Since the beginning of the twenty-first century, corporate culture has begun to change and shift. Currently, many companies tend to implement more individualistic and experiential approaches to hiring and training their employees. Additionally, with the rapid rise of various technologies appeared alternative means of executing these processes, which allow the trainings and interviews to be conducted online. While both of these techniques have their pros and cons, the experiential programs tend to be more effective for the orientation of new employees and the additional training for other workers.
Online training via the Internet or various computer programs may be useful for some professions but rather ineffective for others due to the specifics of the professional duties and required performance. For example, virtual trainings are a logical solution for the professions that allow the employees to work remotely: programmers, web designers, copywriters etc. These jobs require skills and knowledge concerning the variety of gadgets and online resources already. However, online training only will not be suitable for other professions – one can learn to drive a car in a computer program but will hardly be able to navigate a real automobile. As Martins et al. (2019) argue, “virtual instructional resources do not guarantee learning itself” (p. 27). While virtual training programs save time and resources as well as allow to train geographically dispersed employees, companies and organizations should use them appropriately and apply them when necessary.
For example, diversity-training programs may be organized online and have a changing effect on the employees. Chang et al. (2019) conducted an experiment testing the effectiveness of such online courses for a large worldwide organization. The online program helped the workers to reevaluate their gender-based biases as well as prejudices about queer and non-white people. It positively influenced the employees’ attitude towards the mentioned minorities, thus upgrading their overall performance as they started treating the customers more respectfully and professionally (Chang et al., 2019). This experiment shows that diversity-training programs have a lasting positive influence on the employees and the company as a whole, even when conducted online. They create a welcoming and inclusive image, which attracts more customers and establishes a possibility of recruiting more young, progressive employees. However, such training has an impact only when it is created by professional sociologists and psychologists, who carefully and properly explore the company’s issues and produce a program aimed to solve them. Summing up, to have real value, the developing and conducting of diversity-training programs must be approached seriously and responsibly.
Experiential training programs may be more conservative and resource- or time-consuming, however, they help to build a more united collective and create a safer, supportive environment for the workers. Martin et al. (2019) mention the three types of learning strategies: behavioral, cognitive, and self-regulatory. While the first two types are more or less equally important in both online and experiential training, the third is a lot more influential for virtual learning (Martin et al., 2019). This training model requires the worker to control their anxiety levels, attention span, and motivational stimulus by themselves, which may feel burdensome and alienating, especially for new employees. Face-to-face training, on the contrary to online ones, provides workers with more tangible support, which reduces their stress level and establishes a trusting relationship with future or current coworkers.
Experiential training is the most useful for the orientation programs of new employees. Such programs should be conducted with the help of the employees, who already have working experience in the company – this way, the recruits can acquire the needed skills and knowledge their position requires faster and more effectively. With the help of HR managers, who will assist in moderating the studying process, experiential training will result in numerous benefits for both workers and the company. Due to experiential programs, new workers will get the chance to form stronger bonds and to know their colleagues better, which will create a system of social support that is of great importance to the recruits (Martin et al., 2019). While solely online orientation programs make sense for some professions, others need interactive face-to-face training. It might be helpful for the new employees in their future career path and useful for the entire company as more cooperative collectives provide better working performance.
Employees’ performance is one of the key things that greatly affect the executive side of every company’s working process. Different companies have various strategies for collecting and organizing data on their workers’ accomplishments. For instance, Google has its own tools to measure the employees’ work quality, including annual and monthly performance check-ins, a self-evaluation system, and 360-degree feedback on their performance.
The mentioned instruments help Google’s managers to evaluate each worker’s productivity objectively by collecting and organizing the information on their performance. The annual and monthly check-ins allow the managers to see the growth and improvement of the company’s employees (Husaini, 2020). It will enable the promotion or reward for those who deserve it the most, thus motivating other workers. The self-evaluation system gives the employee an opportunity to reflect on their performance and set new performance goals (Husaini, 2020). This tool helps the company to build a healthy competitive environment. 360-degree feedback completes the employee’s image, including feedback from other workers and their managers (Husaini, 2020). Thus, it assists in a fair evaluation of the employee’s accomplishments. These methods serve as great tools for rating the workers’ performance and finding a way to motivate them.
Google created an effective system of organizing data about their workers while also making it understandable to the employees themselves and catering to the criteria for the effectiveness of a performance management system. The system should be aimed to help the managers understand if the employee’s performance matches the company’s strategy and the effectiveness of the worker’s actions for the company (Husaini, 2020). It also should assist in understanding the quality level of one’s work and provide the basis for the instructions that should be given to the employee in case of underperformance. The system must depend on reliable feedback from those included in the evaluation. Google’s performance management meets almost all of these criteria.
However, the criteria of reliability seem to be challenged in Google’s performance evaluation system. The model implements feedback from other workers, which frequently may not be objective due to personal biases. In my experience, such unfair assessments may cause fatal consequences – when I worked in customer service, my colleague was fired because of personal problems with one of our coworkers. This situation leads to the conclusion that the feedback on one’s performance should be collected from mostly unbiased coworkers who do not involve in their personal life. This way, the presented assessment will be more objective and fair.
References
Barros Martins, L., Zerbini, T., & Medina Díaz, F. J. (2019). Impact of online training on behavioral transfer and job performance in a large organization. Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, 35(1), 27-37.
Chang, E. H., Milkman, K. L., Gromet, D. M., Rebele, R. W., Massey, C., Duckworth, A. L., & Grant, A. M. (2019). The mixed effects of online diversity training. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 116(16), 7778-7783.
Husaini R. A. (2020).Google: Hiring Process and Performance Appraisal. International journal of business and management invention, 9(7), 26-29.