Training Proposal for a Small Business
Introduction
Sweet Aroma Café is a local enterprise specializing in the production of coffee for sale to local consumers as well as people visiting in the region. This document examines the main training and development elements and their impacts on improving the said business’ performance. The paper will further discuss different challenges faced by small business owners and managers in their efforts to address organizational performance.
Analysis of the main elements of training and development
Every business, especially small businesses requires effective training and development. Skilled, experienced, and competent workers are important for the business to achieve its mission, goals, and objectives as well as realizing increased profits, performance, and productivity. In the contemporary competitive world market, the ability of a business to be highly competitive largely depends on its ability to maintain a highly skilled and experienced workforce. Before conducting training, Sweet Aroma café should carry out a thorough training needs evaluation to ensure that employees receive training that matches their performance requirements. Most of the company’s concerns revolve around poor employees’ training (Charantimath, 2005). For instance, the company referred employees with challenges in making coffee at the right time to the management training course. However, the workers continue to experience the challenges after the management training course and hence the problem continues.
As such, Sweet Aroma Café failed to effectively carry out a training requirements analysis before sending the worker for training. Training needs evaluation usually helps the managers to eliminate the problem instead of addressing the symptoms. Instead, the company should have referred an employee with such a problem for extensive training on the right procedures of making coffee within the most appropriate time. Although providing employee training may be an expensive exercise for a small business like Sweet Aroma Café, they should make considerable efforts and invest in employee training (Blanchard & Thacker, 2013). Effective employee training has the potential to influence increased business performance and profitability.
Because of the nature of the business in which Sweet Aroma Café operates, there are various circumstances where a group of employees may need training. In the event the company has more than one employees requiring training, Sweet Aroma Café should conduct a group training for cost-effectiveness and avoid wastage. Taking a single employee for training can be time-consuming, ineffective, and even more expensive than considering group training, especially when the employee requires to learn different work areas (Charantimath, 2005). After establishing the actual training requirements, the company can then move to the next step of conducting the training to ensure the company addresses the problems by meeting the established needs.
Potential Challenges
Small business owners and managers face a range of challenges in their management and leadership functions. One of the most common challenges and present in Sweet Aroma Café is the development of strategies to attract and retain employees. Coffee making business experiences high competition for talented employees because most of these talented workers move from one company to the other in search of better remuneration and other employment benefits. In its survey conducted in 2010, the US Conference Board revealed that many employees in the contemporary labor market area in the constant exodus from low-paying companies to better-paying jobs. In light of this, managers at the Sweet Aroma Café could face a challenge in their efforts to address organizational performance because they lack clear information on the duration that their employees would remain in the company.
Another challenge that managers at Sweet Aroma Café would face in enhancing organizational performance is dealing with employee concerns such as personality conflicts, personal trauma, conflicts resulting from the company structure, or supervisory challenges. If a company manager or business owner delays in taking appropriate actions, simple conflicts at the workplace can spread swiftly across different business departments. This kind of conflict has the potential to disrupt operations in the organizations, overall organizational performance, and possible organizational failure. Managers should act swiftly in case of conflicts, establish the causes of the conflicts, and determine the persons spreading the conflict. If there is no specific cause of conflict, managers should review the organization’s communication policies because poor communication is the main cause of conflicts. As such, managers must exercise all their powers to eliminate or reduce harmful conflicts in the organization including dividing workers into manageable groups. Sweet Aroma Café should ensure that individual employees and simple groups’ concerns do not develop negative impacts on the company’s corporate culture.
Aligning employees towards achieving a unified goal is another potential challenge that Sweet Aroma Café managers may face when addressing organizational performance. In some instances, employees from distinct functional areas at workplaces may work as distinct groups. In such cases, it is difficult for managers to realize organizational goals because employees or functional units work towards achieving their goals while disregarding the objectives of the organization as a whole. The latter demonstrates a lack of unity of direction at the workplace and hence increasing operational challenges that lead to poor organizational performance. In light of this, Sweet Aroma Café’s managers are likely to face challenges in ensuring that all the employees work towards the achievement of organizational goals and objectives.
