Cahir-ODonnell Amanda - Making Training & Development Work: a Best Practice Guide

The essential purpose of this book is to describe and explain a number of core concepts concerned with the role and effectiveness of training and development (T&D) in organisations and to identify and describe the skills necessary to be an effective trainer. We are conscious that T&D practitioners are busy people and are unlikely to read large amounts of theory. With this in mind, each chapter provides an integrative summary of the implications of current research findings on T&D and identifies practical steps that you can take as a trainer to implement best practice.

The book focuses on five major topic areas:

• The core concepts that underpin the subject area of T&D
• The steps and decisions that need to be considered when establishing a T&D function and in identifying T&D priorities
• The process of designing T&D activities and formal events, and the contribution that learning theories can make to effective training design
• The delivery of T&D activities, including the contribution that psychological concepts can make to effective training delivery
• The costing of training activities, their evaluation and the calculation of return on investment.

This book concentrates on the priorities of the T&D specialist. It goes beyond existing training books in a number of ways by:

• Concentrating on summarising the implications of current theories and research for the practices that trainers can adopt
• Articulating clearly the best practice issues that should demand the attention of the practising trainer
• Providing, at the end of each chapter, a set of best practice indicators
• Focusing on various levels of analysis (intra-individual, inter-individual, team and organisational levels) and the factors that are relevant to better understand training effectiveness from these different levels or perspectives.

This provides a strong theoretical-driven foundation, in addition to a practitioner orientation to the book.

The book emerged from a realisation that many practitioner-focused training texts tend to place too much emphasis on the practice without sufficiently explaining the relevant theoretical foundations in practitioner-type language, or tended to be primarily theoretical with a strong strategic focus. We fully understand the need for T&D to think in strategic terms. However, in this book, our primary objective is to focus on the operational realities that the trainer experiences. Our intended audience is practitioners in the field of T&D. They may be internal or external consultants or specialists and are likely to hold such job titles as Training Manager, Training Specialist, Instructional Designer and Direct Trainer. In many larger organisations, responsibility for T&D activities are differentiated between training specialists and line managers. Although the principles set out in this book apply to both, to the extent that the training and development of employees is more likely to be concerned with fundamental practices such as the assessment of T&D needs, formal and informal instruction, and training design and evaluation, this book will prove more helpful to individuals working as specialists within the field.

This book owes its existence to numerous sources of inspiration and support. In particular we wish to recognise the invaluable contribution of our students, colleagues and peers, who have shaped our thinking and contributed to the concepts developed and explained here. The book is given added colour and texture through the case scenarios that we derived from our combined experiences as practitioners and teachers of training and development.

Thomas N Garavan

Carole Hogan

Amanda Cahir-ODonnell

November 2003