TRAINIG AND DEVELOPMENT AS MOTIVATIONAL TOOL IN STRATEGIC HUMAN RESOURCES MANAGEMENT

Abstract

The success or failure of organizations depends basically on the quality of their human resources. Well trained and highly developed employees are considered as key strategic factor for business success of a company. In a modern company training is supposed to be a continuous process which helps employees to learn needed job-related knowledge, skills and abilities and then apply them on the job. Improving significantly employee competence training increases the performance in terms of output, quality and competitiveness, whether in servicing or production organization. Due to training a company can gain competitive advantages in realization of its strategy. Development was traditionally related to learning of top-managers and main specialists of a company. But arguing this point of view, the authors think that in the epoch of innovations development is extremely important for all employees. It facilitates enhancing knowledge, skills and abilities needed for future working activity, much wider than day-to-day tasks, with creative and strategic managerial   functions. Training and development provide both professional and personal growth of people in a company. Putting together, they influence on employee motivation ensuring short-term and long term means for employee performance. Their impact on motivation of employees is in the center of the study. The authors conducted research on training and development as a motivational tool, taking case of Dangotte Group Companies, one of the largest conglomerates on the African continent, in particular its manufacturing cement organization located in Lokoja, Kogi State – Nigeria.Sociological research, based on representative   structured questionnaire, confirmed, that training and development was truly a motivational tool to employees’ performance and productivity and to their loyalty and satisfaction as well. Therefore, it was recommended that effective training programs and carefully set development plans should be provided to all employees to enable them to upgrade their knowledge and enhance their skills both professional and personal. The recommendations for managers were given, which occupy all steps of training and development process and highlight their great motivational role in strategic human resource management of organizations. Finally, foreseeable future research can be conducted to cover other variables like (capabilities, involvement and creativity) which might affect performance and productivity in strategic perspective.