case study on the job training

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NCEE Brief No. 9, August 1990

On-the-Job Training: A Case Study

Sylvia Scribner and Patricia Sachs

Why study on-the-job training? Although this educational form is widespread, and acknowledged as significant, little is known about the whys and hows of it. Our study in a stockroom was an initial effort to make visible to research and educational communities an actual instance of on-the-job training. We wanted to go beyond general description and make available a detailed analysis of training and learning processes as they occur in the day-to-day working environment: How does the workplace support such learning? What devices do worker-trainers use to help newcomers acquire the knowledge and skills the job requires? How is training fitted into ongoing work activities?

Our effort to unpackage the "black box" of workplace training had broader objectives as well. Educational research has traditionally focused on the schools. Most of what we know about teaching and learning processes derives from studies in academic classrooms. A decade of interdisciplinary research on everyday cognition, however, demonstrates that school-based learning, and learning in practical settings, have significant discontinuities. We can no longer assume that what we discover about learning in schools is sufficient for a theory of human learning. Nor can we make substantial progress toward improving school effectiveness without a better grasp of what makes school a special context for education with its particular strengths and problems. For these reasons, we need to enlarge our understanding of what out-of-school teaching and learning actually entail and how its characteristics compare with school-based learning activities.

Work and Training: One Stream of Behavior, Two Activity Systems

A first step in this enterprise is to break out of the catch-all phrase that lumps all non-school-based learning into one category. Learning may be related to practical activities in a number of different ways that need to be identified and studied. Our case study of on-the-job training concentrates on one such configuration—education embedded in ongoing work activities. The key work here is "embedded." School-based research has fostered a conception of learning as an activity separate from other life activities. But as soon as we enter the workplace, we find that this conception does not hold: the defining feature of on-the-job training is that teaching-and-learning are occurring simultaneously with getting-the-job-done, with working. Training occurs in the course of working. Analytically, two activity systems are in progress but empirically there is only one stream of behavior to observe. Should these behaviors be described as "working" or "training?"

We adopt an analytic stance. We consider stockroom work and stockroom training to represent two different activity systems. Throughout the study, we attempted to capture the interplay of these two activities as they unfolded in the busy work environment.

On-the-Job Training

This case study of on-the-job training—the only one of its kind—was conducted in a stockroom at an electronics manufacturing plant that employs 500 people. The company is a world-class manufacturer of radio frequency connectors, many custom-made for military and civilian uses. Just before our research, the company installed a database computer system, known as Manufacturing Resource Planning or MRP, that was designed to monitor inventory levels and provide a measure of control over production processes. The great variety of items made by the company—20,000 component parts assembled into about 8,000 finished goods—adds up to a significant inventory to manage. The MRP program was designed to keep track of this inventory.

Except for the highest ranks of stockroom material handlers, the company's official job descriptions treat the stockroom positions essentially as that of unskilled labor. Wage rates and hiring practices follow accordingly. A contradiction arises, however, between these practices and the intellectual demands of the work which have increased with the new MRP system.

MRP maintains an electronic record of all transactions made in the stockroom. These transactions are significant to the functioning of the company; based on the data fed into it, the system recommends purchases for future production needs and prepares a production schedule. The effects, therefore, of inaccurate counting, computing, or recording in the stockroom can be severe, with immediate consequences for the production process and with compounded consequences as incorrect data moves through the system.

Stockroom employees are engaged in a variety of tasks requiring literacy and math skills as a part of their routine work. In addition, they need to be continually alert to discrepancies between stockroom records and computer data. They need to "find" problems and, in order to troubleshoot them, they need to understand how the computer thinks as well as how stockroom procedures work.

The company officially recognizes that new hires need training, and training is an explicit category of activity within the stockroom. Experienced workers are not simply told to keep an eye on or work alongside of new workers, but are explicitly told to "train" them. Training, however, is not included in workers' job descriptions, and they do not get paid extra for it. In six months of intense observations, the most striking occurrence was that within a brief period of ten weeks, the bulk of the training responsibility passed to brand-new trainees, three of whom had not yet completed their own probationary periods.

