INP4004

7. TRAINING

Organizations spend $billions on training their employees

Training can be very valuable by

Increasing employee competence and performance

Increasing employee motivation

Increasing employee adjustment and well-being

Not always effective because training

is for the wrong thing

given to the wrong people

uses the wrong methods

Characteristics of organizational training

1. Field dominated by nonpsychologists practitioners.

2. Much training crisis motivated.

3. Much training frivilous‑‑no particular goal.

4. Many fads & fashions.

5. Nontheoretical. Few principles are applied.

Selection VS Training

Find person with KSAOs Give person the KSAOs

Sterotypically American? Stereotypically European?

Presumes steady supply of Presumes supply of trainable

skilled applicants applicants

Find right person for job Develop person for job

Which Do You Prefer?

THREE MAJOR AREAS OF I/O TRAINING ACTIVITY

1. Need assessment

2. Design

3. Evaluation

Delivery of training usually (but not always) done by non-psychologist trainers

NEED ASSESSMENT

Determining what training should be done

Major methods

Job analysis: KSAO's necessary for the job

Critical incidents: Hospital incident reports

Performance appraisal: Can be part of a performance

management system (see chapter 4)

Employee surveys

TRAINING PROGRAM DESIGN

Goal: Transfer of training to job

Principles

Feedback‑necessary for learning

General principles: Cover the basic principles involved in the training.

Identical elements: Between training and job situation

Overlearning--practice

Whole vs. part (depends on complexity)

Distributed or spaced vs. massed (distributed better)

Ability

Motivation

Supportive environment increases motivation

Anxiety: Yerkes‑Dodson

EVALUATION

Criteria: Ultimate vs. actual

Training criteria

Reactions

Learning

Performance criteria

Behavior

Results

Design of evaluation studies

Posttest only

Pretest‑posttest

Control group

TRAINING UTILITY

Is training worth the money?

Study of training

18 training programs, single organization

16 showed positive training effects

13 had utility, although some were marginal

(Morrow et al. 1997, Personnel Psychology)

EXAMPLE OF A THREE STAGE TRAINING STUDY

Need assessment

New high tech assembly line employees taking too long to train

Attendance problems

Absence

Lateness

Analysis: Anxiety problem

Program Design

One day orientation training designed to reduce anxiety in new employees

Evaluation Study

	Units/hour (mean number per employee)	Absence (percent of employees late per day)	Times late (mean number per employee)	Training hours (Mean per employee)
Trained group	93	.5%	2	225
Untrained control group	27	2.5%	8	381