Effectiveness of the training and development function: a Tanzanian case study.

• Author: Dominic, Theresia

1. INTRODUCTION

   One of the major factors hindering the growth of African economies and organizations is the lack of capacity to carry out tasks that are necessary for such growth. It is therefore essential to engage in capacity building as a component of development. This suggests the importance of training and development. Given this importance, many African countries have launched initiatives to training employees in public sector organizations. These initiatives have been supported by the donor community which has similar views to those expressed in a World Bank Long-Term Perspective Study of Africa that identified capacity building as vital to the continent's growth and development. Thus, various policies on training and development have been developed and large amounts of money spent on them. An important issue, given such importance and expenditure, is to assess the effectiveness of training and development.

   In 1989 the Government of Tanzania requested the donor community to provide assistance in carrying out a civil service reform programme. The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) responded positively through the project "Strengthening Management in the Public Sector' which was executed directly by the Government. One of the objectives was to study and recommend a National Training Policy and conduct training for those civil servants whom the government retained in its service to fulfill its stated role (UNDP, 2005). This was designed to assist civil servants in updating their skills so as to make them more efficient, effective and productive. The need to strengthen the public sector was due to identified problems such as overstaffing, declines in real wages, non-transparent pay systems, suboptimal organisation and management of public service functions and limited capacity in skills and administrative technologies. All these changes or reforms required massive training of management and administrative staff in the public sector. Unfortunately they were not preceded by planned, concerted efforts to ensure that the available personnel became adequately trained and developed in order to assume more complex responsibilities and to increase their efficiency and effectiveness in their job performance (Fjeldstad, et al., 2002). Until the early 1990's most parastatals mainly depended on external sponsorships for training their executives. However due to economic and budgetary constraints the sponsored trainings were inadequate. Also, the Tanzanian government initiated programs which did not address themselves concretely to a specific training need of public enterprises (United Republic of Tanzania (URT), 2004). This indicates that there is no comprehensive policy to guide and design appropriate training programme. Consequently there has been uncoordinated, fragmented and ad-hoc approach to training and utilization of human and financial resources resulting in poor service delivery to the public. In addition, there was weak team- working among managers, which has largely caused lack of understanding of the requirement and the pressures to maintain momentum in their own activities (Braathen, et al., 2005).

   Gupta (2007) considered the following as characteristics of an ideal training and development programme. First, it should be designed with clear scope and objectives. Thus, a training needs assessment (TNA) exercise should be conducted. Second, it should have proper reinforcements to continuously improve the performance capability of an individual employee: Third, it should be role-specific and involve practice; it helps employees do their present jobs better and skills that are practiced often are better learned and less easily forgotten. Fourth, an effective T&D function should be carefully planned in terms of reading materials, learning duration, and instructors...