Training needs

Training needs

Introduction

Overview of the organization

Apple Inc., the American technology giant, has managed to maintain its one position in the industry as a result of the strategic management that its management has put in place. The company, which is located in California in the USA, remains one of the most recognized corporations in the telecommunication industry. The company is involved in the production and sale of computers, but in recent days of operation has extended its operation to the various sectors as wee. Apple, Inc. has an estimated employee population of over 140,000 employees and operates more than 500 retail stores within an outside the United States of America. However, the organization is often engaged in the intense market innovation in which the company comes up with new products from the ever-demanding market. The principal objective of Apple is remaining the dominant company in the telecommunications industry with the leading innovative products in the global market. Due to the ever-changing needs for innovative products in the market, one of the most critical strategic issues within Apple is the need for the organizational employees to meet the creative demands of the company.

In recognizing the current market trend, Steve Jobs claimed that he wanted to transform the company by making it the Mac Hub of the consumer’s digital lifestyle. As a result of this desire, the company has strived to remains the most innovative one and is ever-evolving. This element of innovation, however, comes with critical strategic challenges, which include employment of US-centric strategy, the challenge of sustainable development (change), and dependence on the specific suppliers for the various product for the company. However, of all the challenges, the most striking strategic issue for the company is the company’s challenge for sustainable development and understanding of the innovations that it comes up with.  As such, the three training needs include, the training need for changing the US-centric strategy, the need to keep up with the function or understanding of the innovation, and the needs for training to adapt to the product from the various suppliers to the company.

Training needs

Training/development need for the company’s innovation

Training needs analysis is the process of identifying the training needs of an organization to improve employee job performances. Since the company is ever innovating new products, there is a need for the employees of the organization to be trained on how to develop, use and improves the innovation. This need training is aimed at putting all the employees of apple on the same level of understanding concerning these innovations. There is a need for training of employees. Since competition is a strategic element of any organization, innovation training needs is a vital issue within an organization for an organization to be competitive innovation remains one of the most critical tools towards achieving this, employees must be equipped with the right skills of change to be able to drive the innovation objectives of the organization towards the right direction. Employees of an organization remain the most crucial resource towards achieving any kind of training needs. As such, for this to be possible, there is a need for the organization to focus on training and developing the skills in line with the strategic issues, in this case, innovative procedures within the apple. The three training levels of the apple innovation employee training needs include;

1. Organizational

The organization level of training needs analysis advocates for the preparation of the entire organization or exercise of everyone towards the needs of the whole organization. This includes training everyone with the needs of the organization. In this level of needs analysis, the organization training or the HR department needs to align the activities through skills enhancing to meet the global demands of the organization (Pomerantz, 2017). Training needs analysis allows for the existing gaps within the organizational employees’ job decryption and future development within the organization. For the corporate stage, the need analysis would include planning the training programs with the needs of the general organizational needs regardless of the individual population within the organization. This means that every training program will be tailored to meet the goal and objectives of the organization.

2. Operations or tasks

The other need analysis level is the operational level. At this level, the training aims at enhancing the specific skills towards a given task within the organization. The tsk level of the need assessment needs works to match the capabilities of the employees within an organization with the respective responsibility that they are likely to undertake within an organization. This form of training is based on the employee’s roles and department within an organization. The training need at this level involves training or development of skills towards a specific role within the company. For apple, the innovation process is done at given concentrations. The training program within Apple will focus on the development of the appropriate or the required skills.

3. Individual

Individuals’ training need level focuses on improving the overall skills of an individual. This is based on the individual role and the capabilities that one has towards his character. The personal training needs assessment, and training involves enhancing the particular skills in a unique way, which is different from the skills used by individuals in daily activities. For apple employees, the training at this level will focus on enhancing the individual employee skills and knowledge towards the innovations that the company is developing. This ensures effectiveness in the single employee’s productivity.

Training program

The training program aims at illustrating the individual’s employee training method that will besides the individual rules, the task, or the organizational levels of training and development within the organization. For each employee, a given element of employee skills development will be developed, and the training program duration, objectives and the method involved is clearly articulated in the training program.  It focuses on the aspect of specific gap identification, skill development, and the knowledge that an organization needs. Training program framework. It begins with the needs assessment to measuring of the training effectiveness. For an effective training program, there is a need for the organization to look into all these factors of a training program clearly

The organizational and individual training program

Learning theory

This training has very many concrete benefits to the company; there is an established clear connection between the training and the company innovation goals. The mission of improving innovation in the company is objectively related to the performance in the company. Creating a comprehensive and development program is very crucial for Apple Inc. as it contributes to the improvement of innovations in the company (Ford, 2014). The training will involve the definition and the prioritization of the Apple company mission and the training units’ mission and the performance objectives. The following learning theories will be used to ensure that the employees get the perfect skills in improving innovation in the company.

Cognitive Learning Theory

This is a comprehensive theory that describes intelligence and different mental processes and exactly how external and internal aspects influence them to produce learning in trainees. The cognitive approach puts much focus on how the trainees process the information, gain, store, and retrieve data as well as how they transfer the learned knowledge. The main aim of the program is to train the employees on ways of improving innovation in the Apple Company (Ford, 2014). With the regular and proper working of the cognitive processes, the acquisition of and storage of knowledge works precisely well. The trainees are expected to observe and categorize and then form generalizations about the Apple Inc. environment.