Effects of Detecting Organizational Gaps
Gap analysis is an effective way of identifying organizational gaps, particularly in small businesses. Gap analysis may be conducted on the entire business or may focus on a particular business department in the organization. Blanchard & Thacker (2013) claims that gap analysis helps the management to identify underperforming business areas. The analysis also informs the managers of whether the existing challenges related to internal inefficiencies or external problems. Gap analysis helps the management to easily develop strategies for eliminating organizational gaps while maximizing return on the investment. The underpinning factor influencing small businesses to conduct gap analysis is to minimize the gap between the company vision and its current state in terms of short-term and long-term plans. Managers may develop comparisons between the set organizational goals, acceptable industry standards, and any regulation condition.
According to Blanchard & Thacker (2013), examining the existing business state is the first step in conducting an effective gap analysis. This evaluation may be achieved by gathering the available operational data about the business or by interviewing a sample of employees in the company. The analyst or the manager marks the identified efficiencies against the industry standards as well as internal standards. For the outcomes to be free from bias and credible, many companies outsource gap analysis services from professional agencies. Upon identifying the gaps, analysts should move to the next phase of establishing the possible causes of the identified gaps.
Detecting organizational gaps helps the managers realize the strengths and weaknesses of the organization as well as the areas that need improvements. For instance, gap analysis can help Sweet Aroma Café to establish the needs of the employees and motivational factors that can improve employee performance for increased profitability and overall organizational performance. Besides, the analysis can help the managers to identify the possible causes of delays in service or production delays in the organization. The latter can help develop strategies for improving organizational performance. Gap analysis is also important in establishing any communication challenges in the organization. While Gap analysis may help the organization to identify customer needs and other market demands, it may also help the business owners realize when focusing on the wrong market.
Competitive Training Strategy
A competitive training strategy mainly focused on supporting the business towards gaining a competitive advantage in the market. The strategy involves external and internal decisions made by the business to enhance or maintain its competitive status in the market. The Sweet Aroma Café will implement the market leader strategy that would help the business establish and exploit new market opportunities. The success of Sweet Aroma Café will largely depend on its strength to evaluate various market events and trends as well as environmental situations (Stewart & Beaver, 2004). The strategy may help the business to swiftly take advantage of the emerging opportunities.
For Sweet Aroma Café to realize the latter, it should forego low-margin products that have an insignificant contribution to the company’s primary business of making and selling high-quality coffee. Some of the products that the company can forego include particular food items that only serve to increase traffic but do not increase coffee sales or overall company performance and profitability. Other products that the company can eliminate are products that serve to give an impression of a certain business image that the business does not deal with coffee brewing. These products may weaken the company image.
Another competitive training strategy is the encouragement of creativity and innovation among employees by introducing customized menus to the target market. Sweet Aroma Café focuses on traditional menus but the customers may want new menus, especially with this highly informed customer era. Leveraging on strategy is another strategy for improved performance and profitability. As such, the business must train its employees on new technological selling avenues including mobile applications and order preparation methods. Social media drastically cuts advertising and marketing costs for small businesses and thus the business should increase its presence in social media (Stewart & Beaver, 2004). The business must also train its customers to make orders for beverages with high returns to the business. Increased employee training in inventory handling can reduce waste, delays on customer orders while improving customer satisfaction. Another training strategy for increased performance is training on customer experience. Employees must learn new approaches for increasing customer satisfaction.
As highlighted above, the management should understand the main elements that require training by first conducting extensive training needs analysis. Another important agenda should be to enhance employee motivation and focus on customer satisfaction. The latter may allow the company to identify the right menus for its customers. Focusing on the discussed training strategies can improve the company’s return on investment because of many reasons. Firstly, employees will have the right skills and experience and motivated to do their work. Increased employee motivation increases the chances of employee retention and customer service increases customer satisfaction. The latter experiences increase return customers and positive organizational image and hence increased sales and profitability.
Summary
Training and development is very essential for small businesses and particularly Sweet Aroma Café as it can improve business performance and profitability. While ensuring that employees have the right skills, experiences, and etiquette, organizational management must conduct effective gap analysis, develop appropriate competitive training strategies, and determine the expected return on investment. Business owners must realize a reasonable return on investments within the limited time to break-even.
References
- Blanchard, P.N., & Thacker, J.W., (2013). Effective Training: Systems, Strategies, and Practices. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 23-89.
- Charantimath, P.M. (2005). Entrepreneurship Development and Small Business Enterprise. Pearson Education India, 37-76.
- Stewart, J. & Beaver, G. (2004). Human Resource Development in Small Organizations: Research and Practice. Routledge, 69-102.