Generally, this study sought to examine the training and development impact on employees’ performance in the administrative cadre of the PMO in The Gambia.
The study investigated whether the trainings were meeting the training needs of administrative officers in the administrative cadre and whether there had been any improvement in their skills and attitudes. The study also investigated whether training and development had made any significant changes to the behaviours of the officers’ actual job performance and the impact of such performance on PMO and the Ministries in terms of service-delivery. The findings indicated that the trainees had undergone various training and development programmes. These training programmes included the Civil Service induction training programme, performance and results-oriented management, human resource planning and development, ICT on data analysis using the simple payroll system, public policy analysis, formulation and Implementation, and job evaluation, analysis and design programme.
This chapter basically begins by giving detailed conclusions in an attempt to provide answers to the research purpose, which involves the role of the training and development in meeting administrative officers’ training needs, improvement of their skills and attitude, behaviour changes to their actual job performance as well as overall service-delivery in their offices at both the PMO and Ministries. This is followed by recommendations in the form of suggestions in line with the conclusions.
Conclusions
This section presents the conclusions in line with the themes for the purpose of easy understanding of details by readers. All the themes show the real situation of the impact of the PMO training and development on the administrative cadre as follows:
T & D Programmes Meeting the Administrative Officers’ Training Needs The data analysis revealed that the trainees’ training needs were basically met. All the trainees expressed their need for the trainings they had attended as a result of their importance for effective performance of their work and career development endeavours. All the training programmes they underwent except the financial forecasting programme reported by one respondent are within the scope of study stipulated in the scheme of service. Even the
trainee who underwent the financial forecasting programme reported her training needs being met and after all, she did the required Civil Service induction programme. This suggests that the administrative officers’ training needs were met. They, therefore, responded positively to the trainings and gained significant skills. They were also motivated both in terms of financial reward and the training satisfaction they gained in the process. These responses were confirmed by both the heads of departments and senior management officers, who are the training coordinators and were further in line with the literature and documents’ review.
Improvement of Administrative Officers’ Skills and Attitudes
All the trainees expressed having developed significant skills, which helped them become more professional in their work, performance of their daily-routine administrative assignments and in identifying their various potentials, especially as organizational development expert as one of them, for example, mentioned (TMA-1-Q05-1). They became more professional in their work in the sense that they worked on official requests in expertise, timely manner and with more commitment (SFA-3-Q08-1). They also met qualifications for upward mobility, whereby a cadet administrative officer could rise through the ranks up to the level of a permanent secretary within a reasonable period of time as mentioned by the senior management officers and confirmed by the scheme of service for the administrative cadre. On the whole, the training and development did improve administrative officers’ skills and attitude towards the training programmes and their jobs as well.
Behaviour Change in Administrative Officers’ Actual Job Performance The trainee at the Ministry of Tourism reported that her trainings were not related to the job she was currently doing and lack of needed institutional support, and this problem seems to have been confirmed by the response from a head of department at the Office of the Vice President, for reporting that the trainings the trainee at her Ministry underwent was not related to his job. This suggests that PMO should apply stronger measures including the establishment of an effective performance management system to ensure relevance of its training and development programmes, despite reports by the senior management officers that adequate measures in the form of the established training committee and training policy were taken to ensure training relevance. An explanation for the problem could be that trainees change their fields of study when they travel abroad for studies, which is another area PMO should look into. Nonetheless, majority of responses revealed training and development
relevance, provision of supportive working environment, and significant behaviour changes on actual job performance of trainees or administrative officers in the sense that they performed their job faster and more effectively than before they underwent the trainings. This seems to have been supported by the same above-mentioned head of department when she added, “…Anyway, the officer does his work with high maturity and professionalism in the issuing of travelling clearance to travelling civil servants different from the time he was newly appointed and this is great contribution to the office” (HAA-2-Q06-2). An explanation for the head of department’s inconsistency could either be the result of her trainee’s utilization of his work experience in the administrative cadre to demonstrate significant job behaviour changes or simply the long-term effects of the training and development.
Contributions of T & D Programmes to Service-delivery of PMO and the Ministries
The data analysis revealed timely individual service-delivery and some effective office or institutional performance in terms of overall service-delivery for both PMO and the Ministries. The surprising part of it, is that even the trainee at the Ministry of Tourism who complained of irrelevance of trainings, reported contributing positively to her Ministry’s overall service-delivery, for example, in the processing of personnel issues with PMO and the Ministry’s facilitation of cooperation between The Gambia Tourism Sector and Katara Hospitality of Qatar’s endeavour to invest in developing tourist resort in the country when she stated, “…it better enhances my knowledge on how to relate to issues tactfully and professionally in order to achieve timely results…” (TNA-1-Q09-1). This was confirmed by her head of department (HKA-2-Q07-1). The explanation for the trainee’s inconsistency could either be that she did not want to downgrade her potentials or she did not like the Ministry she was posted to. It could also either be that the trainings may have seemed irrelevant to her at the time, but could be beneficial in the long-term especially to her Ministry as they had already started realizing the benefits or she might have made good use of her past work experience as well. On the whole, service-delivery of both PMO and the Ministries were enhanced in terms of timely individual delivery of services, which undoubtedly contributed a great deal, to some effective overall service-delivery for both institutions in line with majority of responses from the respondents and the literature and documents’ review as elaborated above in the findings.
