History of Training and Its Development

HISTORY OF TRAINING AND ITS DEVELOPMENT
It has been a way of life that, the trades of adults have been taught to children to prepare them to face the real world. During the course of time people have changed, become more intricate and along with them, the skills applied and the tools used to do the work have also transformed. In a situation to manage these changes in the production, and substance of operation, job training also evolved
In olden times, the kind of work that people did was mainly unskilled or did not require expert knowledge. Older and experienced members of the group would usually pass their knowledge on to the young ones through direct instructions.
This would usually take place while the job is going on. This was known as on the job training, it’s economical because there is no need for special tool other than what is normally used for the job. Most learning was done through observation.
With the beginning of the Industrial Age, the training of the unskilful underwent a drastic change in which professional education and training developed to replace the out-dated system.
The early 20th century witnessed the growth of training and development as a vocation, resulting in the establishment of training centres.
Important moments in the 1900’s:
• 1906: The National Society of Industrial Education is formed
• 1911: Frederick Taylor publishes “The Principles of Scientific Management”
• 1913: The first cars roll off the Ford Motor Company assembly line
• 1914-1918: World War I
• 1916: Henri Fayol declares that the work of mangers is to plan, organize, coordinate, and control
• The American Management Association was formed in 1923
• The National Association of Foremen in 1925.
With the introduction of the assembly line, there was a tremendous increase with the specificity in training in various required skill-set. The vast production needs of the World War I created a heavy inflow of new workers with little or no industrial experience, thereby compelling a number of training efforts. But eventually manufacturing factories had such a high volume of requirement that, the old-style trainee system was inadequate and it was necessary to institute a factory school to train the workers. Training room by that time had become a customary place of education, and were simply reconstructed in the factories.
• 1933: The Wagner-Peyser Act creates the US Employment Service

Whenever it was needed for a firm to train a large numbers of men on machine operations, formerly used methods have proved to be insufficient. Well experienced trainers were required for such a daunting task.
In 1938 the first train-the-trainer programs for supervisors are developed by the Industry Service of the War Manpower Commission and 1940 the US President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed an executive order calling for the government to provide training for its employees
The training was done with the following kept in mind:
• Training should be done within industry by supervisors who should be trained how to teach.
• Training should be done in groups of nine to eleven workers.
• The job should be analysed before training.
• Break-in time is reduced when training is done on the job.
• When given personal attention in training, the worker develops a feeling of loyalty.

Job instruction training (JIT) was implemented to train plant managers in instructing the new employees in necessary job skills as quickly as possible.
They were followed as:
• Prepare the learner. Put him at ease, explain what the job is, and explain the importance of the job.
• Give a step-by-step presentation of the job. Explain the what, when, how, why and where of the job, then demonstrate them. Have the learner explain each step, then let the learner demonstrate each step.
• Do the performances try-out. Have the learner do the steps under supervision.
• Follow-up. Inspect the work regularly.
Trainers began considering the level of efficacy their training programs had, and were interested in developing them to be more resourceful.
The 1960s witnessed an increasing demand of training methods as the number of corporations using training centres increased by the end of the 60’s.
The Government initiated programs to train young men for industrial jobs, such as the Job Development Program in 1965. These Government programs were aimed intensively at minorities as a group and required corporations to increase their efforts to recruit minorities.
• 1970: The new US Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) mandates safety education and training for workers
• 1973: The International Federation of Training and Development Organizations is formed
In the late 1980s and early 1990’s there was a significant change in the social, economic and political aspect of life, that had an intense effect on the way corporations did business, resulting in the increasing need for effective training.
Increasing governmental regulations also require a greater range of training programs to reflect the greater diversity of employees.
In 1982, the Congress passes the Job Training Partnership Act to provide training and employment assistance to disadvantaged and dislocated workers
In 1993, US president Bill Clinton creates the Office of Work-Based Learning within the Department of Labour
By the end of the 20th century, in the mid of the information technology revolution, where the amount of knowledge required to do a job is increasing and work procedures are changing rapidly, learning the changing procedures and all the information needed to do the job is practically impossible, because what we learn today will be out-dated tomorrow.
These changes involved in the production, the skills the job required, have forced the companies to look for ways to make the training more economical, efficient and effective and ways to minimize the need for it.
Job support is a form of training that does not require the worker to learn, but simply to know where to find the information when they need. It contains written or drawn instructions on how to do a job.
A Job-aid is a well-known type of job support tool that has been in use for decades, which traces its modern roots to the JIT method. It first came out as a printed card that contained simplified instructions for performing a specific task. However, they are not really intended to produce learning, as they substitute it.
Jobs that require quick thinking and action, such as emergency procedures, cannot be relied on job-aid, and must be learned so they may be performed swiftly and efficiently when needed because there may not be time to read and follow the instructions.
The advantages of job support tools are
• Reduced training time
• Low selection of standards
• Improved quality
• Reduction in job errors
• Increased reliability and productivity
• Increased scope and complexity of tasks performed.
In the late 1990s, most of the industry became very much dependent on computers; making knowledge of computer use crucial for almost all the workers. As a consequence, companies launched computer training and development programs to ensure that their employees possessed the required basic computer skills; these were known as CBT (computer based training)
The goal was to develop a step-by-step process that could identify and eliminate elements (usually human errors) that choked the work process. This unique design allows learners to get immediate feedback of their performance. By focusing upon the learners to determine their needs, building empowering tools into their environments, and then building best-of-breed program, can lead to defining the future of training.