Question

This week's chapter discusses reviewing your risk assessment, analyzing counter measures, preparing a cost benefit analysis, implementing a plan and staying with in budget. One aspect mentioned is how training is often an overlooked area of the plan. What are some of the issues when training is overlooked? Give an example as well.

Answer 1

With the advent of more and more advanced technology, there has been a need for the Human resource to ensure that the Organization’s workforce is well-acquainted with the Technology in order to be competitive in the business. Lack of training shall give rise to the issue of lack of knowledge to handle various technological systems in an Organization. Further, the diversity in the workforce itself adds more advantages of bringing employees to the Organization that have a scope of challenging the old school of thoughts and have a varied view and life experiences in different kinds of work, with respect to their wide range of talents or skills. In this regard, the role of Management System to recruit and retain the diverse workforce has become essential to be aligned with the Strategic plans to retain a good diverse work force by offering them job-sharing, flexible timings, telecommuting and by creation of such programs that could take care of the children and the elderly dependents of the employees, thereby ensuring a strong workforce in order to cherish the Organizational goals with a competitive advantage in the industry. If the Training is overlooked, the issue of managing the cultural diversity of an Organization, especially if it is a Multinational, shall be evident. Besides, when the Training is inadequate, there shall not be any creation of a pool of readily available and adequate replacements for personnel who may leave or move up in the organization. In addition, there may also be issues in enhancing the company's ability to adopt and use advances in technology because of a insufficiently knowledgeable staff. Also, the Organization shall not be able to build more efficient, effective and highly motivated team, which shall in turn impede the company's competitive position and may not be even able to improve the employees’ morale. There may be issues in ensuring adequate human resources for expansion into new programs. Further, the Organization may also not be able to gauge when the performance improvement is needed for the employees or be unable to "benchmark" the status of improvement so far in a performance improvement effort for the employees. It may fail to even be part of an overall professional development program or that of a succession planning to help an employee be eligible for a planned change in role in the organization

Example, a Company has just recently stepped into the global front but is very rigid in its approach. The Organizational culture does not really support cultural diversity and this is impeding its growth in the global markets because the Organization fails to connect with the local crowd of the Host countries. Besides, owing to the shoe-string budget of the Company, the Company is unable to invest as much as it should do on its Training part. As a result, the sales of their products which are although good in quality, is relatively lesser than expected owing to the lack of connect with the consumers.