Various trainers, in fact, appeared less propelled by considerations of what the new worker needed as by how training could be managed within the ongoing workload of the stockroom. Practical considerations, such as who was around or how pressing the workload was, or how many workers were available, seemed to dictate training choices. For example, during our period of observations, all experienced workers (six, when our study began) either left or were transferred out of the stockroom. As a result, the distance between trainer and trainee narrowed in practice to a point where the placement of individual workers in one category or the other became almost arbitrary. Reciprocal teaching—each one helping the other with what he or she knew best—characterized the stockroom training more aptly than an expert-novice model.

It should come as no surprise that supervisors and senior people have constructed their own assumptions and "theories" of what training should look like. None of these has been incorporated in an explicit training plan. These training assumptions are an unrecorded form of cultural knowledge. Nonetheless, these views about training are firmly grounded in the company's history and practice, and some workers are reflective and explicit about how training "is supposed to be" and bring these views into play when they train. The common core of consensual opinion involves general principles: training revolves around work, is conducted by experienced workers, and should continue for a period of more or less two weeks. Variations involve the exact nature of the work, what should transpire after the core period of training, and how to define good training.

Training begins as soon as the new worker walks into the stockroom. When it ends is not so clear-cut. The probationary period for the job is 60 days, but no one suggested that training covered that entire time. Most supervisors cited "two weeks" as the training period, the cutoff apparently being set at the boundary of a new worker's need to "work with another" or ability to "work alone." Yet two weeks is not set in stone. Even after this period of time, however, a stock handler is not considered fully expert. It may take up to two years, according to one manager, until a stockroom worker is "fine-tuned." Clearly, the period of learning far outstrips the period of training.

Since training proceeds in the absence of any written description, how it is carried out depends crucially on the background and views of the individuals who act as trainers. Supervisors do not engage in training stockroom workers, and no one in the stockroom carries even an auxiliary title of "trainer." It is apparent also that the two supervisors with authority to make decisions about training approach the task from different vantage points: one taking the point of view of what management needs in an end product; the other taking the point of view of the learner's requirements.

The company has no special training materials, and no employee alluded to a need for such materials. The company has no manuals describing principles of inventory or stockroom procedures, nor are instruction sheets available to new workers on topics such as how to use the computer. New workers are not given a tour of the plant.

Although the stockroom has four departments—shipping, receiving, dispatch, and component—training is conducted within the department to which a new worker is assigned. Some senior people in the stockroom believe that this practice should be abandoned in favor of cross-training in the four departments. One supervisor intimated that a higher management decision was needed to implement this change. It is unclear with whom this responsibility rested, but the fact that the supervisor did not put it into effect suggests that, appearances notwithstanding, some general "structure of training" is operative in the plant as a whole and kept in place by "higher authority."

On-the-job training, in this company's stockroom, is an activity subsidiary to work and a dynamic construction into which many factors enter. These factors include supervisors' views of how to train and how much leeway to allow trainers; which level of management is charged with decision-making and in position to implement its "theory" of training; the composition, turnover rate, and workload of the workforce; and background factors such as union policies and established personnel practices. What does not happen, however, is that a training "plan" is put into operation. Training "takes shape" as supervisors make decisions on the basis of historical practice, personal theories, and pragmatic constraints.

At this company, neither supervisors' theories of training, nor the training that actually takes shape reflect top management's views of the importance of intellectual understanding of modern forms of inventory control. Training, with one seemingly accidental exception, is assimilated into ongoing work practices, with the consequence that trainees are primarily exposed to routine, "normal" work events and not explicitly prepared for problem-solving in the context of the data management system.

Social Aspects of Training and Working

Trainer-trainee units, which we called "training dyads" (pairs), are not isolated from wider stockroom activities but interact continually with others in the workplace. The wider community of workers does not go out of its way to lend a hand in training. Workers who approach the training dyad talk to the trainer rather than the learner. Production takes priority over training. Whenever a problem arises, the trainer walks away from the learner and becomes involved in discussions with others about it, resuming his primary function as worker. Trainees are exposed to the nonroutine, problematic aspects of the work through such episodes. Clearly, the social relations of work are not reorganized to accommodate training. Instead, training is embedded in the preexisting system.

