planned training programme, validation, evaluation and review of training. Companies are trying to adopt high level of training model to meet their skill needs and they are linking training to strategic initiatives. Traditional training models are being rejected by many companies. There have been many changes in responsibility in line with the growth of HRM, delayering and divisonalisation. Training is seen as a job of line managers, with specialist trainers being used as an internal consultancy resource. The new approach needs a very effective communication system between the strategic decision makers, line managers and specialist trainers.

This is now understood that employees are main asset of any organization. Bank of Montreal Chairman says employees key to maximising continued growth. 27 February 2001 Bank of Montreal shareholders were told that employees are the real key to sustaining competitive advantage and financial performance. At the bank’s 183rd annual meeting in Vancouver the chairman said ” The foundation of Bank Montreal’s continued growth and success, and the only way to achieve its competitive advantage is through the performance of its 33.000 people.” “Even there is no doubt that investments in technology, products or delivery systems can be matched by competitors, since nothing profitable remains exclusive for long. The only sure and permanent way to stay ahead of the competition is to employ the most capable people and to ensure they are given every best opportunity to do their very best work,” (Camper, 2001). From this example it is very clear that the bank is confident of the investment it has made in people.

Human Resource Development (HRD) is a title which represents the latest evolutionary stage in the long tradition of training, educating and developing people for the purpose of contributing towards the achievement of individual, organizational and social objectives. HRD as with the title HRM are like nuts and bolts of an organisation that can be interchanged and dispensed with at will. Drucker suggested the term ‘biological HRD’ to vehemence the living nature of the people with in the organisation. The scope of education is broader then the scope of training. Education has also a less immediate and less specific application than training and is often perceived as being delivered in educational institutions. Education is regarded as surrounding knowledge, skills and attitudes (Bloom et al, 1956). Distinguish between education and training could be very problematic. The example of difference between training and education is like young child coming home and saying we had sex training today. Now this is a severe contrast to sex education classes that involve a theoretical rather than a practical application of learning. Frank investigated theoatical base of HRD in order to distinguish it from other fields and told that HRD is based on research and theories strained from the field of adult education and is very different from learning process that occurs in children. Frank also said that HRD is concerned with better performance within a work environment but it is not about improving people’s health and personal relation with their family. HRD also tells that how theory of change relate to an organisation and how an organisation use these theories (Frank, 1988).

Human resource development is the study and practise by the help of which we can increase the learning capacity of individuals, groups, collectives, and organisations through the development and application of learning based inventions for the purpose of optimising human and organisational growth and effectiveness(chalofsky, 1992).

Strategic role of HRD is increased a lot by strategic pressure and this includes accelerated rate of change, focus of quality, globalization of business, increased elasticity and reaction of organisations, increased pressure to show the involvement of human resources, new competitive structure and new technology(Graven et al, 1995).HRD contributed in many ways at all organizational levels to provide support with the help of all these pressure. In today business environment HRD is not only supporting the business strategies of organisations but it is also very useful in shaping of business strategy. HRD increase the competence of employees to fulfil the organisation present performance demand along with meeting present organisational needs (Swanson, 1995). Strategic HRD is helping organisations to respond challenges and opportunities. It also helps in telling line managers supervisors and managers their roles. The continuous assessment of learning and development and enabling them to advance their careers and supporting organisational growth.

The organisational environment consist of approximately six main departments, which are shown in figure below and name as distribution, finance, human resources, marketing, production and research design.

These all departments are related to one another although most of the organisation outsourced some of the elements such as distribution(John P.Wilson, 2005).

Training and development is very important in every time and in every organisation weather it is small or big and Human resource and development is like back bone for any organisation because people are main asset of any organisation.

