the role of employee satisfaction in the success...
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THE ROLE OF EMPLOYEE SATISFACTION IN
THE SUCCESS OF ETRAINING WITHIN A
COMPANY IN INDIA
A study submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for
the degree of Master of Science in Information Systems
Management.
at
THE UNIVERSITY OF SHEFFIELD
by
SHEETAL THAWAL
September 2011
i
Abstract
Background: Etraining has a large investment attached to it, hence it is important
that to determine and study the critical aspects which have an impact on its success.
After having looked at the literature available it is seen that there exist a need for
research to be made towards understanding the relationship of employee satisfaction
and the success of etraining.
Aims: This research tries to fill in the void for studies made towards evaluating the
role of employee satisfaction in the success of etraining by performing a qualitative
study of how etraining is developed and managed at ICICI Prudential Pvt. Ltd. an
company providing insurance and banking services in India.
Methods: The research made use of qualitative study approach, a detailed literature
review was done in order to understand the topic better and based on this a interview
questionnaire was created. 8 etraining managers at ICICI Prudential Pvt. Ltd. were
interviewed and the data was analysed using Thematic Analysis and Concept Map
methods.
Results: The data analysis findings stated that there is a consensus among all the
managers at ICICI Prudential Pvt. Ltd. that employee satisfaction is one of the most
crucial aspects which have a considerable impact on the effectiveness of etraining
and that there were efforts made first to understand what employees need i.e. what
can be done while planning and development of etraining that will eventually satisfy
the employee. However there was no process devised to evaluate the difference in
performance of etraining when employees are satisfied or not satisfied.
Conclusions: It is concluded that although employee satisfaction does play a very
strong role in success of etraining and that an satisfied employee is expected to
perform better at least this is what etraining developers have an opinion of, however
there was no concrete evidence of change in etraining effectiveness when employee
is satisfied with the training.
ii
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank my parents and my brother for their intense support due to
which I was successfully able to reach the masters degree.
A big thank you for my dissertation supervisor Dr. Miguel Baptista Nunes whose
support meant a lot for me to complete my dissertation.
As my research was based on a case study approach, for which I had chosen ICICI
Prudential Pvt. Ltd. (India) company, I would deeply like to thank all the
managers who participated in telephonic interviews, and were kind enough to share
their views on the topic. The research wouldn’t have been completed without their
support.
I would also like to thank my dear friend Vikram Telkar, for always helping and
supporting me throughout the masters program.
Last but not the least I would like to thank god with whose blessings I was able to
finish my dissertation successfully.
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Table of Contents
Abstract ..................................................................................................................................... i
Acknowledgements .................................................................................................................. ii
Chapter 1: Introduction ............................................................................................................ 1
1.1 Purpose of this study ...................................................................................................... 1
1.2 Problem Description ...................................................................................................... 2
1.3 Research Questions ........................................................................................................ 4
1.4 Objectives of this study .................................................................................................. 5
1.5 Summary of Methodology ............................................................................................. 5
1.5.1 Research Approach ................................................................................................. 5
1.5.2 Data Collection and Analysis .................................................................................. 5
1.5 Practicalities and Limitations ......................................................................................... 6
1.6 Structure of the Dissertation .......................................................................................... 6
Chapter 2 Literature Review .................................................................................................... 8
2.1 ETraining ....................................................................................................................... 8
2.1.1 Introduction ............................................................................................................. 8
2.1.2 Traditional Classroom Training .............................................................................. 9
2.1.3 ETraining Definition ............................................................................................. 10
2.1.4 Purpose of Etraining.............................................................................................. 11
2.1.5 Why Etraining ....................................................................................................... 12
2.1.6 Methods of ETraining (Game Based Learning, Video Conferencing, ELearning
Courses) ......................................................................................................................... 12
2.1.7 Benefits of Etraining ............................................................................................. 13
2.1.8 Limitations of Etraining ........................................................................................ 14
2.1.9 Future of Etraining ................................................................................................ 16
2.1.10 Conclusion .......................................................................................................... 17
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2.2 Trainee Satisfaction in Indian Company ...................................................................... 18
2.2.1 Introduction ........................................................................................................... 18
2.2.2 Concept of Trainee Satisfaction ............................................................................ 19
2.2.3 Etraining in Indian Companies ............................................................................. 21