This theory will also be beneficial to trainees in three main ways. First, it will take into account accommodation, and the trainees are expected to modify what they already know and take into account the new information about innovation that communicated to them. Secondly, they will involve assimilation, in which trainees are expected to comprehend how the new knowledge passed to them is arranged alongside the experience they have about innovation. Third, they are expected to reach equilibration, which is they are to balance between what they already know about the change and what they are currently mastering. According to Swift et al., 2013, the trainer/facilitator will create a safe learning/training environment for the trainees where their insights are welcomed. The facilitator will ensure that every new point about innovation introduced properly builds on the already acquired knowledge (Lin et al., 2014). The relevant training materials are divided into appropriate stages and taught in a very logical order or manner. The facilitator will also ensure that the comments and questions from those in training are welcomed and effectively encouraged.

The facilitators and the Learning and Development Managers will consider the penetration of cognitive learning they need to achieve. The training in innovation is likely that retention, understanding, and applying the information provided to the trainees is satisfactory. According to Lin et al., 2014, the innovation information should be appropriately sequenced and carefully so that this innovation knowledge is built on what the trainees already fully understand. The facilitator’s preface of new materials with the background information is very crucial. Therefore, the facilitators will need to emphasize much how each element of the training session is meaningful to the task that the trainees are being prepared for (Swift et al., 2013). The facilitators will also deploy observational learning, where the trainees will learn from them by observing them in a very effective way and gaining knowledge on innovation (Ford, 2014). Self- efficacy where the trainees are expected to improve on the newly learned innovation knowledge. At the end of the training program, the employees are expected to discover their expertise regarding innovation and practice innovation at their working place.

Information Processing Theory

This is a theory that is used in corporate training as is usually referred to as employees’ acquisition of knowledge, competences, skills, and attitudes. The theory posits that the brain function like a computer, which is the brain, involves the acquisition, storage and retrieval, and use of information. This is a useful framework that Apple Inc. can use for structuring corporate training. It offers a formula that the trainees gain more than a passing knowledge of the material presented to them (Pomerantz, 2017). It helps ensure that information is encoded into the long-term memory for recall whenever it is required. The information learned during the training program is maintained in working memory through maintenance or elaborative rehearsal

This learning approach is precious in improving innovation in the Apple Company or any other working place. It contributes to the employees’ advanced skills, system understanding, creativity, and innovation. In the training program, the facilitators can engage the trainees in a variety of styles that are appealing to their senses (Young et al., .2016). They will explain the benefits of the improving innovation to the Apple Company, show them infographic that conveys to them the information visually, this will create iconic memories and hand around the samples of the product so that they can touch. When data is presented to the trainees in a variety of different ways, this will guarantee that the facilitator is appealing to the strengths of every trainee in the session and increases the likelihood that they will retain the information.

Since every individual filters information at each stage of processing, the facilitators will employ positive approaches to ensure that the trainees understand the innovation topic in-depth. They will have to break the information into smaller parts and moving at an appropriate speed, by giving the trainees plenty of opportunities and breaks to process the given data (Pomerantz, 2017). Making the information meaningful is another critical strategy in this approach; the trainees are more likely to retain the relayed information that is meaningful to them by connecting it to the experience they had about innovation.

To adjust the chances of the information being kept in the trainee’s long term memory, the facilitators should ‘layer’ the material, by the provision of adequate background information and connecting their current session what they had learned previously and to what they will learn next. One of the simplest ways of encoding new facts into long-term memory using this learning approach is to present the information more than once (Young et al., .2016). Repeating the data in different layouts like verbal, visual, written, and tactile is the most excellent way of doing this. Repetition of the information will make them retain it for the future. This approach combines an element of qualitative development that leads to the emergence of new strategies that, when acquired by the trainees, will help in improving innovation in the company. The information processing theory is currently utilized in studying the proper ways of developing innovation in several organizations (Pomerantz, 2017). It has been successful in describing the business organizational behavior as well as the presentation of the model that describes how effective and ineffective business strategies are developed.

Evaluation of training

The evaluation of the training program will be evaluated using the CIPP method. This method, which stands for contexts, meaningful, process, and product evaluation the success of the need training and development of the critical basis. The technique pays a greater focus on the overall outcome of the training and development process through the process of judging the value of the training program on the organization. The success of the training program for Apple will be valued in the context (which measure if the training process addressed all the needs of the organization, individuals, and their roles). The method also measures the success of the training process in terms of input. This monitor or measure the overall contribution of the training process of the organization. Besides, the method looks at or examines the training success in terms of whether the process remained on track concerning the skills gap that the employee had. In these cases, the training method will focus on if the training method developed the skills that relate to the innovation process within the apple. Lastly, the technique will examine or evaluate the success of the effectiveness of the training program using the product. The product aspect of training program effectiveness looks at the end product. It examines whether there is a change in the value of the product, quality, or quality. For the training program in apple, it looks at whether the training program has a positive change on the innovativeness of the employees who were trained in the process.

Conclusion

Employee training remains one of the most critical parts of employee experiences. Whenever a new employee starts working or joins an organization, they are often trained on the key policies of the organization, the new skills, and knowledge concerning that particular organization. However, the training can also be on the existing employee to better equip themselves with the latest procedures or the change procedure of the organization. For an organization such as apple, it is often vital that the organization management institute vital training programs based on the training needs assessment within the organization.  Apple innovation is a key driver towards the training need and development for the company to enhance its employee’s skills that relate to the key change of the organization

References

Ford, J. K. (Ed.). (2014). Improving training effectiveness in work organizations. Psychology Press.

Lin, H. E., & McDonough III, E. F. (2014). Cognitive frames, learning mechanisms, and innovation ambidexterity. Journal of Product Innovation Management, 31, 170-188.

Swift, P. E., & Hwang, A. (2013). The impact of affective and cognitive trust on knowledge sharing and organizational learning. The Learning Organization.

Young, C., & Ghoshal, S. (2016). Organization theory and the multinational corporation. Springer.

Pomerantz, J. R. (2017). Perceptual organization in information processing. In Perceptual organization (pp. 141-180). Routledge.