Organisational development and organisational learning

Organisational development has come out as a key element in the strategic management of change. OD (Organisational Development) provide focus for the cultural and organisational change which is needed a lot for continuous improvement, support systems, culture and activities to the success of organisational goals. It enables better use of financial, human and technological resources, promote a better sense of organisational purpose and it is hence more likely to bring the required performance improvement. OD is a dynamic valued based approach to systems change in organisations and communities. In simpler OD defined as a behavioural science approach to the improvement of organisational efficiency which should lead to the accomplishment of organisational objectives. In practise OD is about moving the organisation on purpose. In any organization OD create an environment which enables staff to understand and deliver the organisation’s objective. It support managers and staff in accomplish their aims and objectives through the condition of an infrastructure for performance and development. OD involves both hard and soft issues. Strategies, policies, structure and system are considered as hard issues whereas developing skills, behaviour, attitudes, culture and style of leadership which enable the organisation to achieve performance are considered as soft issues. To avoid conflict between goals and needs both of these issues should be addressed. A strong and successful organizational development can be not easy because it involves undertake issues related with change and service improvement. In any process of organisational development following steps should be keep in mind like establishing a central point to organize and support organisational development activities. Organisational development should within the organisational structure correctly. We should be flexible and creative in using approach to the organisational development. Organisation should take important steps to build proper organisational skills and capacity. Momentum should be keep going. Organisational development, wherever apply, attempts to improve the overall success of the organisation (Tina Buckle, 2005).

Chapter Three – Research Methodology

Research Strategy

This chapter elaborates how the research study was carried out. It is also talks about the limitation of the research and the methods used in this research. After looking at the literature available on training and development the research will look at the methodology which is use to perform the research. The research process ‘onion’ (saunders et. al., 2003) is one of the most used research process structures. Using this structure we can classify different approaches, strategies and data collection method available under the different research philosophies. The research philosophy depends on the aims of the research along with its objectives. But in this case the philosophy being applied is not single and it is a mix of two philosophies. This research clearly shows a very higher influence of phenomenology in its approach to get the findings (Hussey and Hussey, 1997). This is mostly because the research does not pre define variables, but discover human behaviour in naturalistic settings, i.e., the research organisations. In this research the approach being applied is that of deduction.

In good research design charts there is always a detailed research plan that how the research will be conducted . it will not only anticipate but also specify the decisions interconnected with the plan and explain how the data processing, data collection and analysis will be carried out, but will also represent a logical basis for each of these decisions (Blaxter et al, 2oo1). There are two approaches to reasoning which may result in this gaining of new knowledge, namely inductive reasoning and deductive reasoning. Inductive reasoning is a theory building process starting with observation of exact instances, and seeking to establish generalisation about the phenomenon under investigation. Deductive reasoning is a theory testing process which commences with an established theory or generalization, and seeks to see if the theory relate to specific case (William, 2005). This current research looks at previous theories in relation to training and development and then sees if any or all of these theories are applicable from organisational prospective. So we can say that this research attempts to identify the issues surrounding training and development by applying the deductive approach. We can achieve better results by the combination of research approaches. Under the deductive approach we use multiple strategies for research. For better results it is suggested to combine different approaches. It can be deduced that it is ok to ‘mix and match’ approach different research strategies under the deductive approach. The strategy which we used in current research are research as an exploratory study and as a case study. The current research will be the combination of these two strategies on the basis of the information which we collected from the education sources as mentioned in the next paragraph. This current research could be ascertained to be a case study as only the study of small set of restaurants is involved which might not reflect the actual scenario in the whole organization taken in a holistic approach. This case study also allows the researcher to look at the population which might be similar in terms of jobs profile and work area, and on the basis of this the researcher could produce some overview.

As exploratory research allows the researcher to address general informed questions from observation of the data collected, this type of case study is often very helpful to stimulate the further research. According to Robeson (2002), as cited by Saunders et al (2003), enquiries can be classified in term of their purposes as well as the research strategy used. Mostly the classification is used in three fold one of exploratory, descriptive and explanatory.