2.2.4 ETraining in Specific Industries ........................................................................... 23
2.2.5 Etraining from Trainee Perspective ...................................................................... 24
2.2.6 ETraining from Management Perspective ............................................................ 25
2.2.7 Comparing actual ETraining with Trainee & Management Perspective .............. 26
2.2.8 Conclusion ............................................................................................................ 27
Chapter 3: Research Methodology ......................................................................................... 29
3.1Introduction ................................................................................................................... 29
3.2 Research Strategy ......................................................................................................... 29
3.3 Data Collection Methods ............................................................................................. 31
3.4 Data Analysis Methods ................................................................................................ 33
3.4.1 Thematic Analysis................................................................................................. 33
3.4.2 Concept Maps ....................................................................................................... 34
3.5 Methodological Limitations ......................................................................................... 36
3.6 Ethical Considerations ................................................................................................. 37
Chapter 4: Findings and Discussions ..................................................................................... 38
4.1 Introduction .................................................................................................................. 38
4.2 Interview Findings and Discussions ............................................................................ 39
4.2.1 Theme 1: ETraining Manager ............................................................................... 40
4.2.2 Theme 2: ETraining Development ........................................................................ 45
4.2.3 Theme 3: Trainee feedback mechanism ................................................................ 50
4.2.4 Theme 4: ETraining and trainee satisfaction evaluation ....................................... 51
4.2.5 Theme 5: Trainee (employee) ............................................................................... 53
4.3 Concept Map ................................................................................................................ 56
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Chapter 5: Conclusion and Further Research ........................................................................ 58
5.1 Introduction .................................................................................................................. 58
5.2 Summary of Findings ................................................................................................... 58
5.3 Overall Limitations ...................................................................................................... 61
5.4 Recommendations for Further Research ...................................................................... 62
Chapter 6: References ............................................................................................................ 63
Chapter 7: The Appendices .................................................................................................... 70
Appendix A–Interview Questionnaire for Evaluation ........................................................... 70
Appendix B – Sample Interview Transcript .......................................................................... 76
List of Figures
Figure 2.2.2.1: Kirkpatrick-Philips Model………………………………………....20
Figure 3.4.2.1: A concept map showing the features of concept map and the
relationships between them…………………………………………………………35
Figure 4.3.1: Concept Map derived from actual data analysis……………………...57
The Role of Employee Satisfaction in the Success of ETraining within a Company in India
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Chapter 1: Introduction
1.1 Purpose of this study
This research paper uses the word 'Etraning' for the word 'Elearning' as there
are different ways in which 'Elearning' is worded. This is done in order to maintain
consistency through the content and especially for the quotes and references from
other authors.
Training whether the traditional face to face or the new age online training
also known as etraining has a huge amount of cost attached to it. Corporate look at
this cost as an investment, one which helps them grow their business excellence and
knowledge base. This means evaluation of its effectiveness is one of the most crucial
functions for their training management division. It is only when we understand what
contributes to the success of training can we organise and plan the available
resources and align them towards a right direction.
Many researchers have highlighted the importance of evaluation of the end
result of etraining. Peak & Berge (2006) studied Kirkpatrick’s four levels and
Phillips’ Level 5 methods of evaluating training and found that neither could provide
useful understanding of the ROI, ROE or other measurement criteria of the training.
However he concludes that no matter how we evaluate training investment what is
more important is whether the company goals are being meet or not. This means that
the training delivered should influence and improve the business functions that need
them.
Despite of the large investment in the development of etraining modules
organisations have not always been successful in achieving the required training
objectives. O’Neill et al. (2004), states that both the modern etraining and traditional
learning have different critical success factors. Several authors have highlighted the
critical factors linked to the success of etraining. McPherson (2002) reports that the
organisational context is critical to etraining success which integrates the tutors,
learners, courses and the ICT. Hall (2002) mentions that Curriculum Development is
one of the critical success factors for etraining implementation and that the
curriculum should be detailed such that content is well sequenced and sourced from
The Role of Employee Satisfaction in the Success of ETraining within a Company in India
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different specialist members of the team. Currier & Campbell (2002) argue that
interoperability standards assisting in delivery and management of the etraining has
become a high priority today. Holsapple & Lee-Post (2006) introduces a success
model for etraining, which states that overall success is depending of the level
success meet at three stages of the development; designing, delivery and outcome.
