The training and development function has made important contributions to the success of American corporations, but is it time now for an overhaul? Sims thinks it is. Not only does his book delineate the ways in which T&D has lost touch with the times, but it also identifies the ways in which it can―and must―be restructured and, indeed, reinvented. It must be more responsive to customer demands and interests, it must participate in and contribute directly to competitive corporate strategies. And it must find ways to measure concretely its performance and its contribution to the corporate bottom line. Sims' book is thus the first to take a corporate strategy approach to understanding and developing the T&D function. In doing so, it dissects T&D, chapter-by-chapter, and in each chapter provides practical guidance on how trainers can improve their performance and thus contribute clearly to the success of their organizations. Not only training and development people, but management in other areas will find this book thoughtful, provocative, and challenging.
To accomplish this task of becoming a more active strategic partner, this book calls for the reinvention of training. Reinvention means that training professionals and their training functions must take a strategic, customer, performance improvement and accountability orientation to add more value to their organizations. After discussing the importance of reinventing training, the book turns to a discussion of the importance of ensuring that, given the organization's strategic agenda, a needs analysis of training goals and employee development needs are derived from a comprehensive analysis of the organization's T&D needs. The book stresses the importance of aligning the organization's strategic agenda and the T&D programs developed by the training function to support the organization's objectives. The book next turns to a discussion on the developing and designing of training programs that will result in employee and organization learning necessary for achieving key business results. Sims offers a detailed discussion of training's need to improve its measurement of the contribution of training. The book concludes with a discussion of issues driving the need for training to continuously learn and work to improve its partnering with customers, delivery of just-in-time customized training, and take on a more proactive role in consulting with the organization on both training and nontraining interventions intended to help the organization meet its intended objective and sustain their competitive advantage.
RONALD R. SIMS is the Floyd Dewey Gottwald Senior Professor of Business Administration, College of William & Mary, where he teaches organizational behavior, human resource management, leadership, and management of change. Author of more than 70 articles in the journals of his field, his most recent Quorum books include: Human Resource Management and the Americans with Disabilities Act (with John G. Veres, III) (1995), Changes and Challenges for the Human Resource Professional (with Serbrenia J. Sims) (1994), and Ethics and Organizational Decision Making: A Call for Renewal (1994).