According to Saunders et all(2003) are very common and valuable to find the proper conclusion. Hussey and Hussey (1997) define expenatery research as; it is a research which is based on looking for new ideas. Exploratory research always have great advantages so this research falls under it. The most important advantages are flexibility and adaptability to change. On the other hand explanatory research is seen to be flexible as it has a broad focus but while progressing it gets narrow. It involves in formation of original idea and not testing or confirming the existing research area it is difficult to manage in short period as in the current case. This type of research needs a lot of study and time. If we look in the current case the researcher is trying to gain insights into the variables chosen in the research organisation. This research is classed as exploratory research as it is tryingto identify the influence of training and development to an organization as well as to an individual and also that how it helps in development of both. The researcher felt that these two methods are ideal and suit the research question because it allows the researcher to look at the organisation’s working style individually and also the whole organisation by using the exploration as it main tool.

Time horizons is another aspect of the ‘onion process’ that should be mentioned. We will class this result as a cross sectional research because of limited time available to conduct the research. According to Saunders et al (2003) and Hussey and Hussey (1997) that such researches comes under the cross sectional studies which are studies of a particular phenomenon at a particular time. These type of researches are designed such that they look that what is happening in a particular time using a research area in research setting. Most of the researches conducted at Masters and Bachelors are classed under this category. (Turabian, 1987).

Data Collection Method

After deciding the research strategies the next step is to collect the data. The researcher uses the both primary and secondary data to perform the analysis and come to a conclusion. Normally secondary data are of the following types.

Documentary (which is written or non written material)

Survey (censuses, regular or ad-hoe surveys).

Hakim (2000) defines secondary data as the data that were collected for another purpose and already exist somewhere. To find the findings of the research the researcher need to know about what has been written in same area. By using literature review the researcher can find that how their findings are similar or dissimilar to the research which was conducted previously (Easterby-Smith et al, 2002). According to Churchill (1991), the first step in any research is to collect secondary data to see whether the problem can be or wholly solved without collecting costly primary data. Similarly according to Kevin (1999) believes that secondary data provide the researcher with a source that they can use to answer or at least begin to answer the research question. Since the conducted from the organisational perspective so it is very necessary to understand the previous researches which has been conducted in the organisation and in the same industry. Hakim (2000) says that sometimes researchers may need to understand and relate previous researches that have already been performed in similar circumstances. Researcher can also use publication data which is industry specific or area specific and relates to the research question (Kevin, 1999). Secondary data was not only used as a reference frame for study but also was a channel to

Chapter -6 References

Work Force, May 2006, Training and Development available at http://www.workforce.com/tools/reports/WorkforceManagementSpecialReportT&D.pdf last accessed on [28/01/10]

McDonald’s, 2010, Our Company available at http://www.aboutmcdonalds.com/mcd/our_company.html last accessed on [28/01/01]

Sun,H. (2003), conceptual clarifications for ‘organisational learning’, ‘learning organisation’ and ‘a learning organisational’, Human Resource Development International, vol.6 No 2,pp.153-66.

Skinner, J., Pownall, I. Cross, P. (2003), Is HRD practiced in micro- SMEs?, Human Resource Development International, Vol.6 No.4, pp. 475-89.

Torrington, D., Hall L., and Taylor, s., (2005). Human Resource Management, 6th ed, Prentice Hall Europe, Essex, Uk

Lee, M. (2001), A Refusal to Define HRD, Human Resource Development International, Vol.4 No.3, pp. 327-41.

Bratton, J., and Gold, J.,(2003)Human Resource Management: Theory and Practise, 3rd ed, Palgrave Macmillan, Hampshire.

http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/human-resource-development-HRD.html

http://humanresources.about.com/od/glossaryh/f/hr_development.htm

http://www.hrmguide.co.uk/hrm/chap11/ch11-links2.htm

http://www.hrmguide.net/canada/learning/bank_of_montreal.htm

http://books.google.co.uk/books?hl=en&lr=&id=zpNc_GZIiikC&oi=fnd&pg=PA3&dq=human+resource+development&ots=o2WrtPGCk4&sig=75P52YDdFEx57lEbQmXC7dhBEcg#v=onepage&q=&f=false

http://www.city.ac.uk/sd/organisationaldevelopment.html