Although the learner is often a silent party in these interactions with others in the stockroom, he or she usually observes them. Since these interactions concern work, the learner is exposed to pedagogically rich material. These troubleshooting sessions and discussions of glitches and problems bring the learners into contact with the more intellectually challenging aspects of stockroom work as well as with its collaborative modes of problem-solving.

The complexity of the industrial setting requires workers to operate within a number of domains of knowledge and practice. While the explicit training addresses some of these domains, the larger social world through which information flows furnishes an unplanned yet crucial way for workers to learn to be workers and to master the nonroutine aspects of their jobs.

Differences Between Work During Training and Experienced Work

One of our major findings is that the anatomy of work during training is strikingly different from experienced work. For experienced workers in this stockroom, the whole activity of receiving (weighing, counting, locating, and putting parts into stock) is the principle that organizes the work. In training, on the other hand, each part functions as the object around which the work is organized, and actions are taken sequentially.

Why did all trainers hit upon the same basic method of training in spite of their differences in personal history and stockroom experience? These trainers were not trained to train, and supervisory personnel never commented on the fact that the work is reorganized for training. One possible explanation is that organizing the work around a whole event sequence—handling a part from start to finish—displays for the learner the functional utility, the meaning of each component action.

It may be that the form of reorganization found here is found in other occupations or workplaces where the actual content of production is different. Whether this is the case or not, our hunch is that reorganization of work for training purposes follows certain orderly forms. To the extent that work constitutes the greater part of the curriculum of on-the-job training, knowledge about these forms and their consequences is important for improving the effectiveness of learning in both workplaces and schools.

Communicative Aspects of Training

Stockroom work has a heavy linguistic component. Trainers are talking as well as working, and so are learners. In contrast to studies of the classroom, research on language in terms of its cognitive as well as social functions is still in its infancy. Because research on the educative role of language in the workplace is just beginning, theoretical foundations are weak. Accordingly, we concentrate our analysis on generating questions about how language functions in on-the-job training.

In the first hours of on-the-job training, trainers talk less in conversational exchanges than they do in stretches of monologue. When exchanges occur, trainers usually initiate them; learners seldom ask the trainers questions or make assertions. Trainers do not use the classic "teacher" model of testing trainees to find out what they know by asking questions and evaluating the answers. Instead, their talk is sprinkled with interjections such as "OK?" and "Right?", and these give learners the opportunity to feed back their understanding. These exchanges seem also to serve the purpose of maintaining contact between the two. Conversations during this initial training period are initiated by the trainer primarily to carry out training goals rather than to accomplish the work.

By far the greatest amount of talk in the training process is provided by the trainer, outside of conversational exchanges. The principal characteristic of this kind of trainer talk, as distinguished from classroom teacher talk, is that it is going on in the context of the activity that it concerns. In presenting a math lesson, a teacher is expounding math but is not at the same time practicing it. In the stockroom, however, the trainer is involving the learner in carrying out work tasks. To the extent that trainer talk explains the work and imparts knowledge about it, exposition and practice, teaching and doing, occur in the same setting among the same participants.

It is an oversimplification to think of "learning by doing" as in some way opposed to "learning by listening and talking." Trainers incorporate talk into the training process and take seriously the responsibility for explaining the work as they do it. Since trainers do not segregate talk about the stockroom from the activity of actually engaging in the work, it may not be useful to think of verbal exposition and practical experience as substitutes for one another. Although it is common in anthropological studies to pose "observation" or "experience" against "talk," as the primary way of learning in nonschool settings, it is unclear how one would disentangle these in stockroom training. Our findings point to the need for a closer look at the mechanisms of teaching and learning in the workplace in all their complex relationships.

On-the-job training is of theoretical significance because it represents a form of education that stands in sharp contrast to schooling. Learning in school is divorced from practice. On-the-job training programs offer an array of formats for relating learning to practice that may very well be useful in settings other than the workplace. In probing teaching and learning when they are embedded in work, we are challenged to broaden our conceptions of the kind of social processes and activities that constitute education.

We have arrived at certain characterizations of stockroom training that raise general questions about on-the-job training and hint at possible improvements.