Rousseau (1997), says the better interaction between the business function and the
corporate intelligence building team the higher is the success rate, he also states that
for long term benefits of etraining the company needs to have the best expertise in
domains like instructional design and multimedia development and Project and
electronic document management.
Davis & Wong (2007), found that although etraining has been accepted by
many organisations as well as educational institutions around the world with an aim
to elevate the learner experience, there has been very less amount of studies focus on
evaluating how learner experience impact on the usage of the etraining system.
The purpose of the study is to understand how critical is Employee
satisfaction in the success of etraining and to try and add in the existing vast research
literature of etraining.
1.2 Problem Description
Employee training management has always been one of the most expensive
activities for all business. In an article - An informal history of eLearning, Cross
(2004) quotes:
―Forget about college, classrooms, courses, curricula, credits, and the campus.
We're going to chat about eTraining. This is corporate.”
Cross (2004) states that organisations have IQ or rather corporate IQ, like
human brain and one which keeps growing with time. He adds further that Business
organisations invest in training their staff so that they perform better which will
provide them a competitive edge and will increase their profit margins. Recent times
have seen a revolutionary paradigm shift in the way corporate training is delivered,
as traditional instructor led training as slowly given way to electronic training –
etraining (Nsour & Abdul-Rub, 2004). Etraining technologies have number of
The Role of Employee Satisfaction in the Success of ETraining within a Company in India
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benefits over the conventional methodology as it provides features like self-paced
and self sequenced learning patterns with increased control for learners over content
and delivery media enabling them to meet their personal learning objectives to the
fullest (Ruiz et al., 2006). All these features of etraining have been the reason why
modern corporate world have accepted it with open arms. As etraining grew within
organisation, more and more funds were invested in its management and
development, with this increased the amount of expectations from etraining.
Evaluation of etraining became an extremely important management function of
organisations. Many authors and researcher developed methods of etraining
evaluation and suggest a varied set of crucial factors which impact the etraining
outcome.
Giangreco et al. (2009) states that the measure of trainee satisfaction for
evaluating the effectiveness of the training has been quite underrated. His study
reveals that the trainee’s perception of the usefulness of training is the most
important factor influencing the trainee satisfaction, however he also expresses that
there exist a lot of scope for research in this domain. It has been seen that there has
been limited study done towards understanding the importance of the trainee
satisfaction and how it contributes towards the success of the training delivered.
Ever since etraining has been in existence, organisations have made
numerous efforts to promote this self learning solution to their employees. Cross
(2004) provides an excellent count of how etraining evolved over the years, how it
was perceived by the trainees and the organisations. He states that etraining on a
computer system was not as easy as it sounds as trainees were constantly disturbed
by their core business tasks, or by other colleagues or bosses who did not take
training seriously. However with time etraining technologies evolved CBTs, to
WBTs, Blended learning to Game based learning. The success of etraining lies in its
outcomes, whether employees perform better after taking these trainings, is customer
satisfaction level improving, is there any rise in the sales Cross (2004).
Understanding the relationship of employee satisfaction and etraining success
together will help organisations to rethink and revise their training practices.
Organisations need to think beyond the cookie-cutter approach while development of
The Role of Employee Satisfaction in the Success of ETraining within a Company in India
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etraining modules. Most trainings whether classroom or etraining are seen by
employees as dull and unimportant sessions, which are looked upon as mandatory
exercise imposed by their employers. This prejudice puts of even the most interested
employees well before the training session has even started. All this with the
constant pressure of performing and the never ending to-do list does more than just
simple damage to an employee’s motivation to learn.
These factors are sending continuous SOS signals asking etraining designers
and developers to look at employee satisfaction as crucial aspect. There is a
desperate need for research and development in evaluating the role of employee
satisfaction in the success of etraining within an organisation. This research attempts
at trying to find the answer to the question:
Does employee satisfaction contribute to the success of etraining within an
organisation?
