Company Profitability & Employee Investment: A Decade of Investment & Improvement - Essay Sample

Introduction

A company's profitability highly depends on the company's investment in its employees. This is because as a company educates and trains its employees, it can be an important element in determining how the company prospers and can greatly improve its profitability (Chan, 2010). In the past decade, many organizations have spent quite some considerable amounts of money in training their employees on the various ways that can improve their service delivery and for the general improvement of the employees. Xenonic Corporation has also not been left behind in the efforts of improving its employees through training as well as attempting to make a workplace that is conducive for talent improvement. Being involved in the production and distribution of new Xenonic lamps used in high-end luxury cars and the high number of employees as well as the anticipated increase, Xenonic Corporation needs to set aside resources to train its employees so that they can remain up to date with the prevailing market and customer needs. Besides, the need for an employee training by Xenonic is necessitated by the diversity of its production plants that are spread across the world as well as the anticipated expansion through the next five years which may come with various challenges. Further, the impending growth of Xenonic necessitates the development of a training program. It is due to this that the development of an employee training program that highlights Xenonic's training needs, recommends the training approaches to be used in training the employees, showcases the objectives of the training program, spells out the activities and costs of the training program, gives the agenda of activities for the training program as well as give the training methods and structure that can be used to actualize the training program.

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Xenonic Corporation's Training Needs

Having in mind the future aspirations of the company where the company prospects expansion through the next five years as well as the feeling within that with the impending growth, it would be strategically beneficial for the organization to allocate resource towards new training and development initiatives within the company. As a result, the company has laid out five key training needs that need training programs to actualize them. The key training needs for Xenonic include cross-cultural training to twenty of its upper-level managers since the company will be sending the managers to its production facility in Tokyo, Japan and thus the need to offer them the cross-cultural training for them to function effectively as expatriates. Putting the upper-level managers on cross-cultural training will help them deliver in their new work stations were the people they will be dealing with may not be of the same social and cultural background as them.

The second training need is the training on basic skills or literacy skills to the recruits since with time the company will need highly skilled workforce yet the company is at the risks of facing a shortage of the fully qualified personnel at the entry level production positions. This is sparked by the fact that the recent estimates suggest 43% of the entry-level recruits lacking the basic math, reading and writing skills. With such a high percentage of employees without the relevant basic literacy and basic maths skills puts the company at the risk of producing low-quality products as well as delays that could have been prevented through training on the basic literacy.

Thirdly, diversity training is another need that needs to be addressed by designing a training program that will aid in training the general workforce to become more diverse as the company continues finding itself hiring more and more employees annually. Hence, with such changes, there comes the need for all the employees to be knowledgeable and sensitive to the differences that exist among themselves, an outcome that can be realized through a diversity training program. Without such training on diversity, the company is likely to experience difficulties in the production as diversity-related conflicts may affect employee productivity and thus affect the overall productivity of the company.

A new employee's orientation training is another need that needs a training program since with the influx of new employees at the organization in the recent past, the company has found itself with the need of offering adequate orientation and socialization to the recruits. Despite training at the organization having been left to the line managers previously and is very informal, it is important to create a new employee orientation training program that will aid the company train the many recruits effectively. This is because, with the many recruits, the line managers may not effectively offer them the orientation that could have been offered to them in the case that a clear orientation program had been designed where the recruits could be trained on the daily operations, cultures and values of the organization and thus boost their productivity.

As a result of the increased employee population at the company, it will also be crucial to perform ergonomics and safety training to limit worker compensation costs and maximize worker productivity. This is because it is important for all the 1800 production employees to receive ergonomics training and safety as a prevention measure to ensure there are few cases of accidents that may reduce the employee's productivity or make the company incur costs in treating the worker. This is attributed by the fact that accidents involved during the production processes can make the company incur huge chunks of money in treating the employees as well as the time wasted when the employees are on sick leaves. Thus, training them on ergonomics and safety can greatly help in improving the company's profitability and increase its productivity.