First, although top management emphasized the higher skills required by the new computer system, they did not modify the company's training practices. Workers were expected to take on the new responsibilities without being specifically trained for them. Yet the training that "took shape" enables new workers to stay on the job and assume increased responsibilities. Stockroom training pragmatically measures up to some level of effectiveness. It is important to note that this level of effectiveness is achieved:

• without the imposition of an educational criterion for hiring;
• with trainers who varied in experience from 13 years to less than two months; and
• without any special procedures for introducing learners to the computer system or for acquainting them with general material-control principles.

These circumstances suggest that even ad hoc on-the-job training is a powerful educative practice for initial levels of competency.

Second, although trainers are not trained to train, all do in fact train, not merely work alongside newcomers. When we looked closely at what was going on between trainers and learners, we found that all worked out some form of division of labor that drew the trainee into practice in a way that got the work accomplished; and that the trainers reorganized the work in similar ways for training purposes. The systematic approach, in the absence of any specific training curriculum, suggests that ways of guiding others into knowledge and work procedures are indigenous in workplace communities. Workplace settings may contain educational resources with considerable potential.

Finally, activities that are called training primarily involve normal work routines. Learners are introduced to the more demanding aspects of the work accidentally, that is, only when a problem arises in the course of routine work. Over a long period of time, new employees "accidentally" encounter a fuller range of problems. But becoming adept at troubleshooting calls for a fuller understanding of the production and computer systems than does the routine work. To the extent that training does not accelerate or facilitate such learning in an organized way it cannot be considered fully effective from the perspective of the worker's long-term career development, even though it may meet management's immediate needs.

We brought to this research the theoretical perspective of activity theory. This perspective helped us analyze the complex and changing relationships of a stream of behavior designed both to educate and to produce manufactured goods. Positing work and training as two different activities enabled us to identify a variety of relationships between them: normal work tasks were incorporated into training, some aspects of work were modified for training purposes, and work not directly related to training nevertheless served training purposes.

This Brief is a distillation of a longer paper by Sylvia Scribner and Patricia Sachs, A Study of On-the-Job Training, Technical Paper No. 13, which is available from the National Center on Education and the Economy, Teachers College, Box 174, Columbia University, New York, New York 10027.

Institute on Education and the Economy, Teachers College, Columbia University 525 West 120th Street, Box 174, New York, NY 10027 Phone: (212) 678-3091 | Fax: (212) 678-3699 | [email protected]

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Journal of Workplace Learning

ISSN : 1366-5626

Article publication date: 15 July 2022

Issue publication date: 12 October 2022

This research aims to understand whether and how the perceptions that employees build and share over time about training activities and opportunities at work are linked to the knowledge management processes within the organization. This study aims at measuring how different levels of job training satisfaction are linked to employee perceptions of knowledge-sharing (KS) practices at work.

Design/methodology/approach

A total of 179 employees from an information and technology firm in Italy took part in the study, by completing questionnaires on job training satisfaction, KS practices and job-related variables (i.e. years of experience, hours of training in the previous year, job role and organizational area of belonging).

Findings showed that high job training satisfaction is related to positive perceptions of KS practices, so that when employees are satisfied with their job training experiences, they are more likely to value and recognize those practices.

Research limitations/implications

The relation between job training satisfaction and KS practices needs to be extended to different sectors and organizations to be generalized.

Social implications

Training activities within the organization are at the core of knowledge management practices and constitute a main source of sustainable competitive advantage; human resource management should reconsider the importance of monitoring training perceptions inside the organization, to become more conscious of the value and impact of these practices, in particular about training strategies.

Originality/value

Although great attention has been given to single-training satisfaction, only few studies consider the wider impact of job training satisfaction and its possible impact on knowledge sharing.

• Job training satisfaction
• Knowledge-sharing practices
• Knowledge management

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the Insiel SpA HRM team for participating in this study.

