Nowadays how to motivate the employees has become one of the most crucial challenges companies have to face. It is essential for an organization to choice proper human resource practices as several researches have proved that a company’s human resources plays a critical role on a company’s success (Ferris et al., 1999).
Among all the functions of human resource practices, the most important one is employee training and development. Recent study suggests that human resource practices with high employee involvement, such as workplace training and development, have a significant impact on company-level outcomes by positively modifying employee behaviors and attitudes (Arthur, 1994).
By definition, employee training refers to the systematized approach in which corporations help new and existing employees to develop and thus enhance the working quality. It is viewed as an organized way of employees’ learning and development which benefit both individuals and organizations (Goldstein & Ford,
2002). This series of activities are usually taken within the organization with the purposes of knowledge or skills acquisition. As a result, well-being and performance might be achieved at human capital level, the company level, and the society level.
Based on the study of Langer and Mehra (2010), training plays an important role in enhancing the goods and services quality of a company in the fierce competition market by sharpening employees’ technical skills.
Employee development, on the other hand, means the activities aiming at knowledge or skill acquisition from the perspective of employee growing. Development programs are provided by a company to its employees with the purpose to capability improvement. In the current business environment, it is highly critical and strategically imperative for firms to support employee development (Waheed 2011).
Therefore, in order to maintain high quality employees as well as the company
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success, investing in continuous employee development would be a wise choice for organizations (Khawaja & Nadeem 2013).
Employee training and development programs have been so invaluable in improving employee performance that worth investing heavily. By observing the most successful organizations all over the world such as Microsoft or Apple, it is easy to find out that they place a priority on the progress of workforce and thus make considerable investment in employee training and development, resulting in increased skills and competence which enhance productivity and morale (Hamid
2011). Moreover, advancement opportunities seem to reduce the employee turnover
(Deckop et al. 2006). With the training and development opportunities, the commitment and satisfaction of employees will be increased, which in turn help reduce absenteeism and turnover (Atif et al. 2010).
As training and development improves personnel resourcefully and offers the chance of learning the jobs virtually and performing the tasks more competently, it will eventually improve the corporate performance. Various studies have proved the positive impacts of training and development on corporate performance. As pointed out by Galanou & Priporas (2009), the training and development process is one of the most prevalent approaches to boost the productivity of companies and to communicate organization’s level of goals to workforce. Likewise, research carried by
Rohan and Madhumita (2012) also indicated that investing in employee training and development regarding problem-solving, teamwork, interpersonal relations and decision making has favorable influence on an employee’s performance, as well as beneficial impacts on the organizational growth. Another study (Satterfield & Hughes,
2007) also shows that training and development affects personnel behavior and working skills, leading to the improved corporate performance and various constructive changes. Besides, Hutchings et al. (2009) mentioned in their article that in most
