The impact of staff training and development on non clinical worker’s performance in Ekiti State Teaching Hospital, Ado-Ekiti

CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION

1:1 Background of the Study

Human capital can be regarded as the prime asset of an organization and businesses need to invest in that asset to ensure their survival and growth. The organization should ensure that, it obtains and retains skilled, committed and well-motivated workforce it needs. This means taking steps to assess and satisfy future people needs and to enhance and develop the inherent capacities of people- their contributions, potential and employability- by providing learning and continuous development opportunities.

Global competition has caused organizations to focus on every aspect of their operations, questioning how each function and process can contribute to strategic goals. Training departments are also under pressure to demonstrate their organizational value in the same terms Steed, (2000), this is because organizations spend a considerable time, effort and money in training their employees, but the benefits from these efforts are not clearly visible in organizations in terms of improved performance. To make training and development useful, it should be well planned and systematically implemented Rao and Nair, (1990). The capacity of staff in a firm influences the ability to achieve the desired targets particularly in performance driven enterprises. Human resource is recognized as a critical resource for success. In order to sustain performance of the organization, it is important to optimize the contribution of employees towards achievement of the aims and goals of an organization (Armstrong, 1999).

Armstrong, (2001) defines training as the formal and systematic modification of behavior through learning, which occurs as a result of education, instructions and development and planned experience. Training is the process of equipping the workforce with the necessary knowledge, skills and attitude to tackle the job responsibilities. Staff development on the other hand is improvement of the employees‘ competences for future environmental demands and adaptability. Beardwell and Hidden (1994) consider training and development as a planned process to modify attitude, knowledge or skill behavior through learning experiences to achieve effective performance in an activity or range of activities. Corporations are offering a variety of training programs to meet their organizational needs. These include content on IT and systems, processes, procedures and business practices, industry-specific trainings, managerial or supervisory training, interpersonal skills, compliance, sales, executive development, basic skills, new employee orientation, customer service and quality. As Reynolds (2004) points out, training has a complementary role to play in accelerating learning. It should be reserved for situations that justify amore directed expected approach rather than viewing it as a comprehensive and all-pervasive people development solution. He also commented that the conventional training model has a tendency to emphasize subject –specific knowledge rather than trying to build core learning abilities.

Development is a long term education process utilizing a systematic and organized procedure by which managerial personnel learn conceptual and theoretical knowledge for general purpose. According to Campbell (1971) development implies an individual

growth and self-realization in a brand base. Cole (1990) suggests a broader view of knowledge and skills acquisition training. He suggests that he is more concerned with employee potential than immediate skills and views employees as adaptable resource aiming at personal growth and realization of potential of an employee. Armstrong (2001) indicates individual development is the progression by individuals in their career with guidance encouragement and help from the manager.

Training and Development improves the workforce competence in order to create a competitive advantage and contribute to organizational success. Training and development is also a means for employers to address the employees‘ needs. By offering the training and development opportunities employers help employees develop their own competitive advantage and ensure long term employability, Jackson (2008). Development implies it is an ongoing process and that progress is made over time and this fits also with the emphasis on long life learning.

Holton (1995) defines performances a multi-dimensional construct, the measurement of which varies depending on variety of factors. Armstrong (2000) on the other hand indicates performance as both behavior and results and emphasizes that both behavior (input) and results (output) need to be considered when managing performance. Performance of an organization is the outcome of acrostic of individuals and units of the organization. Except for the external influences on individual behavior and personal traits, organizations can either influence or control all factors affecting performance of

individuals and units through formal and informal means. Greater influence of individuals can be exercised formally through communication; work culture and management style Kasturi (2006).

Employee performance involves all aspects which directly or indirectly affect and relate to the work of the employees. Performance means both behavior and results. Behavior emanates from the performer and transforms performance from abstraction to action. Not just the instruments for results, behaviors are also outcomes in their own right-the product of mental and physical effort applied to tasks-and can be judged apart from results Brumbranch (1998). Within high performance work systems, training will be aligned and integrated with actual work. Employees need training in group dynamics and interpersonal relations, and in systems thinking to understand better how all parts of their organization fit together and affect each other. Trainers play a key role in providing feedback on employees‘

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CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1 BACKGROUND OF STUDY.

Globalization is becoming more and more important to companies all over the world. A major component of the globalization of business is the field of human resource management. A trend over the past few years has been to identify the linkage of human resource management with strategy not only on the national level but also on the international level.

Wikipedia defines Human Resource Management (HRM) as the management of an organization’s employees. While human resource management is sometimes referred to as a “soft” management skill, effective practice within an organization requires a strategic focus to ensure that people resources can facilitate the achievement of organizational goals. Effective human resource management also contains an element of risk management for an organization which, as a minimum, ensures legislative compliance.

