Case:

Determining Training Needs at Summit Credit Union

Summit Credit Union, located in Madison and Milwaukee, Wisconsin, is a small company with 366 employees. A merger in 2015 doubled the size of the company and made it necessary to build a new corporate culture. Summit's mission is to improve credit members' financial lives to help them achieve their dreams. For example, in 2013 Summit members saved over $13 million based on higher savings rates, lower loan rates, and lowerfees compared to for-profit banking institutions in Wisconsin. Summit has invested in creating a world-class learning function, which includes a team of seven professionals who are able to design and deliver instructor-led training as well as e-learning. Summit has shifted away from generic off-the-shelf training to develop online and face-to-face programs customized to employee needs and the company's goals and initiatives. For example, the learning function is expected to play a key role in dealing with business issues such as efficiency, loan growth, and increased sales. All learning staff members are expected to contribute to new company initiatives, such as new products and services, systems, or regulations. Summit has recently identified a problem with its new lenders. They were starting to perform their jobs without the necessary skills, information, and knowledge that they needed. One potential reason for this is how the lending training curriculum is organized. New lenders attend a course on different types of loans and the lending system, start their jobs, and then later return for a course on lending guidelines, underwriting, and sales skills

Identify at least two method(s) of training you would use to train the personnel, and why. (Consider both traditional and technology-based methods.)

 

Effective methods need to be adopted in training the personnel to ensure that the underlying problems are resolved. The most effective training methods include the following:

Job Rotation training method

The organization of the lending training program creates issues with the employees. The employees start their job after only a shallow training program. This means that they lack the necessary skills to serve customers and enhance the goals of the firm. Job rotation requires that employees are transferred from one job to another (Padula, et al, 2017). One of the expectations is that the employees can promote the different needs of the firm including contributing on better regulations, systems, new products and services. The organization is huge and therefore has a vast of services and products to offer. A better understanding of the respective needs and loopholes that the organization has can only be attained when employees learn on the job. At one time, an employee needs to be posted to the lending section. At another time, the same employee needs to be posted to the sales function. Employees will learn first-hand the best way to enhance better productivity in the various sections. The employees will therefore be all round and have many ideas on how best to adopt better systems and regulations. Job rotation training will also enable the employees support each other when need arises.

Web-based training method

Web-based training requires that the employees are trained online through a web. From the case, one understands that summit credit unions is huge based on the number of employees it has. The credit union keeps on growing as it has numbered the number of employees recently. The ultimate aim of the firm is to ensure that the credit life of the lenders is enhanced. This means that there are specific skills that ought to be induced in the employees at the same time. Web-based training is effective as it allows the trainer to train the many employees from a single location. Time and money are saved in the training process while content is delivered effectively (Jackson et al, 2018). The training method also allows the trainer and the trainees to have a high level of engagement. The close engagement allows the trainer to determine the rate of retention among the employees. The training method is also less judgmental on the employees and highly motivating. The virtual training ensures that all the employees are trained with limited resources and efforts. Tracking the progress of the training is easy as it is recorded electronically. In the end, employees will be in a position to learn more and have enough time to implement the same in the workplace.