CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

        Some years ago, the concept of training and development were widely misunderstood and not fully appreciated in most Nigerian organization. Today, the situation has dramatically changed such that many organizations, business and non business organization have come to appreciate the need for employee development and training as a very important instrument for organization development.

        Training and development date back to the beginning of man. In our own families, our parents direct the children on what to do. A little baby is trained / taught to sit, crawl, stand and walk. All these efforts are geared towards developing the child to gain essential skills for adaptability in this  environment. It is this training and development that guides the child as he grows and matures into adulthood.

        The above make it clear that although once is qualified to be employed in an office, to perform once duty or the other, yet the staff employed needs to be trained for adaptability in his office environment.

        As can even be seen from the Biblical aspect of it, in the book of Samuel chapter 30, David the king of the Israelites realized the importance of training and development. By selecting his distinguished six hundred soldiers he gave the special training and sponsored their scientific and special reading to enable them to satisfy advisory roles in his palace and ultimately meet the nations needs in having a well trained army. It has become increasing apparent to more and more organization that life/long learning    must become a reality for them to remain competitive in an increasingly demanding environment. Such learning can take place through training courses offered by the firm themselves or by outside suppliers of training and education.

        According to Buke (vol 41, 1988; 731) it can also take place informally through learning and development on the job. There has recent literature Morrison (1992: and Burke (1994:28 suggesting the impact of both the number of development activities undertaken and their pertinences usefulness on a variety of work attitude and outcomes, such as self reported future career prospects.

        Furthermore, training and development is seen as a continuous process, believing that money spent on training and development is money well spent.

        According to Ubeku (1975:270) employee who have not received adequate training before assigning them with responsibility lack of necessary confidence with which to  carry out the job. It is evident that the main objective of any organization is profit maximization, complimented with cost minimization. Hence, it is prudent for organizations to manage their resources in the best possible manner. One of such ways is through the manipulation of its labour force in such a way as to yield the highest attainable effective operations.

        In the past, organization did not fully accept the benefits of employees’ training just because the results were not easily identified and clear.

        The Federal Government of Nigeria recognized the benefit of training and manpower development when they established the Industrial Training Fund  (ITF). Through the promogation of Decree No. 47 of 1971, the objective of which were to “promote and encourage employee training and development as well as the acquisition of skills to industries with a view to generating a pool of indigenous training manpower sufficient to meet the needs of economy”. With these objectives in mind, one realizes that it is very necessary for organizations to expect high productivity in order to accomplish organizational goals and objectives.

        It is a truism that without production, the organization will not survive and such survival is usually predicated on the quality, quantity and efficient use of resources. 

        All these cannot be achieved without the expertise knowledge and skill of the particular job coupled with the right attitudes acquired through training and development. Ogundele (1983:35) stresses that the success of an enterprise depends on the effectiveness of the human resources, the skill and the enthusiasm of the employees.

        He observed that a set of objectives will not be achieved if there is no competent employees to effect such objectives. He argues that human development could be effected by the employees concerned through trial and error but error but better by the organization, through as well planned training scheme or programme.

        He argued that the question should not be whether or not to train but the type of training to be employed. He concluded that human resources are rather scarce production factors which must be intelligently handled.

        This brings us to be the importance of labour. Likert (1967:11) lie of taught is that “all activities of any enterprise are initiated and determined by the person who make up that institution”. The importance of labour force are two folds. First, its indispensability in the organization set up. Second is its unpredictable nature. Mainly because of the later, it is very necessary to take special care of this factor of production i.e labour.

        In actually, no man is indispensable but suffice it to say that there are costs associated with recruitment and orientation or new staff. The profit the organization would have reaped from having this in mind, my aim in this research paper is to highlight the influence of staff training and development on effective  operations and hence after make recommendations from the empirical findings.

THE IMPORTANCE OF STAFF TRAINING

        After an employee has been selected, placed and inducted he should also be trained. Training is the act of increasing the knowledge and skill of an employee for doing a particular job. No organization has a choice of whether to train or not, the only choice is that of method, if no planned training programme established this has not eliminated training costs. The employee will train himself by trail and error or by observing others.

        The establishment of a sound training programme serves the interest of both the management and workers. Training is valuable to the employee in terms of better security and greater opportunity for advancement within or outside  the present organization.

Other values of training include: -

a.           INCREASED PRODUCTIVITY: An increased in skill usually results in increase in quantity and quality output. The increasingly technical nature of modern job demands systematic training to enable even minimum, levels of accomplishment.

b.          HEIGHTENED MORALE: The possession of needed skills helps to meet such basic needs as security and ego satisfaction. Elaborate personnel and human relations programme can make a contribution toward moral but they will be of little use of employees do not possess the necessary knowledge, skill aptitude and altitude to perform their job.

c.           REDUCED SUPERVISOR: The trained employee is once who supervise himself. Both employee and supervisor want less supervision, but greater independence is not possible unless the employee is adequately trained.

d.          REDUCED ACCIDENTS: More accidents are caused by deficiencies in people than in equipment and working conditions. Proper training in both job skills and safety attitudes should contribute towards reduction on the accident rate.