The Approaches to Use in the Training Program

There is no sole approach that can be used to address all the five training needs for Xenonic Corporation as each of the five training needs may use a combination of approaches to deliver the required skills to the employees based on the training need to be addressed.

Apprenticeship/Job Mentoring

Among those approaches that can be suited for the five training needs include the apprenticeship approach whereby an experienced employee within the company, such as a senior manager instructs the moderately experienced middle-level employees on how to perform various tasks, work functions for basic skills and new employee orientation training programs or how to carry themselves for the case of diversity, cross-cultural and ergonomics and safety measures training programs. The apprenticeship approach of training is typically a skill-based training method that involves learning procedures or systems for specialized positions that may need information and mastery, such as basic literacy skills training and the new employee orientation training. This approach is effective since as fellow employees train each other to do the various distinctive task within the organization, there happens to be enhanced flexibility in allocating assignments as well as challenge the experienced employees involved in the training to learn new skills while diversifying their undertakings (Kirkpatrick & Kirkpatrick, 2010).

Additionally, this kind of training approach can be motivating to employees for professional advancement like the young employees that have future aspirations in their careers. An example of this approach is an instance where a worker under the training is expected to watch the more experienced employee perform the tasks as well as classroom guidelines and then follow the directions by the experienced employee to perform the task (Chan, 2010). At the early stages of training through the approach, the expert employee may perform some basic maths arithmetic, and then the learner is expected to follow or do the various tasks he or she is supposed to undertake under the normal schedules, and then the learner follows the directions upon completion of the orientation. At the end of the training program using this approach, the learner turns into an employee with expertise and the needed information to undertake their duties.

Instructor-Led Classroom Training

The classroom-style training is one of the most traditional and widely used training methods that can be used to address Xenonic's training needs. This method is known to account to almost 42% of a company's training hours on average as it mimics the educational environments like a college course where the trainer or expert uses a lecture-style presentation with visuals and presents it to the trainees (Rossett, 1987). This method has been around for quite some time and comes with a variety of benefits such as the approach giving room for personal interaction by giving the trainees the right resources and environment to interact with the instructors and ask them questions that would not have been possible in a non-interactive forum. Besides, the approach empowers relationship building between the trainees, fellow trainees and the trainer, thus enabling them to grow and learn together. For instance, in the cross-cultural training program, basic literacy training and the diversity training programs employees can ask the trainer questions as well as brainstorm among themselves on the various ways that they can enhance their learning and practice.

Besides, the approach can be critical in training ergonomics and safety measures and be used to take the new employees through their orientation as the trainer can demonstrate to the trainees on the ways that they can ensure safety and answer various questions on how the recruits can undertake various tasks while at the place of work. However, if this approach is to be used within Xenonic, there is the need to ensure that the energy is kept since such training sessions can run for long hours and without the incorporation of breaks, time to move around and discussions the trainees may lose interest quickly (Rossett, 1987). On the other hand, this approach may have some limitations as it requires the instructor to be present at all times and can get hard to handle when the classes at too big for one on one interactions.

Interactive Methods

The interactive method of employee training takes the classroom-style to another new level as it involves interactive and group activities to the trainees training experience. Such popular interactive methods that can be adopted during the training include case study reviews, group discussions, demonstrations, quizzes and role-playing (Palmer, 2002). Through such approaches, the training sessions become more fun to the trainees as well as create engaging experiences to the whole training process. This approach will be key in addressing Xenonic's cross-cultural training needs for the twenty upper-level managers as well as basic skills training where the trainees can be involved in group discussions, role-playing and answer quizzes to gain knowledge on the needs for the training. This method is considered highly effective as it helps combat the one-directional transfer of knowledge that accompanies the lecture-style training through the empowerment of group interaction and conversation which not only helps in the maintenance of employee energy but also put the employees at the position to learn from each other. Besides, the training procedures involved in this approach will keep the workers engaged throughout the training period, which hence makes them more responsive to the new information gained in training (Palmer, 2002). Additionally, the use of demonstration in this approach is a powerful training device as the demonstrations include the utilization of the tools an...