Buonomo, I. , Piccinini, M. , Benevene, P. , Blasutig, G. and Cervai, S. (2022), "Job training satisfaction and knowledge sharing in IT company: a case study", Journal of Workplace Learning , Vol. 34 No. 8, pp. 677-690. https://doi.org/10.1108/JWL-02-2022-0016

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Home » Management Case Studies » Case Study of Nestle: Training and Development

Case Study of Nestle: Training and Development

Nestle is world’s leading food company, with a 135-year history and operations in virtually every country in the world. Nestle’s principal assets are not office buildings, factories, or even brands. Rather, it is the fact that they are a global organization comprised of many nationalities, religions, and ethnic backgrounds all working together in one single unifying corporate culture .

Culture at Nestle and Human Resources Policy

Nestle culture unifies people on all continents. The most important parts of Nestle’s business strategy and culture are the development of human capacity in each country where they operate. Learning is an integral part of Nestle’s culture. This is firmly stated in The Nestle Human Resources Policy, a totally new policy that encompasses the guidelines that constitute a sound basis for efficient and effective human resource management . People development is the driving force of the policy, which includes clear principles on non-discrimination, the right of collective bargaining as well as the strict prohibition of any form of harassment. The policy deals with recruitment , remuneration and training and development and emphasizes individual responsibility, strong leadership and a commitment to life-long learning as required characteristics for Nestle managers.

Training Programs at Nestle

The willingness to learn is therefore an essential condition to be employed by Nestle. First and foremost, training is done on-the-job. Guiding and coaching is part of the responsibility of each manager and is crucial to make each one progress in his/her position. Formal training programs are generally purpose-oriented and designed to improve relevant skills and competencies . Therefore they are proposed in the framework of individual development programs and not as a reward.

Literacy Training

Most of Nestle’s people development programs assume a good basic education on the part of employees. However, in a number of countries, we have decided to offer employees the opportunity to upgrade their essential literacy skills. A number of Nestle companies have therefore set up special programs for those who, for one reason or another, missed a large part of their elementary schooling.

These programs are especially important as they introduce increasingly sophisticated production techniques into each country where they operate. As the level of technology in Nestle factories has steadily risen, the need for training has increased at all levels. Much of this is on-the-job training to develop the specific skills to operate more advanced equipment. But it’s not only new technical abilities that are required.   It’s sometimes new working practices. For example, more flexibility and more independence among work teams are sometimes needed if equipment is to operate at maximum efficiency .

“Sometimes we have debates in class and we are afraid to stand up. But our facilitators tell us to stand up because one day we might be in the parliament!” (Maria Modiba, Production line worker, Babelegi factory, Nestle South Africa).

Nestle Apprenticeship Program

Apprenticeship programs have been an essential part of Nestle training where the young trainees spent three days a week at work and two at school. Positive results observed but some of these soon ran into a problem. At the end of training, many students were hired away by other companies which provided no training of their own.

“My two elder brothers worked here before me. Like them, for me the Nestle Apprenticeship Program in Nigeria will not be the end of my training but it will provide me with the right base for further advancement. We should have more apprentices here as we are trained so well!” (John Edobor Eghoghon, Apprentice Mechanic, Agbara Factory, Nestle Nigeria) (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); “It’s not only a matter of learning bakery; we also learn about microbiology, finance, budgeting, costs, sales, how to treat the customer, and so on. That is the reason I think that this is really something that is going to give meaning to my life. It will be very useful for everything.” (Jair Andres Santa, Apprentice Baker, La Rosa Factory Dosquebradas, Nestle Columbia).

Local Training

Two-thirds of all Nestle employees work in factories, most of which organize continuous training to meet their specific needs. In addition, a number of Nestle operating companies run their own residential training centers. The result is that local training is the largest component of Nestle’s people development activities worldwide and a substantial majority of the company’s 240000 employees receive training every year. Ensuring appropriate and continuous training is an official part of every manager’s responsibilities and, in many cases; the manager is personally involved in the teaching. For this reason, part of the training structure in every company is focused on developing managers own coaching skills. Additional courses are held outside the factory when required, generally in connection with the operation of new technology.

The variety of programs is very extensive. They start with continuation training for ex-apprentices who have the potential to become supervisors or section leaders, and continue through several levels of technical, electrical and maintenance engineering as well as IT management. The degree to which factories develop “home-grown” specialists varies considerably, reflecting the availability of trained people on the job market in each country. On-the-job training is also a key element of career development in commercial and administrative positions. Here too, most courses are delivered in-house by Nestle trainers but, as the level rises, collaboration with external institutes increases.

