Enhancing Quality Of Employees

The Kirkpatrick Model

Discuss how an International NGO responding to a Humanitarian Emergency might use these Unitiatives to Ensure the Quality of its response.  

The way the employees perform in the organization converts to the amount of business that organization will gain (Armstrong and Taylor 2014). The employees need to enhance the quality if work that they deliver to the customers or the clients. The organization should take all the measures so that they will be able to enhance the quality of work that will be delivered by the employees (Brewster, Mayrhofer and Morley 2016). The employer has to keep a check on the performance of the employees and then implement necessary measures so that the performance could be enhanced (Storey 2014). The Kirkpatrick Model is one such model that talks about the training of the employees and the change in the employees in course of action. The model has four stages, the behavior of the employees will vary in each stage, and it is expected that the potential of the employees will also be enhanced.

The write-up will look into the aspects of the Kirkpatrick Model and will discuss the importance of the stages for the development of the employees and enhance the quality of work of the employees. The case of National Australian Bank will be taken into consideration. the bank has not been able to good customer service when there had been technical issues in the organization. the application of the Kirkpatrick Model in such situation and it will be seen whether the model will be helpful in enhancing the quality of the service that is being delivered to the customers.

Enhancing the quality of an organization should be a continuous process (Purce 2014). The Kirkpatrick Model might be helpful in training the employees in the organization. An organization needs to keep a check on the performance of the employees to enhance the quality of the performance of the employees. The organization needs to keep a check on the performance of the employees so that it will be able to get an understanding if the employees need any kind of training so that the quality of the performance could be enhanced. The Kirkpatrick Model talks about the training process that could be imparted to the employees of an organization.

Figure 1: Kirkpatrick Model

(Source: Panchenko 2013)

Reaction

The extent to which the employees comply with the needs of training is covered in the reaction stage (Panchenko 2015). Based on the evaluation of the employees, the employees will engage in the training process and will find the training relevant to the jobs that are assigned in the organization. The employees will get an understanding of the need of the training if they have faced any adverse situation (Jackson, Schuler and Jiang 2014). If they have faced any harsh situation, they will understand the training is necessary. The organization that is thinking of implementing the model can take a small test to see the need of the training for the employees (Konrad, Yang and Maurer 2016).

National Australian Bank Case Study

Learning

The amount of knowledge that the employees acquired through the training process is covered in the learning stage (Agarwal, Pande and Ahuja 2014). The level of skills that have been acquired by the employees is depended on their commitment for their organization and their interest in the training process.

Behavior

The performance of the employees after the training is discussed in the behavior stage (Chen 2013). The things that the employees will learn while in the training process will help them in performing while they return to the job. If they have good amount of interest for the training process and have learned the things well, then the knowledge will be seen in the way the employees will perform in their jobs (Alfes et al. 2013).

Results

The overall performance of the organization will help in understanding the effectiveness of the training that has been imparted to the employees (Woodhouse 2016). The performance of the employees will be judged by the external factors that work outside the organization. The annual reports of the company and the feedback of the customers  will be able to throw light on the fact on whether the model has been effective for training the employees (Riley 2014).

The customers of National Australian Bank complained of poor customer service (Mitchell 2016). The staffs were not able to meet the demands of the customers. The functions of the banks are going online and the demands from the customers are rising at a steep rate. In addition to this, the customers are also looking for better services when they are coming to the bank. They do not like to face long queues when they come to the banks. In addition to this, it is the duty of the bank to give unmatched customer support if they face any issues online. Even if the banks have strong online presence, then also they have to keep a strong customers service department. They have to prompt in their service so that the customers would not have to wait if they are facing any issue online. As a result, the customer service department should have been able to solve the issues of the customers in time without inviting any trouble for them. However, the issues in the National Australian Bank are resulting in various issues for the customers both online and offline. The website of National Australian Bank faced a huge issue when the sites stopped working. The mobile apps stopped working and the customers were unable to do any transaction online. Even when the customers tried to open the websites of the bank from the internet browser, they were unable to do so. Moreover, there was not any person who would solve the queries of the customers. Due to the technological error in the online sites, the customers went to the banks but the staffs were unable to handle the rush of the customers in the banks.

Implementation of the Kirkpatrick Model

The Kirkpatrick Model should have been implemented in the organization that would have helped the employees to prepare them for any difficult situation. The employees were not ready for any adverse situation and hence they were not able to handle the customers during the time of an emergency (Aswathappa 2013). The Kirkpatrick Model would have been able to make the employees prepare for the adverse situations.