In order to define the scope and set achievable research targets this research
looks at the performance of etraining delivery in an Indian company. Data from
management staff interviews are analysed to create a hypothesis and then evaluate a
conclusion. It can be easily seen that this conclusion which will be based on the
performance of etraining within a single organisation does not speak for all the
organisations around the world, however it can help in understanding what a small
part (one company) of the whole (companies around the world) have to say about
the importance employee satisfaction in etraining.
1.3 Research Questions
Following are the questions this research tries to answer:
What are the most crucial aspects of etraining that define its effectiveness?
What is the role of employee satisfaction in the success of etraining?
Do employees respond better to etraining which gives utmost importance’s
towards understanding what do they need?
Does employee satisfaction lead to improved business performance and
eventually impact profit margins?
The Role of Employee Satisfaction in the Success of ETraining within a Company in India
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1.4 Objectives of this study
Understand the relationship of employee satisfaction and success of etraining
within an organisation in India.
This research will be based on a case study approach were it will analyze the
outcomes of Etraining implemented in one of the real world companies.
The research will look at existing research in order to understand what the
study made in this domain.
With the help of past company records of how Etraining was implemented on
what scale and by what method and also what the outcomes were.
Through interviews the research will try to understand what the employees as
well as the managers of the trainings have experienced with the Etraining
module.
The basic objective of the research will be to understand the role of employee
satisfaction in the success of Etraining in a company in India.
1.5 Summary of Methodology
1.5.1 Research Approach
A qualitative approach will be undertaken for this research. The higher
management people who actually conduct the training will be interviewed forming a
part of qualitative research which will help in defining an accurate and detailed
research conclusion.
1.5.2 Data Collection and Analysis
The data will be collected from a specific company in India in order
to limit the scope of the research.
Interviews: The qualitative data will be collected with the help of interviews of the
higher management people i.e. HRD and LND managers of the company who
manage the Etraining programs. For analysing the interviews, Thematic Analysis and
concept maps will be used.
The Role of Employee Satisfaction in the Success of ETraining within a Company in India
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1.5 Practicalities and Limitations
The research results and conclusions will be based on the hypothesis
developed from the interviews conducted with the employees of the selected
company in India. It is very natural that there will be different motivations and
factors that affect the response of an individual and hence it is quite possible that
they do not convey the correct or incomplete information. This aspect can be
managed to some extent by the use of more close ended questions rather than
questions whose answers are expected to be more subjective.
One more practical difficulty of managing with the schedule of the
interviewers within the limited time frame of the research can be a challenge.
However well planned and pre scheduled the research tasks can help overcome this
challenge.
1.6 Structure of the Dissertation
The dissertation is structured as follows:
CHAPTER 1: Introduction
Introduces the background of the research topic with its purpose of study. It
then explains the problem description following the research questions. Objectives
of this research are also mentioned in this chapter. Then the methodology used for
conducting the research is discussed. Practicalities and Limitations are also discussed
in this chapter.
CHAPTER 2: Literature Review
Literature studies conducted by various authors on, ETraining and Trainee
Satisfaction in Indian Company is discussed in this chapter. We discuss the
following sub topics in detail in each literature review topic.
In ETraining, we discuss the background of etraining along with traditional
classroom training. Then we discuss the ETraining definition, its Purpose and the
reason behind Etraining. Moving further we discuss the different methods of
The Role of Employee Satisfaction in the Success of ETraining within a Company in India
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ETraining (game based learning, video conferencing, ELearning Courses). Lastly we
discuss the benefits, limitations and future of Etraining with a Conclusion
completing the chapter.
In Trainee Satisfaction in Indian Company, we discuss the background of
trainee satisfaction followed by discussing the concept of Trainee Satisfaction,
ETraining in Indian Companies, and ETraining in Specific Industries. Then we
discuss ETraining from trainees and from Management Perspective. Moving ahead
we compare actual ETraining with trainee & management Perspective and conclude
it.
CHAPTER 3: Research Methodology
This chapter specifies the methodology adopted for research with Data
collection and analysing methods. Thematic analysis and concept maps will also be
discussed in detail in this chapter. Concluding this chapter we will talk about the
methodological limitations and ethical considerations.
CHAPTER 4: Findings and Discussions
Data gathered from the interviews are analysed and represented using
thematic analysis and concept map. Themes derived from the interviews are
presented with appropriate discussions.
