Training and Development

Training and Development

Introduction

Nowadays, organizations strive to gain competitive advantage over rival firms, and interestingly, they no longer focuses on marketing mix to gain edge over competitors but make investment on human resources to remain competitive. Thus, employee performance is of great importance for an organization, this necessitates continuous and ongoing evaluation of past, current and expected performance of an organization.

This paper addresses the performance gap of employees at Wal-Mart, develops an effective training program to close this performance gap, as well as discusses how training can effectively close this performance gap.

Discussion

Performance Gap

Wal-Mart is the world's renowned retailer and primarily associated with service industry where employee communication is one of the core competencies which all employees must have from low-level employees to senior managerial level. However, Wal-Mart encounters a serious problem in employee's performance as they lack in ability to communicate effectively. This not only affects employee individual performance but also have a negative impact on organizational performance (Durand & Wrigley, 2009). Thus, it becomes essential to close this performance gap by developing an effective training program to close gap and improve employee communication with each other and with customers as well.

Develop an Effective Training Program

This training program is designed to improve communication skills of employees to close the performance gap, especially for employees who come in direct contact with customer at Wal-Mart stores. This training program is intended to improve employee performance by improving communication skills, which necessitates managers to glance at needs and different learning styles of employees so that effective training program can be developed. In-house trainer will design and offer trainer to employees. Moreover, role playing, multimedia and group discussion will be used during training.

Firstly, trainer must think about common characteristics and traits of employees, and determine how employees learn, past performance of employees and what knowledge training brings to employee. Once, common characteristics of employees are determined, trainer will define communication style of employees (sensory, intuitive, visual, active, sequential, verbal, reflective and global) during a training session (Hamilton, 2013). In the session, each employee will be asked to define their own style of communication and small recommendations will be given by trainer.

In the second training session, trainer will demonstrate active listening skills as communication is a two way process. Good listening is essential to become good communicator. Here, employees will learn how they can improve listening skills. Small guidelines are instructed that will help employees in becoming a good listener, such as minimizing external and internal distractions, adjust listening based on the situation, make eye contact will listening, do not interrupt, do not judge, stay focus and remain clearheaded. All these small initiatives will help employees at Wal-Mart to effectively communicate with Wal-Mart customers that will eventually improve their work performance (Guffey & Loewy, 2012).

In the third session, trainer will request a good communicator within organization to come forward and demonstrate his/her communication skills. For example, the way he/she communicates with co-worker, managers and customers. This will help employees in gaining ...