Sunday, November 02, 2014

Learning and Development issues in Indian Context

Learning and development is the bedrock of talent management. It touches and is the key-driver behind, nearly all parts of the talent cycle and is actually a core enabler for delivering many of the talent processes. In the last two decades the Indian economy has witnessed tremendous change in terms of global competition and technological advancement. As a result of these changes a lot of organisations have had to undergo restructuring which has led to a significant transformation in the work practices. This has led to demand for new job skills, greater levels of workforce which has a big impact on learning and development provided to the employees.

 Organisation Transformation often results in anxiety, confusion, anger and withdrawal amongst employees. According to a recent survey conducted by Deloitte, less than 8% of hr leaders have confidence that their teams have the required skills to meet the challenge of global environment and consistently deliver innovative programs that drive business impact. 

In order for HR teams to become better business partners, they need to develop deeper business acumen, analytical skills, learn to operate in the capacity of performance advisors and most importantly understand the needs of the 21st century workforce. This, one could say is the responsibility of the learning and development team to make sure the employees acquire these right tools over a period of time which could positively impact an organisation’s business results. Sadly though, despite of the challenges and need to overcome them, merely a few organisations are emphasizing on the need for training and development. The organisations which do don’t have effective modules. 

An issue with regards to the training and development modules are that most of them are one size fits all kind of training. The training imparted is based without judging the caliber of the individual in question or the job profile. Often trainers conduct programmes without considering the background of people involved and whether they understand the process in consideration. Also most trainers still continue with the old format of PowerPoint presentations without any add-ons in the form of videos, games or any other entertaining ways of getting the message across. 

Shifting focus to those being trained, it has been seen that the participants of a training programme consider the training to be a time to relax from their busy schedule and have fun. Often it has been seen that these participants don’t take the trainings seriously. It would be safe to say that that in order for the process of learning and development to be complete and show results in the financials, trainers must understand the end customers and the main reason behind why the training is being conducted while the participants need to buckle up and show some seriousness and genuine interest towards these programs .


                                                                                                                               - Sarthak Daing

                                                         (Batch 2014-16)

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