HR Article Critique
- David McGuire, M. B. (2010). Diversity Training in Organisations. Journal of European Industrial Training, p.493-505.
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The article addresses the problem ofmanagement diversity in an organization/institution’s basic structure and operations. The purpose of the study is to scrutinize the essence of diversity training and studies the impact of parameters like power, politics and privilege on the company/ institution diversity.
Diversity training involves integration of minority groups into one effective functional unit. The article analyses the impact of diversity training at the individual, group, organizational and societal levels. This developmental approach depicts the scope and impact of diversity training and its necessity to the organization/society.
Diversity plays a key role in the management and progress of an institution/company. The worth of diversity to supporting impartiality and inclusivity in organizational structure and operations is the essence of human resource sector.
Employees and other diversity groups add more value to the company/institution. For better operational efficiency in global scenario, diversity should be well managed. Diversity training programmes provide avenue for research of workplace diversity.
The article considers critical variables in diversity and diversity training, which include power, strength and politics. The article presents the research on the effect of each and their dynamics. It uses social dominance theory to describe power differentials and how diverse groups are constructed depending on the social group and organization type. The theory depict how organizations suit as political arenas and that organizational politics usually pursue to benefit select dominant person(s)/group. This locks out the minority groups that are information deficient. Therefore, power, strength, and politics relate directly to diversity situation of an organization and can affect negatively on the organizational progress if not well managed.
The Human Resource Department (HRD) can use the article in the integration of the workforce as it covers the diversity issues, variables and provides recommendations reliable integration programmes of diversity in an organization’s workforce. Employees are an important resource to an organization necessitating the need for improving their effectiveness. The article provides research and practices on diversity, the barriers involved, the effectiveness of diversity training interventions and the methods for enhancing a diverse organizational culture/structure.
The article can be divided into three categories, which include the contribution of diversity training on the organizational practices, contributions of how the employees view and present themselves at the workplace, and the contributions of resistance to diversity. Diversity training has been found to improve the organizational commitment and performance, which leads to career satisfaction on the employees’ perspective. HR systems have held on the similarity philosophy for long as it sought to align employees and their groups based on similar social characteristics and those who did not fit the criteria were deemed obsolete (Snell, 2012). With rapid globalization, this philosophy needs to change and diversity integrated in the organizational culture.
- Klein, F. N. (2008). Effect of Performance Support and Training as Performance Interventions. Performance Improvement Quarterly, p.95-113.
The article addresses the problem ofreducing the training costs while improving the organization’s performance. The purpose of the study is to analyze the impact and effectiveness of technology use as a performance intervention on the cost and time of employee training.
The article considers Electronic Performance Support Systems (EPSS) for this analysis. A posttest-only, control group design was applied in the research. The participants were divided into three sections: training-only, EPSS-only and training and EPSS. The variables of the study included the participant’s performance, time for task completion and the training time. Data regarding these variables were collected for each section and analysis conducted using ANOVA (variance was the main analysis basis).
The findings for each section` were recorded. Regarding the participant’s performance (in each section), the mean scores were 46.54 (for the training and EPSS section), 43.92 (for the EPSS-only) and 39.92 (for training-only). Considering the time for task completion, the mean time was 1:29:58 (for training-only), 0:31:32 (for training and EPSS) and 0:26:39 (for EPSS-only). Regarding the training time, the mean time was 0:42:12 (training-only), 0:34:48 (for EPSS-only) and 0:48:12 (for EPSS and training). These results depict the impact of technology use in performance intervention methods.
Training is a performance intervention technique employed by most companies. It is recommended to be implemented at the lowest and shortest time possible, but still effective. The use of technology in performance intervention methods is recommended as it reduces the training time while still attaining higher performance evaluation as compared to the training-only technique.
The article divides the participants into three sections and measures their performance based on the three variables. The article provides reliable research as it uses latest technology (EPSS) for the research and analyses the data using reliable statistical software (ANOVA). It also provides reliable information on the essence of performance interventions and the traditional methods which are compared with the integration of technology in performance intervention methods.
The article can be applied in organization’s training programmes as it provides research of the most cost-effective yet quality performance intervention method. These can be applied in broad procedural tasks like machine repair and manufacturing operations.
Organizations have applied training interventions to improve the employees’ knowledge and their performance (both of the organization and the employees). The training impacts a lot of benefits to the company, but these benefits elude high costs and time. EPSS has emerged to address such pertinent costs thus improving the feasibility of training interventions.
References
David McGuire, M. B. (2010). Diversity Training in Organisations. Journal of European Industrial Training, p.493-505.
Klein, F. N. (2008). Effect of Performance Support and Training as Performance Interventions. Performance Improvement Quarterly, p.95-113.
Snell, S. &. (2012). Principles of human resource management. Mason, Ohio: South-Western.