ACHIEVING BETTER PERFORMANCE THROUGH TRAINING AND DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMMES FOR EMPLOYEES. A CASE STUDY OF NEW TIMES CORPORATION HEADQUARTERS, ACCRA

ABSTRACT

Training is one of the most pervasive methods for enhancing the productivity of individuals and communicating organizational goals to personnel (Arthur.W.Jnr, Bennet.W.Jnr, Edens. P.S. and Bel. S.T 2003). In the field of human resource management, training and development is the field concerned with organizational activity aimed at bettering the performance of individuals and groups in organizational settings. Training and Development is the framework for helping employees to develop their personal and organizational skills, knowledge and abilities.

There are two types of training namely, off-the-job training and on-the-job training. Off-the-job training has to do with training of employees outside the organisation, this means employees are sent out to learn and they come back to apply the knowledge acquired to their jobs. On the other hand, on-the-job training has to do with training employees within the organisation. Before training employees, a needs assessment has to be conducted to know which employees need training and the best training methods to be used in training them.

To achieve the study objectives, questionnaires were distributed to some employees of New Times Corporation to obtain data. The data analysed indicated that that the criteria which is regularly used in selecting employees for training was performance and as such most employees were selected for training to improve upon their performance, at the end of this exercise employees who were trained were motivated and satisfied with their jobs. They also exhibited excellent performance.

An organisation's greatest asset is its Human Resources. To help these Human Resources achieve better performance, they have to be updated and upgraded through training and development programmes regularly.