Human resource management is defined as a strategic and coherent approach to the management of an organization’s most valued assets – the people working there who individually and collectively contribute to the achievement of its objectives.

Storey (1989) believes that (HRM) can be regarded as a ‘set of interrelated policies with an ideological and philosophical underpinning’. He suggests four aspects that constitute the meaningful version of (HRM):

 

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BUSINESS PROCESS REENGINEERING AND ITS IMPLEMENTATION. A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF THE BANKING AND MANUFACTURING SECTOR

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background of the Study

BPR could be described as a process that contributes to each company’s transformation in a bid to achieve a radical and dramatic improvement .BPR would continue to remain constant in our business activities as a means to restructure our aging processes to achieve the strategic objectives of increased efficiency, reduced costs, improved quality, and greater customer satisfaction (Hammer and Stanton, l995:32)

As a result of improved technology and customer awareness, companies worldwide have become conscious of the need to constantly change their processes in other to serve their customers better and at the same time remain efficient and cost effective.

According to Davenport and Short (1995:11-27) BPR is ‘a set of logically related tasks performed to achieve a defined business outcome’. A business process in this case is a structured and measured set of activities designed to produce a specified output for a customer or a particular market. In the views of these authors, a business process has two very important characteristics; internal or external customers and ability to cross organizational boundaries.

Hammer & Champy (1993:35) on the other hand defined BPR as ‘the fundamental rethinking and radical redesign of business process to achieve dramatic improvements in critical, contemporary measures of performance, such as cost, quality, services and speed’. A number of other literature have been published on process reengineering which covered the processes, myths and its relations with other restructuring tools e.g. Grover & Kettinger in Reengineering concepts, methods and Technologies, Michael Hammer in Beyong Reengineering.

In recent times, the focus on customers, competition and change have become the new watchword for businesses around the world and the old rigid structure has proved inadequate to cope with the flexibility and quick turnaround being demanded by customers around the world presently (Hammer & Champy.l995:73).

In our opinion, between 1970 and a decade after, the structure of businesses in Nigeria hardly changed with importation of raw materials and cheap finished goods being the other of the day. The revenue generated from the oil export did not help matters as the successive governments embarked on ill-conceived projects and few ‘white elephants’ that led to drain on the foreign exchange reserves.

Although, this period created a level of economic growth with many factories springing up in most urban centers of the country, it also served as a neglect of our agricultural sector and an exodus from the rural areas to urban centers. By the mid 1980’s our dwindling foreign imports and the issuance of import licenses could not be utilized as our international trade partners could no longer guarantee our imports (Michael Stevens and Associates, 1994:19).

In 1986, it was evident that efforts had to be made to be address the economic recession and discontinue the false perception of life shared by all and sundry. This led to the introduction of the SAP which major steps include:

Stringent economic measures,

Trade liberalization

Guided deregulation

And currency devaluation (Agusto & Co, 1994:15)

A number of financial reforms were implemented which resulted in increased activities in the financial sector. These activities included liberalization of imports of goods and services, interest rate and foreign exchange reforms.

With hindsight, the consequent effects of this was a strange hold on the manufacturing sector, breakdown of shaky infrastructure and the collapse of the banking sector which had witnessed a growth in the number of participants as a result of these reforms earlier mentioned.

Majority of the corporations operated well below optimal level due to lack of foreign exchange and credit squeeze. The financial sector’s problem was caused by illiquidity and insolvency as many banks began to fail to meet with their customers’ demand for funds.

The manufacturing sector took the brunt of these economic measures as their sales took a downward turn. Although, the sector was classified as a preferred sector, together with agricultural and housing but with no credit facilities to secure foreign exchange for raw materials nor enough sales to generate adequate revenue to repay outstanding loans, the predicament of this sector soon became evident.(CBN Briefs,1998).

A number of these companies employed numerous tactics to redress the situation; some employed a three day working week, few rationalized while some closed down all together. Some of these companies that survived the downturn in the economy at this period were those that changed their old structures and their old processes with the customers as their focus.

The process steps are considered activities that transform a set of inputs into a set of output (goods and services) for another individual. Improving business processes is paramount for businesses to stay competitive in today’s market place. Over the past few years, businesses have been forced to improve their processes because the consumers are demanding better and better products and services. Coupled with this is the competitive issue facing businesses, the opportunities available to each customers to seek service/goods from other outlets if not satisfied with that provided by a particular company.

Inevitably, with the opening of world markets and increased free trade, many businesses started business process improvement as competition became more intense and coupled with the reality that change was the only hope of survival.

The process of reengineering centers on understanding the current process and build in performance improvements into the process accordingly. Having said this, it is important to note that there are a few different schools of thought in BPR. Extreme school assumes that the current process is irrelevant and should be dismantled and rebuilt while another is of the opinion that you only need to bridge the gap between the current process, technologies and structures (Hammer, 1995: lO4).

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