Part-1
Ques. 1 What are the four types of training objectives? Why is it necessary to formulate objectives for all four types?
Ques. 2 Consider yourself to be a training manager of a large trading company. Design a format for a TNA [training needs analysis] for this company.
Ques. 3 During any training session all trainers' face many unexpected challenges by way of participant's queries. Briefly describe the three major dilemmas which trainers face routinely.
Ques. 4 What is programmed learning? How is it different from experiential learning techniques?
Case Study:Dunkin' Donuts Training for Quality and Hustle
Dunkin' Donuts requirement for success is provide a high-quality product at impressive speed. Dunkin' Donuts promises fresh doughnuts every four hours and fresh coffee every 18 minutes.
To meet this requirement, fast-food company face training challenges to train a very young (typically aged 18 to 21) and inexperienced workforce to meet rigorous performance standards. Company must train in an industry where turnover averages 300 to 400 percent yearly and where company locations are widely dispersed. Dunkin' Donuts has 1,400 shops spanning the United States and 12 foreign countries. The company approaches this training challenge with a highly decentralized training function.
Dunkin' Donuts's corporate training staff conducts a demanding training program for its franchise owners. Prospective franchisees undergo six weeks of training at Dunkin' Donuts University in Braintree, Massachusetts. There, they spend four weeks in production training, learning how to make doughnuts, coffee, soup, and other products, and how to operate and maintain the production equipment. Performance standards are rigorous; the final production test requires that a trainee make 140 doughnuts per hour (enough to fill a shop's doughnut case). Each batch of doughnuts is weighed and measured for length and height. If a batch of six cake doughnuts is one ounce too light or too heavy, for example, the batch fails the test.
Franchisees spend the last two weeks focusing on financial aspects of the business and on developing employee management skills (for example, supervising, performance appraisal, and interpersonal communication). The 12-member training staffs conducting the program are all former store managers or district sales managers with about 10 years' experience with the company.
Training of hourly employees is totally decentralized. Franchise owners serve as trainers and receive how-to-instruction for this task. Dunkin' Donuts's corporate training staff also provides training videocassettes for owners to use. Quarterly clinics on quality control are also conducted by the company's district managers and technical advisers.
Dunkin's Donuts uses a different and decentralized approach to training its store managers who are not franchise owners. Rather than have franchise owners conduct the training, the company selects experienced store managers and trains them as store manager trainers. Their trainers train new managers using a program and materials developed by the corporate staff. This decentralized approach is relatively new for Dunkin' Donuts and was adopted after the company dropped its 12-week training programme conducted totally at corporate headquarters. With the centralized approach, turnover among new managers was 50 percent during training. Under the new decentralized, on-site approach, turnover during training is about 0.5 percent, and annual training costs have decreased from $418,000 to $172,000.
People-related management skills are emphasized in training both franchise owners and store managers. Dunkin' Donuts credits this emphasis as a major reason why its annual turnover rate for hourly workers (80 percent) is considerably less than the industry average.
Questions
1. What are the strengths and shortcomings of a decentralized approach to training managers and hourly employees? Discuss.
2. In your opinion, why was the turnover rate among management trainees in Dunkin' Donuts' centralized program so high?
Part-2
Ques. 1 What is the relationship among Kirkpatrick's four levels of evaluation? Would you argue for examining all four levels if your boss suggested you should look only at the last one [results] and that if it improved, you would know that training had an impact?
Ques. 2 Justify the use of business games, in-basket and case study training methodologies for training a group of young civil servants who will be shortly posted as district magistrates in different parts of India.
Ques. 3 Choose a job you are familiar with. Develop a self-directed learning module for a skill that is important for that job.
Ques. 4 What are the strengths and weaknesses of the lecture, the case study and the behavior modeling methods of training?
Case Study: Training Designed to Change Behavior and Attitudes
JBC Textile, Surat decided to provide training to improve employees' attitudes toward their work and to provide them with skills to be more effective on the job. The 2-day seminar involved a number of teaching methods including a lecture, films, role plays and group interaction. The topic covered were conflict control, listening, communicating, telephone etiquette, body language, delegation, taking orders, and others. Throughout, the 2 days, the value of team work, creativity, and rational decision making was stressed and integrated into the training.
Before the training was instituted, all 55 non-management employees completed a paper-and-pencil questionnaire to measure both their attitudes toward the job and their perception of their job behaviors. Supervisors also completed the job behavior questionnaire, a type of assessment, for each of their employees. All 55 employees were told they would be receiving the same 2-day seminar. The first set of employees (34 of them) was chosen at random.
The 21 employees who did not take the training immediately became a comparison group for evaluating the training. While the first group of employees were sent to the training, the others were pulled off the job, ostensibly to receive training, but simply took part in exercises not related to any training. Thus both groups were treated similarly in every way except for training. Both groups completed attitude survey immediately after the trained group finished training. Six months later both groups completed self-report surveys to measure changes in their job behavior. Their supervisors were asked to complete a similar behavior measure at the 6-month mark as well.
The data provided some revealing information. For the trained group, no changes in attitude or behavior were indicated either by the self-report or by supervisor-reported surveys. This result was also true (but expected) for the group not trained.
Questions:
Q1. What were the reasons for no change in trained employee's behaviour?
Q2. What measures you would have taken to ensure the affectivity of the training program