CHAPTER 5: Conclusion and Further Research
This chapter concludes the research with summarising the findings, stating
the limitations and giving recommendations and future research options.
The Role of Employee Satisfaction in the Success of ETraining within a Company in India
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Chapter 2 Literature Review
2.1 ETraining
2.1.1 Introduction
In January 2011, BBC News reported that as per World Bank the
global economic growth is expected to slow down in the year 2011. In the year
2009, BBC News had reported that UK was then in recession for the first time since
1991, it’s been 3 years now and there is still no respite, in fact the economy is going
bad to worst. Businesses small or large have been trying to put in all their resources
to survive in these tough times. Slow economic growth is not the only challenge,
delivering products and services to customers with better quality and faster than their
competitors is also the need of the hour. Companies have to constantly look at
revising their business and market strategies as per the needs of the customers, and
with all the competition around, it becomes even more crucial for business to
survive. The constantly changing business strategies means introduction of new
product lines and services, which means changes in the manufacturing, operations,
marketing almost all functions.
In such times training their staff becomes all the more important for
businesses. Traditionally trainings have been conducted by a Trainer or Instructor
who delivers the training to a group. This kind of training, though most effective,
becomes extremely unmanageable when there is a need to keep the workforce up to
date with the ongoing changes in the process, products or services. Also the biggest
drawbacks of traditional training are:
It’s extremely difficult to track the trainee’s learning curve.
Once the training in delivered, the trainees will not be able to refer back.
The cost involved in arranging such trainings is extremely high.
The quality standard and effectiveness is completely dependent on the trainer
and can vary from trainer to trainer.
The Role of Employee Satisfaction in the Success of ETraining within a Company in India
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Strother (2002) reports that many large organisations have turned to
online training for more faster and economical training delivery. Companies like
IBM, Ernst and Young, Rockwell Collins have been able to successfully implement
Web-based training at far less expenses as compared to the traditional form Strother
(2002). Many authors have expressed that etraining is definitely more cost effective
at the same time provide broader benefits (Barron, 2001), (Strother, 2002).
Phillips & Burkett (2008) states ―Etraining investment impacts multiple
areas of an organization‖. He suggest the below key questions:
In what way do the Etraining programs provide strategic value?
How does the strategic activity affect the business results?
Are the employees (learners) getting more responsive to the customers?
Does the Etraining investments helping the organization to innovate more
effectively?
Does everyone in the organization have greater access to required
information?
Has the Etraining services helped the organization achieve its core capacities
more effectively?
When etraining is seen to have so many benefits it becomes all the more
apparent that there exist a need for measuring its results. Strother (2002) raises a
question: When we measure the results of etraining, do we have to evaluate
etraining differently from traditional training methods? Kirkpatrick’s classic model
and Phillips’ Level 5 method and few others clearly state that there are definitely
different ways of evaluating the results of etraining.
2.1.2 Traditional Classroom Training
Classroom training or Instructor led training have been traditionally the
methods of training. Such trainings are delivered by a trainer or instructor to a group
of trainees. Most common form of the traditional training is the school classroom
where teacher delivers the learning to a group of students.
The Role of Employee Satisfaction in the Success of ETraining within a Company in India
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As per Jen & Sandhu (2006), traditional classroom training delivers
training with a human touch as the instructor or trainer meets the learners in person
in a classroom environment making a costly method of training. He says this
considering the fact that there are multiple overheads involved for managing such
trainings, precisely because when employees have to be group together at one central
location from where the training can be conducted it will mean that they are not
available for their core business function for that duration which means loss of
productivity. This along with the cost of the trainer, location and travelling cost of
the employees adds up to the total training cost.
According to Coppola and Myre (2002) ILT trainers need and learning
capacity by employees proper techniques like delivering the same content multiple
times in different ways for example techniques like ―repetition,‖ can be used which
reinforces important information being delivered until the learners have encoded it
properly. In this study on ILT (instructor led training) and Web-based training he
finds that the ILT training are far less suited for geographically large scale
organization as they lack the required resources.
