Reference no: EM132077966

Oster (n.d.) states that “The ultimate goal of your organization's training and development plan is to produce employees who are able to provide your company with a competitive edge, whether those employees work in sales, manufacturing, logistics or management.” Whatever the strategic goal of a given company is that goal cannot be realized if the employees tasked with accomplishing said goal do not have the necessary skills to do so. The skill set of employees will vary and some or all of the will require training in their job functions. Aligning a training program to the ensure employees have, not only the skills needed to complete their day-to-day tasks, but also to coincide with the company’s strategic goals is a necessity not a luxury. “Regardless of what else you expect from your managers, facilitating employee learning and development should be a non-negotiable competency… Work groups in which employees report that their supervisor (or someone else at work) cares about them as a person, talks to them about their career progress, encourages their development, and provides opportunities to learn and grow have lower turnover, higher sales growth, better productivity, and better customer loyalty than work groups in which employees report that these developmental elements are scarce” (Valcour, 2014).