Your role in training need identification and beyond.

Person Analysis :

Employees should be involved in the Needs Assessment and it should not be left to the managers to decide.

Because if the manager decides that a person in his team needs to attend a particular training but the employee does not feel so, the training will just be taken as a formality and the person will not show a willingness to learn as he/she might feel that it has been forced on to him/her.

At times the managers choose people who they don’t want to see around or who they are biased towards and hence it becomes extremely important to not rely on the manager’s choice of trainees for a program but ask the person himself whether “do you agree you should be attending it?”.

At times the person might act smart and say “No, I do not need any training.”.

Discussions Beyond Training : 

How to get employees to attend the training program? Most of the line managers say the team members are busy working on important projects and cannot be relieved for the training. What do we do?

Ans : Ask them for determining a good time when these employees can be relieved.

If they do not have an answer and seems difficult to get them to attend on weekdays, suggest weekend training programs for the employees.

Is it fair to get employees to come on weekends for training programs? Does it not affect their work life balance?

If the employee himself wishes to up skill himself/herself and wants to upgrade and develop their competency levels, then they should not mind to attend a weekend program, provided they are informed 3-4 weeks prior and their calendars are blocked. If the employee does not wish to attend these periodic programs weekdays options should be provided to the employee. 

How is Work Life Balance defined? Everybody has a different perception of it.

You and me will differ in opinion about W.L.B, but the fact remains, that for majority of them, the meaning of the term Work Life Balance is simple - “I will work on my project/assignment and after I am done and tired I would want to take a break from work and run away” and it is very tough to recondition that perception as it has been ingrained in them by their own desire for escape from stress, which occurs not due to not working for long hours but due to the stress caused trying to achieve unrealistic deadlines set by managers. In such cases, even if the employee loves what he/she does, they get stressed naturally due to high pressure and begin to try and find a way to escape and search for that work life balance.