What are the training and development challenges encountered by human resource departments?

I remember training for my promotion and making my own note cards for drinks and menu items, as well as it was my first high-volume serving job (I had previously served and bartended, but we sat over 2,500 covers just in the restaurant part of the building on some nights (possibly much more)). So, needless to say, HR had their work cut out for them in that building.

  HR Training   Apr 7, 2024   0   34  Add to Reading List

Some things HR can encounter during training and development are (but not limited to):

  • differing learning styles among trainees,
  • differing training styles among educators,
  • potential language, ethnicity, and/or other barriers,
  • lack of experience of mentors to be training and/or lack of experience in those on-boarding,
  • inadequate and/or insufficient quality and/or amount of training matierals/tools,
  • insufficient budget for training costs,
  • candidates who are not dedicated (either trainers and/or trainees),
  • etc.,.

This is surely not a comprehensive list, as I've mentioned. I once worked at a place that only accepted paper applications (I loved that), and they handed out a kids pack of crayons to anyone that asked for a pen to fill out the application - I'm not kidding. I believe it was (at the time) one of the fifty largest restaurants in the US, and I worked there for several years; they explained it as if they can't come prepared to fill out the application, they can't come prepared for work. They held true to this concept with shift bids, which basically worked like if someone was on-call/came to pick up a shift, and the person with the shift was unprepared (and they could get pretty specific on this down to the amount of “flair” that person had on), and the person picking up the shift was one hundred percent in uniform down to the proper number of ink pens (see how that follows from the application part above), they would be granted the shift.

Overall, I never saw anything quite like that go down. But, I heard stories.

Doing the training was no different. I remember training for my promotion and making my own note cards for drinks and menu items, as well as it was my first high-volume serving job (I had previously served and bartended, but we sat over 2,500 covers just in the restaurant part of the building on some nights (possibly much more)). So, needless to say, HR had their work cut out for them in that building.

Regardless of how it sometimes went, I loved that job. I couldn't imagine working as one of the two (possibly three) HR managers for that size, but I'd honestly be pretty good at it, as I seek balance and equality in everything I can as much as possible.

Anyway, HR will always have a learning curve as people get more diverse. Human resources departments will invariably have to utilize new techniques to keep things focused, growing, and, of course, legal as far as training and developing is concerned, as there are a variety of novel learning experiences that may unfold at any moment.