Training of Employees

EMPLOYEES, TRAINING OF. Arrangements for the training of employees date back as far as industrial history. They were among the most important objects of the mediaeval guilds (q.v.) and the whole basis of the system of apprenticeship (q.v.). But with the introduction of the factory system the personal rela tionship between the master craftsman and the beginner changed substantially, and since then employee training has been carried on, if at all, generally in an unorganized, sporadic, haphazard and ineffective way.

Corporation Schools.

In the United States, however, as early as the '9os, a few corporations had formed what were commonly called "corporation schools," the assumption being that the train ing function should be exercised by a department especially equipped and trained to perform the job of training the employees. This change was due to the assumption that the foreman could not be expected to train employees partly because he was poorly equipped to teach and could not be trained to teach and partly because it was assumed that he had too many other responsibili ties. It was not unusual for corporations establishing schools or educational departments to appoint as the head of that department some one who, presumably, was better able than the supervisor to train employees, as for example, an engineer or a public school teacher or official. By 1913 there were in America a sufficient num ber of corporation schools to warrant the formation of a National Association of Corporation Schools, and this association grew in influence and numbers substantially from 1913 until 1921. Mean while, similar associations were formed in England, France, Japan and in some other countries. Most of these schools adopted the pedagogical methods which had been in vogue in the public schools and in engineering and other colleges during the days when the director of education had attended them. Without any particular knowledge of pedagogical methods, he naturally adopted the meth ods with which he was most familiar including often the formalism of the classroom and its more or less inevitable removal from occupational activity or other relationships. By 1918 or 1919 many corporations in America were training employees without the formality of a corporation school and this trend of thought found its expression in the renaming of the association, National Association of Corporation Training.

There has been a strong tendency for corporations to abandon the formal classroom instruction method of training and to return to the earlier method of making training fundamentally the re sponsibility of the line supervisor. There is, however, this very important difference, namely, it is being recognized that the super visor should be trained in the teaching process and that he can be trained.

Furthermore, it is being recognized that the instructional mate rials for training purposes must be organized in such a way that the supervisor will cover all aspects of the training program so that they will not be left to mere chance. The break with formal istic methods is further shown in the widespread use of the con ference method for all training of supervisors.

Industrial School Training Inadequate.

During this change in methods of training employees, United States public educational authorities were giving more and more attention to the preparation of youth for industrial and commercial pursuits. The industrial and trade school supported by communities as part of the public educational system became quite general. The first tendency in this movement was to assume that the public schools could take over a very large part of the programme of training for industry as well as education for life, and for a time it was easy to find vigorous advocates of public educational institutions which would entirely relieve industry and commerce of the prob lem of training for the job. There has been, however, a distinct swing away from the assumption that the public schools could entirely relieve industry of its own responsibility. It is now real ized that the public schools have failed to perform the whole task of education and training for occupational activity, that the fail ure was inevitable, that the problem cannot be transferred in its entirety to the public schools and that industry, whether it wishes to or not, must assume its own share of responsibility for training.

At first many corporation schools undertook what is generally conceded to be the responsibility of the public schools, i.e., the responsibility of educating young people and even others for the broader relationships of life, most of which, of course, have some bearing on the effectiveness of an employee in his occupation. For the most part, this tendency has been or is being abandoned. Or ganized business now expects the public schools to prepare youth for most life relationships, and by eliminating this feature from its own programme, industry can devote itself more intensively and effectively to training for the job.

Training a Management Problem.—A very large number of companies have what is commonly referred to as an educational department or an educational director. One of the largest electric manufacturing companies has practically done away with all formal classroom instruction of employees and is concentrating its efforts in teaching the foreman to train. A syllabus for super visors in an electrical public utility company consists largely— practically 90 to 95%—of material which deals with teacher train ing for foremen, the assumption being that in order to make the training programme really effective, steps must be taken to make the training of the worker continuous from the time of entering the business until he leaves it, and on the principle that the best training is that which is given in connection with actual work under normal circumstances of supervision, incentive and respon sibility. The president of a large company in the United States has stated that management is in large measure, 8o to 9o%, an educational and training job. He illustrates by saying that on one occasion a number of executives of this company analysed exactly what management is in terms of specific operations and, that after classifying all of the typical operations, nine out of ten of them were listed under education and training.

The preparation of instructional materials is, of course, one of the most important steps in a training programme. At one time, the usual practice was for the instructor himself to learn every element of the job and then proceed to convey the information to the employee usually by the lecture process in a classroom. More recently emphasis is being laid on the job difficulties of the em ployee, and the result has been a pronounced movement in the direction of analysing the job difficulties and the man require ments, the learning difficulties of the employee and the order in which these appear. Out of this analysis it is possible to set up a body of instructional materials which attack, not training for the whole job, but rather, the problem of training the employee to overcome the job difficulties. Another important step in a mod ern training programme is an analysis of the teaching process in terms of the difficulties of the foreman or department head in training his employees for the job. Such an analysis leads to the development of a body of instructional materials on the technique of training and is naturally followed by a programme of instruct ing the supervisor to train. Employee training has come to be recognized as a management problem and the subject of training employees takes a very large place in all discussions of manage ment societies the world over.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.-James

H. Greene, Organized Training in Business Bibliography.-James H. Greene, Organized Training in Business (1937) ; S. R. Shellow and G. R. Harmon, Conference Manual for Training Foremen (1935) ; P. H. Douglas, American Apprenticeship and Industrial Education (192I). Papers of American Management Association: E. E. Brinkman, Training for Improved Motions (1928) ; Russell N. Keppel, Training Manual Workers (1928) ; R. H. Fogler and B. F. Field, Training the Sales Supervisor to Train (1928) ; Frank Cushman, Training of Skilled Workers (1936) ; R. F. Lovett, Training and Retraining Salesmen (1937) ; L. Urwick, Specialized Training for and Control of Office Operations (1938). (W. J. Do.)