If the Kirkpatrick Model is implemented in the National Australian Bank, the organization would not face any issue in the reaction stage.  The employees have already faced the issues of mismanagement while the website went down. They could not handle the customers in the banks. If the employees were given the training, they would be able to handle the situation, when there is any kind of emergency in the organization. As they have already failed to handle the situation, there would not be a resistance from the part of the employees (Armstrong and Taylor 2014). They would like to comply with the needs of the training so that they are able to enhance their quality if work and able to handle the crises in a better manner. As a result, the reaction stage would not be difficult for the organization. The employees will be already convinced that there is a need for the training (Brewster, Mayrhofer and Morley 2016).  The learning process will help them to get an idea about the way crisis should be handled in the organization. As the online sites were not working, the customer came to the banks. As a result, the footfall of the customers will be more than the normal days they have to divide the works in such a manner so that they could combat to the issues of the customers. They have to make their work faster and they have to cooperate with each other so that they would be able to handle the situation in a better manner (Storey 2014). They do not have the knowledge to handle crisis and they should be taught about the crisis. The learning process will help the employees to serve the customers in a better manner. The behavior of the employees of the organization will be judged in the behavior stage. This situation may not be real and will be made by the organization (Purce 2014). It is up to the senior managers of the organization to test whether the employees have been able to learn the way to handle the crisis. The senior managers should implement a situation that is not real but will help in understanding the level of knowledge of the employees (Jackson, Schuler and Jiang 2014). The senior managers can tell the employees about a situation of emergency that has arisen in the organization. They will create mock customer who could come to the banks and the employees will have to solve their issues in some hours. The employees will not be told about the customers and that they are mock and not real customers (Konrad, Yang and Maurer 2016). In this way, they will be able to learn to tackle the situations better and will be able to handle tough situations better in future. The overall performance of the banks will tell whether the employee have been able to gain the knowledge properly and will show the result for the training process. The customers will be the best people to talk about the quality of the service will be giving to the customers who are coming to the bank (Alfes et al. 2013). They will be able to give proper and correct feedback about the functions of the employees. If they are satisfied with the way the employee are performing in the organization (Riley 2014). The quality of the services of the employees will be judged by the promptness in delivering the work, the time take to deliver the work and the quality of the work delivered by the employees in the organization (Aswathappa 2013). The customers will also be asked to compare between the service that has been delivered in the past with the banks and the changes that they might have seen in the present. If they feel that there is any change in the service in a positive manner then it can be said that the model has been helpful in enhancing the performance of the employees (Armstrong and Taylor 2014). The feedback will throw light on the affect of the model on enhancing the quality of the services of the banks (Brewster, Mayrhofer and Morley 2016).

Conclusion

After going through the Kirkpatrick Model and the case study of the National Australian Bank, it can be concluded that training is necessary for enhancing the quality of the performance of the organization. The model consists of four stages, reaction, learning, behavior and result. the Kirkpatrick Model mainly talks about the stages of training and the way the employees will behave once they will be given the training. It has been found that once the employees will understand the need of the training, they will learn more and the quality of the performance of the employees will be enhanced accordingly.

The National Australian Bank  has faced issues when the online website of the bank has stopped working. The customers faced huge issues as they were unable to carry out the transactions. The tried to carry out the work from the banks but the  employees were not able to handle the rush. The Kirkpatrick Model can be implemented in this situation so that quality of the performance of the employees could be enhanced. In this situation, it will be easier for the organization as the employees will know the need of training. The customers will be the best people to tell the result of the training process. They will also be able to tell whether the employees have been able to learn the things properly.

References

Agarwal, N., Pande, N. and Ahuja, V., 2014. Expanding the Kirkpatrick evaluation model-towards more efficient training in the IT sector. International Journal of Human Capital and Information Technology Professionals (IJHCITP), 5(4), pp.19-34.

Alfes, K., Shantz, A.D., Truss, C. and Soane, E.C., 2013. The link between perceived human resource management practices, engagement and employee behaviour: a moderated mediation model. The international journal of human resource management, 24(2), pp.330-351.

Armstrong, M. and Taylor, S., 2014. Armstrong's handbook of human resource management practice. Kogan Page Publishers.

Aswathappa, K., 2013. Human resource management: Text and cases. Tata McGraw-Hill Education.

Brewster, C., Mayrhofer, W. and Morley, M. eds., 2016. New Challenges for European Resource Management. Springer.

Chen, W.K., 2013. Disorder chaos in the Sherrington–Kirkpatrick model with external field. The Annals of Probability, 41(5), pp.3345-3391.

Jackson, S.E., Schuler, R.S. and Jiang, K., 2014. An aspirational framework for strategic human resource management. The Academy of Management Annals, 8(1), pp.1-56.

Konrad, A.M., Yang, Y. and Maurer, C.C., 2016. Antecedents and outcomes of diversity and equality management systems: An integrated institutional agency and strategic human resource management approach. Human Resource Management, 55(1), pp.83-107.

Mitchell, G. 2016. National Australia Bank apologises to customers amid online banking outage. [online] The Sydney Morning Herald. Available at: https://www.smh.com.au/business/banking-and-finance/national-australia-bank-apologises-to-customers-amid-online-banking-outage-20161004-gruvvt.html [Accessed 27 Apr. 2017].

Panchenko, D., 2013. The Sherrington-Kirkpatrick model. Springer Science & Business Media.

Panchenko, D., 2015. The free energy in a multi-species Sherrington–Kirkpatrick mo

Purce, J., 2014. The impact of corporate strategy on human resource management. New Perspectives on Human Resource Management (Routledge Revivals), 67.

Riley, M., 2014. Human resource management in the hospitality and tourism industry. Routledge.

Storey, J., 2014. New Perspectives on Human Resource Management (Routledge Revivals). Routledge.

Woodhouse, M., 2016. An Analysis of Evaluation Practices of Two Training Programs in the Healthcare Sector Using the New World Kirkpatrick Model.