“As part of the Young Managers’ Training Program I was sent to a different part of the country and began by selling small portions of our Maggi bouillon cubes to the street stalls, the ‘sari sari’ stores, in my country. Even though most of my main key accounts are now supermarkets, this early exposure were an invaluable learning experience and will help me all my life.” (Diane Jennifer Zabala, Key Account Specialist, Sales, Nestle Philippines). “Through its education and training program, Nestle manifests its belief that people are the most important asset. In my case, I was fortunate to participate in Nestle’s Young Managers Program at the start of my Nestle career, in 1967. This foundation has sustained me all these years up to my present position of CEO of one of the top 12 Nestle companies in the world.” (Juan Santos, CEO, Nestle Philippines)

Virtually every national Nestle company organizes management-training courses for new employees with High school or university qualifications. But their approaches vary considerably. In Japan, for example, they consist of a series of short courses typically lasting three days each. Subjects include human assessment skills, leadership and strategy as well as courses for new supervisors and new key staff. In Mexico, Nestle set up a national training center in 1965. In addition to those following regular training programs, some 100 people follow programs for young managers there every year. These are based on a series of modules that allows tailored courses to be offered to each participant. Nestle India runs 12-month programs for management trainees in sales and marketing, finance and human resources, as well as in milk collection and agricultural services. These involve periods of fieldwork, not only to develop a broad range of skills but also to introduce new employees to company organization and systems. The scope of local training is expanding. The growing familiarity with information technology has enabled “distance learning” to become a valuable resource, and many Nestle companies have appointed corporate training assistants in this area. It has the great advantage of allowing students to select courses that meet their individual needs and do the work at their own pace, at convenient times. In Singapore, to quote just one example, staff is given financial help to take evening courses in job-related subjects. Fees and expenses are reimbursed for successfully following courses leading to a trade certificate, a high school diploma, university entrance qualifications, and a bachelor’s degree.

International Training

Nestle’s success in growing local companies in each country has been highly influenced by the functioning of its International Training Centre, located near company’s corporate headquarters in Switzerland. For over 30 years, the Rive-Reine International Training Centre has brought together managers from around the world to learn from senior Nestle managers and from each other.Country managers decide who attends which course, although there is central screening for qualifications, and classes are carefully composed to include people with a range of geographic and functional backgrounds. Typically a class contains 15—20 nationalities. The Centre delivers some 70 courses, attended by about 1700 managers each year from over 80 countries. All course leaders are Nestle managers with many years of experience in a range of countries. Only 25% of the teaching is done by outside professionals, as the primary faculty is the Nestle senior management. The programs can be broadly divided into two groups:

• Management courses: these account for about 66% of all courses at Rive-Reine. The participants have typically been with the company for four to five years. The intention is to develop a real appreciation of Nestle values and business approaches. These courses focus on internal activities.
• Executive courses: these classes often contain people who have attended a management course five to ten years earlier. The focus is on developing the ability to represent Nestle externally and to work with outsiders. It emphasizes industry analysis, often asking: “What would you do if you were a competitor?”

Nestle’s overarching principle is that each employee should have the opportunity to develop to the maximum of his or her potential. Nestle do this because they believe it pays off in the long run in their business results, and that sustainable long-term relationships with highly competent people and with the communities where they operate enhance their ability to make consistent profits. It is important to give people the opportunities for life-long learning as at Nestle that all employees are called upon to upgrade their skills in a fast-changing world. By offering opportunities to develop , they not only enrich themselves as a company, they also make themselves individually more autonomous, confident, and, in turn, more employable and open to new positions within the company. Enhancing this virtuous circle is the ultimate goal of their training efforts at many different levels through the thousands of training programs they run each year.

External Links:

• Employee and Career Development  (Nestle Global)

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4 thoughts on “ Case Study of Nestle: Training and Development ”

Very nice case study

one question, when is this case study published? please ,thank you. i am doing this for final year project. as references

Post date: 03-09-2010

How does Nestle evaluate the effectiveness of training programs? Explain your reasons

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