Special Training Programs

Most of training is either technical or behavioural in nature, but there are still other trainings that are neither. These fall under the ambit of special training programs and are conducted with an agenda of smoothening the work process within the organisation.

Workforce diversity can be both positive and negative for the organisation. Positive in that it brings fresh and different perspectives to the latter and negative in that team building may not be that easy. Multinational corporations that employ workforce of all races, creeds and colour face the problem racism. Similarly organisations in the Asian subcontinent more specially, face the problem of sexual harassment of workers. There are other problems also apart from these and these can only be resolved with the help of awareness trainings.

In this article we briefly discuss trainings other than the behavioural and technical ones.

• Diversity Awareness Trainings - handling workforce diversity is one of the emerging challenges for organisations in the 21st century. They face claims on from coloured workers, immigrants, older people, various ethnic groups, gays and lesbians for harassment at the work place. Also there is a need for addressing the values of various employee groups, for example, the older generation lives by a different set of values and does the younger lot. This leads to a conflict which can only be resolved by providing appropriate training intervention. Diversity awareness training is necessary to increase the competitiveness and the general competency of the organisation. Many firms have accepted diversity as a way of surviving and many that have not often face the charge of discrimination.

• Sexual Harassment Training - these trainings are mostly conducted in the developed nations and in multinational corporations that function in various geographical locations. These trainings are not very common in organisations in the developing world. Almost all types of organisations, immaterial of what business they are into, what industry they operate in and what kind of people they have hired receive sexual harassment complaints at the workplace. In developing economies they go unnoticed and unreported but in developed economies where the workforce is empowered severely sexual harassment at the workplace is reported, resulting in penal actions and thus the sexual harassment training. Many organisation shave policies on sexual harassment but often they are not communicated!

• Creativity Training - more and more organisations want innovation and creativity as a way of being and expression which ultimately happens only when its people are creative. Many organisations use experiential learning, brainstorming sessions to compel the employees think ‘out of the box’ and thus bring out the latent creativity in them. There are trainings conducted on the art of creative writing from them to write and express themselves beautifully. Organisations like Frito lay and 3M use creativity training to push their employees harder and make them entrepreneurial. These programs have reported to be successful; Frito Lay for example reported huge profits because of the creativity training!

There are other training types that involve training expatriates and inpatriates. These form however a very small chunk of the entire training programs. These special training programs are also with an intent of organisation and people development, aimed implicitly at organisational effectiveness and profits.