2.1.3 ETraining Definition
Jen and Sandhu (2006) quotes: ―E-learning, or less better known as
“electronic learning” can be defined as acquiring of knowledge or skills via
electronic devices, such as the computer, the internet, telecommunications tools like
the telephone and other electronic devices, namely the video and CD-Rom.‖
There is no progress...in how we teach, despite what be possible with
the new technology Laurillard (2002). Electronic training, usually referred to as
etraining, is a relatively new approach to teaching and learning. However, the
concept that lies behind the etraining is pretty old and one that enables users to
access training courses and learning materials on a desktop computer.
A pretty comprehensive definition of etraining was proposed by
Knowledge and Learning System Group NCSA of the University of Illinois at
Urbana Champagne: etraining is the acquisition and use of knowledge distributed
and facilitated primarily by electronic means. Etraining can take the form of courses
as well as modules and smaller learning objects.
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As per (Wentling et al., 2000) etraining may incorporate synchronous or
asynchronous access and may be distributed geographically with varied limits of
time. Incidentally, the report (Wentling et al., 2000) includes a comprehensive
survey of etraining definitions done from various perspectives, including the
business one.
Notwithstanding the widespread adoption of computer communications
in society, we have yet to fully experience the transformative effects of this medium,
particularly its effect on etraining. We are in what Brown (2000) described as the
gradual development phase of this transformative medium and are yet to experience
its explosive impact.
2.1.4 Purpose of Etraining
(Rousseau, 1997) study on etraining delivered by any medium whether
network or standalone computer found it to be very purposeful in, “improving
employee performance and service quality at lower lifetime cost.”
Selim (2005), states that like in any training method, the purpose of
etraining is also to meet the required end learning objectives and the measures can
be; “environmental, technological, student related, and instructor related”.
Especially for large companies where their employee base is scattered around
different locations of country, the prime purpose of etraining is to provide a
centralised training delivery medium which helps in not just proper distribution but
also in tracking the learning curve of the employees as well as training outcomes in
some cases.
According to Hunt & Ivergard (2005) this learning purpose is a
central issue and concern of etraining, such learning help in developing skills and
strategy for lifetime. In this paper he concludes that it is important to first identify
and then give emphasis on the purpose of learning based upon which the choices
with regards to the technologies used to deliver the learning needs to be made. He
further argues all said and done etraining fails to deliver the ultimate learning goal as
according to him learning by practically performing the task in real life situation
continues to stand as the most important purpose of learning.
The Role of Employee Satisfaction in the Success of ETraining within a Company in India
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Takiya et al. (2005) suggest that the purpose of etraining should not be seen as one
which will replace the traditional learning but one which will work with it.
2.1.5 Why Etraining
When corporates were moving from traditional classroom training
towards online etraining methods one big question that need to be answered was:
Why etraining as an alternative method for the traditional classroom training?
The answer lies in what Rousseau (1997) mentions in his paper on ―Strategic Issues
in the Development of Low-Cost On-line Training for Engineers‖, he states that
etraining is needed as it provides:
Simultaneous, benchmarked and quick implemented learning solutions for
employees spread across a wide geographic area
Less time spend on training
Overall cheaper lifetime cost
Talking about blended etraining, Bennink (2004) gives an example
where a traditional training program was converted into a blended etraining
programme which delivered as much quality training as the traditional training. He
states that such trainings help companies to reduce its cost of training significantly as
well as provide multiple benefits to employees including ability to learn at their own
speed, at anytime and anyplace they want.
2.1.6 Methods of ETraining (Game Based Learning, Video
Conferencing, ELearning Courses)
Training can be conducted in various forms like game based training,
video conferencing, by creating etraining courses based on factors like the
requirement in which it is to be delivered, the ability of the trainee to grab the
knowledge, e.g. older age group people prefer the game based training as it can
motivate them rather than the normal page turner etraining course, as well as the
willingness of the client in terms of investment, that is the budget set for the training.
According to Eck (2006) there are three factors whose combined
weight has resulted in widespread public interest in games as training tools. The first
The Role of Employee Satisfaction in the Success of ETraining within a Company in India
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factor is the ongoing research conducted by Digital Game Based Training (DGBT)
proponents. Researchers have published dozens of essays, articles, and mainstream
books on the power of DGBT in each decade since the advent of digital games—
including, most recently, Marc Prensky's Digital Game-Based Learning (2001),
James Paul Gee's What Video Games Have to Teach Us about Learning and Literacy
(2003), Clark Aldrich's Simulations and the Future of Learning: An Innovative (and
Perhaps Revolutionary) Approach to e-Learning (2004), and the soon-to-be-
published Games and Simulations in Online Learning: Research and Development
Frameworks, edited by David Gibson, Clark Aldrich, and Marc Prensky.