The findings of this study are consistent with those of Sahin (2006) and the literature review. That is, despite the short-comings that have been identified, the trainees, heads of departments at the Ministries and the senior management officers of PMO found the training and development impact to be positive. Trainees need to enjoy and have good thoughts and feelings about the training programmes. Trainees at the end of the training programmes need to be certain that the learning objectives for the trainings were met and as a result of the learning, their ways of working and dealing with certain issues would change. Due to these changes in behaviour, participants would be more effective at their jobs, which in turn, would lead to positive outcomes for their organizations (Siniscalchi, Beale, & Fortuna, 2008).
Implications
The findings indicate the importance of the establishment of an effective performance management system in any organization and at the PMO in particular. The instrument does not only help in the establishment of tangible training and performance results, but also aid training providers identify needed areas for training. This reduces to a large extent, the occurrence of training and development irrelevance, if not stopped. Establishment of the instrument is therefore, the way forward for PMO training and development.
Motivation of trainees is vital to the success of any training and development programme, which has been explicitly shown in this study. Trainees reported having been intrinsically and extrinsically motivated. This may have either resulted or contributed to their learning and some eventual effective job performance according to majority of responses and the documents’ review. Trainees need to enjoy and have satisfaction about the programmes, which would help them achieve the learning objectives at the end of the trainings. This would further enable them improve their performance at work (Siniscalchi, Beale, & Fortuna, 2008).
One of the trainees at the Ministries complained of training irrelevance, yet she was reported to have performed well and contributed in some way to the overall performance of her office.
She earlier reported having been motivated by the trainings, so it could also be argued that her performance could be attributed to that motivation in addition to probably some amount of self-motivation.
The findings of this research explain the reason why Kirkpatrick’s four-level training evaluation model is widely utilized in training programmes’ impact assessment. It provides a
comprehensive framework for all issues related to the assessment of on-the-job performance of trainees and also allows the evaluator to examine the training programmes in all dimensions, despite the very broad nature of the model.
Suggestions
In this section, some suggestions have been provided for PMO including the senior management officers, who are the providers as well as beneficiaries of the training and development, Ministries, and trainees based on the findings and conclusions that have been made in this study with the intention of enhancing the situation of training and development in the Civil Service as a whole. Some of these suggestions are also in line with those offered by the heads of departments, who are supervisors to the trainees in the Ministries. The suggestions are presented below.
For PMO
1. PMO should develop an annual calendar of training programmes that administrative officers should undergo. With this, they could screen officers, who should attend these trainings. This calendar would identify the specific training programmes officers should undergo and the specific time they will be sent to do them. This will give officers more skills particularly in report writing, minute writing, and skills in cabinet information paper. All these are skills that administrative officers should possess, before reaching top administrative positions. The system should be made more organized than it is at the moment. This would even help make training programmes more relevant as administrative officers would be monitored in terms of the programmes they undergo.
2. PMO should develop an effective performance management system as indicated by some of the respondents. The fundamental goal is to promote and improve employee performance. It is a continuous process where managers and employees work together to plan, monitor and review an employee’s work objectives and his or her overall contribution to the organization. An effective performance management system should be job-specific, covering a broad range of jobs and align with the organization’s strategic direction and culture, and include a collaborative process for setting goals and reviewing performance based on two-way communication between
the employee and manager. It also includes both positive feedback for a job well done and constructive feedback when improvement is needed and provides training and development opportunities for improving performance. All these could be beneficial to PMO in terms of providing a basis for upward mobility of administrative officers.
It will further help in the identification of areas for training and thus, ensures training relevance at all times. This is much more reliable than contracting training needs assessments to consulting firms and discussions with employees, the former of which is not sustainable at all.
3. Training impact assessment should be conducted periodically to get feedback on the trainings that are offered. It has been sufficiently recognized that evaluating impact does not only help develop a training programme, but also has a therapeutic value for ex-trainees and is an effective form of follow-up. The evaluation process itself can intensify and increase the extent of training and development impact and therefore, should be an integral part of any training and development package (Gunesekera, 1989).
