Staff Development and Training

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Introduction

Staff training and development is an essential aspect for business organizations in the 21st century. It helps in building a workforce of highly professional employees who are effective and efficient in carrying out their day-to-day tasks in an organization. Training employees makes them feel more confident and motivated hence giving the organization undertaking the program an upper hand in facing the competition it might be facing from the other players in the industry. Other names such as staff development, learning and development as well as human resource development are used to refer to staff training (Milstead, 2006 pg 11). This essay will focus on the organizational, communication, social, creative and artistic skills that employees should be exposed to in such a training program.

Effective communication skills that are of high scale are very vital in an organization in the modern world. They help in coping with the stiff competition that organizations are facing from all scopes of life. Effective communication highly relies on the type of communication skills that one possesses. It involves engaging the most appropriate communication channel, presentation of the information to the targeted audience, skills to understand fully, and easily responses made by the audience as well as having the technical expertise of using the chosen channel of communication (Worth, 2009 pg 45). Self-development, Interpersonal skills, cooperation, mutual understanding, as well as trust are significant in setting a concluded channel of effective communications skills.

There are three types of communication skills that corporates can instill in their staffs. They include expressive skills, listening skills as well as management skills meant for controlling the whole process of communication. In addition, emotional skills are also very fundamental since they determine the fate of all the other three skills mentioned above. Expressive skills help in conveying messages to the other people by use of facial expressions, words, and body languages. On the other hand, listening skills are the skills employed primarily so as to get information and messages from the other people (Worth, 2009 pg 55). They help in making the speaker understand his or her audience feelings and thoughts towards him or her and more so, understanding the audience more closely. Communication management skills help in recognizing the needed information, and create a strong hold on the present rules of interaction and communication. Equipping staffs or members of a given organization with relevant communication skills is of much importance and cannot be neglected or ignored. It creates a good public image since customers appreciate the good customer care services or public relations they receive in the organization.

Social skills play a major role in the modern world in all spheres of life more than ever before. Social skills training is significant in order to instill good interpersonal problem solving strategies which would ultimately enhance the general communication skills, help in defining conflicts, help in generating alternative solutions to the existing problems as well as coming up with amicable ways of solving interpersonal conflicts. It also helps people in making good judgments when relating with others or initiating interactions. Social skills are considered as one of the key qualifications for most jobs in the current competitive job market.

Employees of any given organization should possess a number of social skills namely cognitive, effective, interaction, as well as foundation skills. Foundation skills consist of maintaining steady eye contact and appropriate personal space as well as understanding gestures and facial expressions (Milstead, 2006 pg 20). Interaction between people is eased by interaction skills. They include ability to resolve conflicts appropriately, determining right topics for conversations, knowing how to start and conclude conversation as well as having the knowledge on interacting with the authority figures. Cognitive social skills enables maintenance of more composite societal interactions. They include creating good social perception, self-monitoring, making choices, understanding society norms, as well as having the right social behaviors depending on the situation. Effective social skills on the other hand enable one to fully understand himself or herself and the people in the organization. They deal with issues concerning feelings such as having a sense of empathy, establishing the level of trustworthiness in a person as well as decoding facial expressions and body languages (Worth, 2004 pg 46).

Good social skills facilitate making of good social choices that improve interpersonal relationships. It enables one to control their frustrations, aggression, shyness, opposition, anxiety, and depression among others (Milstead, 2006 pg 30). It also equips one with resilient that enables him or her face crises and other stressful job and life events. Good social skills are very important besides having academic qualifications and business organizations should highly consider instilling them in their staffs.

Good organization skills are defined as the ability to predetermine how everything has to be organized in order to work together. They equip people with the relevant skills that enables them to work more efficiently and effectively, manage time in an appropriate manner, have proper strategies in knowing how to prioritize tasks. They also help in preparing working schedules, and more so knowing and reflecting on ones strengths and improving on the weakness.There are a number of organizational skills such as time management, keeping a planner, designated storage and prioritization (Worth, 2004 pg 66). Time management is a central organizational skill and implicates managing time using a range of skills, tools as well as techniques so as to manage appropriately tasks, goals, projects and schedules. It facilitates in combating procrastination and enables establishment of the activities that should be prioritized.

Designated storage is another crucial organization skill. Organized persons designate specific places or locations whereby they place particular items be it at home or in office. It is a good habit to ensure that everything is placed where it ought to be whenever it is not used. This saves a lot of time in accessing it whenever need for it arises. It also ensures tidiness and neatness at the work place or any other place where there is a series of activities going on (Worth, 2004 pg 46). This enables one to complete other tasks easily and on since, no time is wasted looking for missing items. It is also important to train staff on the need for keeping a weekly or daily plan on how they will spend their time. This is covered under the keeping a planner type of organization skills. This ensures that no important tasks are skipped in the name of forgetting and make it easy to observe deadlines.

In addition, it is very vital to instill the staff with proper artistic and creative skills that would enable them remain competitive in the job market as well as making the corporate cope with the stiff competition in the industry. Creative and critical thinking as well as artistic skills have become popular in the 21st century due to the high level of competition that corporates are facing. Corporates are being required to be innovative enough in order to survive even during the economic crises (Milstead, 2006 pg 30). This therefore, calls for ample training of corporates staffs on ways in which they can be creative. Creativity can be achieved in various ways such as using flexibility strategy. Flexibility strategy involves approaching things in different ways and viewpoints, originality strategy which involves creating unique and unusual clever ideas. It times this strategy involves combining ideals that are already known to come up with something unique. Fluency is another common strategy that indulges generation of large number of ideas as much as possible. Others include curiosity, elaborative and complexity strategies.

In conclusion, staff training is a vital aspect in any business organization of the 21st century. It instills staffs with proper organization, communication, artistic, creative and critical thinking skills, as well as communication skills. This enables the company to maintain or even grow their market pie despite the stiff completion it might be facing. It also builds good working interpersonal relationships among the workers.

Bibliography

Milstead, J. A., & Furlong, E. 2006. Handbook of nursing leadership: creative skills for a culture of safety. Sudbury: Mass, Jones and Bartlett Publishers.

Worth, R. 2004. Organization skills. New York: Ferguson.

Worth, R. 2009. Communication skills. New York: Ferguson