What are the true job responsibilities of a professional training manager?

“Three years ago, we needed to send training to the countryside (front-line sales organizations). Now it is easier. Sales staff across the country can learn online at the company’s internal training, or send the company headquarters to the company through a video conferencing system. "The problem is that we have changed the chopsticks into knives and forks, but it cannot effectively solve the problem of the food in the bowl and the difficult to adjust taste of the huge sales team! Just like making cheese, the same style of steamed buns will definitely satisfy you. cannot meet the needs of employees. Obviously, training needs analysis and the development of an efficient matching curriculum system are before us! ”

As a nationally renowned home appliance manufacturer, it has established more than 30 branches (markets) across the country! , sales and customer service), with a sales team of more than 5,000 people. Objectively speaking, it is indeed not an easy task to meet the differentiated training needs of more than 5,000 employees in sales, marketing, promotions, shopping guides, customer service, from salesmen, managers to branch heads, etc. The company also has other functional departments such as R&D, manufacturing and logistics. In fact, Manager Zhang's current situation is a problem faced by many training managers of large and medium-sized group companies.

The "training cheese" problem

Although there are various signs that the training cheese that managers receive from their employers is gradually decreasing, many smart employers or business leaders still insist that: It is necessary to invest resources reasonably in training and developing employees' professional abilities. On the one hand, it is to optimize the retention policy, and on the other hand, it is indeed considered that employees' abilities will directly affect the company's overall performance and long-term competitiveness.

For training managers, they will face more and more challenges. Perhaps training managers often have to be busy with the embarrassment of "having a headache and treating the head first", but if they want to completely change the situation of training work, they must establish an effective training system pragmatically, and the training system to be established will come from two Tests in various aspects: On the one hand, whether training can continuously develop and enhance employees' professional skills and provide "priority capabilities" to support the company's long-term development strategy and staged business goals. In short, whether training can cultivate and develop the company The overall quality of internal human resources will help improve the company's operational efficiency; on the other hand, it will also determine whether the differentiated training needs of employees of different categories and levels can be met promptly and accurately.

If the training manager can only bake steamed bun-style cheese for employees, he will definitely suffer criticism and complaints from all directions. Moreover, the training manager should not devote a lot of energy to the organization of the training courses itself. Instead, the training manager should focus on reviewing the company's internal training process and the definition and implementation of employee development responsibilities, and provide guidance to line department managers or employees from the perspective of a career consultant. Provide a set of tools to effectively identify real training needs.

Tools for identifying real needs

The criticism and complaints that many training managers suffer from different levels within the company are not that they lack due enthusiasm and orderly course organization , and it is precisely because they lack a thorough understanding and analysis of the substantive needs of employee training. You can imagine how ridiculous it would be to put company bosses and ordinary salespeople together to participate in so-called management game training!

In fact, if we want to establish a high-performance and high-satisfaction training system, we must start from the analysis of employees’ job skills. Discovering the difference between an employee's actual ability and job skill requirements is the starting point of training, and the employee's direct supervisor is precisely the person responsible for "discovering the difference." The real challenge for the training manager is whether line department managers can obtain from the training manager a pair of binoculars for spotting employee skill shortcomings and use them actively.

We might as well study the "Job Competency Model" at the department manager level. The basic responsibilities of a department manager should include three areas: personal tasks (Task), leading work teams/team goals (Team-Work) , Establishing and maintaining internal and external customer relationships (Clients Relation). Described in Table 1 is the manager's responsibility model.

As shown in the above responsibility model, the responsibilities of managers have been clarified. The next thing we need to solve is to establish a competency model of managers (by analyzing samples of outstanding manager employees within the company or from professional consulting companies) Purchase research results), that is, the combination of capabilities that a manager should have to achieve high performance in his responsibilities in each area.

As described in Table 2 is the “Manager’s Capability Model”.

Only after the job responsibility models and competency models at different levels are established, and the various responsibilities and abilities have been described in a unified language within the company, the company's job competency map (Competence Mapping) is established. The remaining job, as a manager of the human resources department or a training manager, must sell this set of professional "things" to employees at different levels of the company, especially middle and senior management. The following three points must be clear:

Job competency map (clearly defined responsibilities, ability elements described in a unified language and other "should know/should be able") is an important tool for the company to recruit new employees and train employees in the future (employee positions changes, or abnormal performance);

Department managers or team leaders should be very familiar with the description of the necessary skills for all positions under his jurisdiction;

Let employees "regularly The responsibility for "looking in the mirror" belongs to the employee's supervisor, who must be able to identify the skill shortcomings of his subordinates and effectively convey this information to the training department.

The direct supervisor is the real coach. “In fact, the direct responsibility for improving employees’ work abilities, assisting subordinates in formulating development plans and guiding subordinates to learn is the employee’s boss. However, the boss complains about the employee’s poor work ability. More than 80% come for training managers or HR managers! "You will often hear such grievances from peers at gatherings of human resources managers.

Therefore, the training manager must not blindly assume the role of training cheese bakers. He does not have enough experience and ability to judge what all the employees of the company are lacking or what kind of training they need to receive. Information must come from line department managers. The responsibility of the training manager is to provide line department managers with a set of methods to identify employee training needs, and after receiving training information from line department managers or employees themselves, whether to outsource training or establish in-house instructors to implement the pre-defined tasks training sessions and find a way to track the effectiveness of the training. In this sense, only employees’ direct supervisors are real coaches, and department managers should assume the following responsibilities in employee training:

Coach employees on the job and assist subordinates in improving their work capabilities;

Through performance communication, combined with employees' job competency models, we can determine the ability shortcomings of subordinates and assist them in formulating training or learning plans;

Accurately convey the training needs of employees in this department to the training department ;

Assist the training department to track the effectiveness and performance improvement plans of subordinates during and after training. Compiled by Tianjin Ferryman Training Manager College