4. PMO needs to be doing more routine visits to the Ministries in a bid to have first-hand information about the situation of administrative officers or trainees, who are posted there. This will update them on all the work activities that the officers are engaged in and that will further help them when planning or deciding the exact training programmes officers need to do their job effectively. Misunderstanding between PMO personnel and administrative officers in the Ministries and training irrelevance will also be minimized.
For Ministries
1. Heads of departments should help in the creation of supportive working environments to enable trainees perform to expectation. Acquiring the relevant skills is not enough for effective job performance, but the working environments also have to be favourable in terms of providing administrative officers with the needed material resources or encouragement for transfer of training to take place. Considerable evidence suggests that a substantial part of organizations’ investment in training is often wasted due to poor learning transfer. If there is no transfer of training on the job, then training is not effective. Experts suggest limited opportunity to apply new skills
and unsupportive organizational climate as among the common reasons why the transfer process fails (Cheeseman, 1994).
2. As discussed at the behaviour level, there is the need for heads of departments to open their doors to all employees posted to their Ministries in a bid to encourage dialogue between them and those employees without segregation. This would help them know their subordinates’ problems and either counsel them or take other corrective measures to address the situation for effective job performance and employee retention.
For Trainees
1. The trainees should also endeavour to put into practice their newly acquired skills because if the skills are not applied, then the trainings have no use and will be a big waste on the already insufficient training funds. Trainees should therefore, be self-motivated in addition to other forms of motivation received. One should always endeavour to return what has been invested in oneself. Cheeseman (1994) further mentions that a substantial part of organizations’ investment in training is often wasted due to poor learning transfer, among the causes of which are trainees’ low morale and resistance to change in the workplace.
2. Trainees should also endeavour to study the exact training programmes that are relevant to their work, especially when they travel abroad for studies. They should not take advantage of the fact that they are far away from home and therefore, deviate from their course of study for personal reasons.
For Future Research
This study has some implications for further research because of thedifficulties related to the training and development impact assessment. These problems may range from unforeseen circumstances such as non-existence of a performance management system as observed at the PMO, lack of effective models for training and development impact assessment, limited respondents as a result of participants refusing to participate in studies, scarcity of assessment studies that have been conducted to the difficulties involved in
assessing the impact of training programmes in general. Two suggestions for future research are provided as follows:
1. One suggestion for future research is to further explore this study’s topic with the adoption of the triangulation data collection method as was initially intended in this research, probably with the inclusion of another set of participants like civil servants in other cadres, who are served by both PMO and the Ministries. These civil servants’
requests such as promotions, appointments, and longevity, among others, are also processed by administrative officers. This may help gain a more outsider opinion on the quality of service-delivery different from those reported by the insiders like participants of the current study. Also, with the establishment of an effective performance management system in place other than the current reportedly unreliable performance appraisal system, more tangible results of training initiatives could probably be collected.
2. Another suggestion for future research is on the topic of attrition in the Civil Service.
One issue that has been ringing in the mind of the researcher is why more people have been requesting for trainings, despite the number of officers being trained. In this regard, an interesting discovery was made during the documents’ review and that was loss of valuable officers usually at top positions in the Civil Service after receiving their trainings. This problem has been dilated on, in chapter four in the other findings section.
The results of this research may not be generalized because of the delimitation and limitations of the study. The research was mainly focused on training and development programmes of the PMO in The Gambia. One of the limitations is that a selected participant as a trainee at the Office of the Vice President did not respond to the interview. He kept promising and giving the researcher appointments without honouring them and finally backed down from the research at the last moment. This limited the number of subjects for the study.
Another very crucial limitation is related to the nature of the data collection method. This research intended to adopt the triangulation data collection method, which involves interviews, documents’ review, and direct observation of participants at work in order to collect more in-depth pieces of information. Unfortunately, the trainees’ performances,
particularly for the behaviour and results levels of the study were not able to be wholly directly observed but indirect measures were used for lack of the opportunity to do so. That is, the perceptions of participants together with some documents’ review were taken as a basis for data related to performances or impact assessment. Also, getting enough administrative officers to participate in the study was difficult and the respondents were not very willing to be more specific in their responses probably for fear of being quoted, after having been already assured of confidentiality. Furthermore, the non-existence of any employee performance record-related documents due to the non-existence of an effective performance
particularly for the behaviour and results levels of the study were not able to be wholly directly observed but indirect measures were used for lack of the opportunity to do so. That is, the perceptions of participants together with some documents’ review were taken as a basis for data related to performances or impact assessment. Also, getting enough administrative officers to participate in the study was difficult and the respondents were not very willing to be more specific in their responses probably for fear of being quoted, after having been already assured of confidentiality. Furthermore, the non-existence of any employee performance record-related documents due to the non-existence of an effective performance