The other factor is how the present ―Net Generation,‖ or ―digital natives,‖
who are disinterested with conventional instructional strategy. These individual are
seen to favour content that is delivered in multiple streams, with a rather more
inductive reasoning, have high interactivity, and re graphically more appealing. Last
factor is the recent popularity of games has made etraining developers think if it is a
better option is which training content can be delivered.
2.1.7 Benefits of Etraining
Strother (2002) states that along with the positive economic benefits,
etraining does provide other benefits such as “convenience, standardized delivery,
self-paced learning, and variety of available content, have made e-traning a high
priority for many corporations.”
Anaraki (2004), study finds Web Based Training (WBT) or etraining
gaining popularity as a replacement for the traditional training as it directly benefits
the organisation is developing and maintaining high performance capabilities and it
provides increased efficiencies and effectiveness. The study also states that etraining
method of delivery provides customised learning solutions which are self-paced,
highly interactive and one which can be tracked. Such etraining solutions assist
companies in workforce development by offering numerous easy to use courses in
Flash or Microsoft Powerpoint, assessment solutions and also virtual learning
communities for collaborative learning.
Takiya and Archbold (2005), comments that etraining can be always
profitable for companies as it provides below mentioned benefits;
The Role of Employee Satisfaction in the Success of ETraining within a Company in India
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Creates a favour employer image in the minds of it employees as the
etraining solutions promote professional development opportunities for the
employees.
Etraining promotes use of internet and anytime training culture within the
employees which means that the employees are available 24/7, which means
round the clock services can be offered to clients.
When employees access training material from home or from outside the
office the cost of the training infrastructure is reduced as there is no need to
setup classrooms, arrange for trainers and get a group of employees to one
place.
The just in time learning services provides employees with a more
continuous and faster means of training and as the total amount of time spent
on training reduces the cost of training an employee reduces which means
better productivity at optimal cost.
Kruse (2004) states that along with increased employee retention,
shortened learning time, Etraining provides many benefits to learners like:
Any time access to the training content for learners to complete the courses
during their convenient schedule and time even from home.
The self-paced nature reduces stress and increases satisfaction for learners
with different learning pace.
With its interactive learning style engages learners to undertake the courses
willingly.
Eliminates the burden of memorizing all the information as refresher modules
are readily available.
2.1.8 Limitations of Etraining
As per Rousseau, (1997) over the years companies interested in
Etraining soon realise that, trainings have their own limitations like,
The Role of Employee Satisfaction in the Success of ETraining within a Company in India
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The training material may contain expensive features that are not
instructionally sound.
Few trainings can’t be delivered in online environment.
There is huge development and maintenance cost.
Also as there is rapid change in the delivery of technology and
incompatibility between platforms and data standards which may also
prevent the learners from accessing etraining courses.
Multimedia might quickly become outdated with new versions.
ETraining may have few disadvantages to the trainer or the organization:
There is a huge development cost involved in creating an etraining solution.
Cash flows and budgets will have to be negotiated.
There could be technology related issues like whether the existing technology
infrastructure can accomplish the training goals, whether additional tech
expenditures can be justified, and whether compatibility of all software and
hardware can be achieved.
Inappropriate content for etraining may exist according to some experts,
though are limited in number. Even the acquisition of skills that involve
complex physical/motor or emotional components (for example, juggling or
mediation) can be augmented with etraining.
Also cultural acceptance could be an issue in organizations where student
demographics and psychographics may predispose them against using
computers at all, let alone for etraining.
Disadvantages of etraining to the learner:
Learners have a technophobia related to the Technology and unavailability of
required technologies.
There has been portability in training which has become strength of etraining
with the proliferation of network linking points, notebook computers, PDAs,
The Role of Employee Satisfaction in the Success of ETraining within a Company in India
16
and mobile phones, but still does not rival that of printed workbooks or
reference material.
Other drawback could be reduced social and cultural interaction. The
impersonality, suppression of communication mechanisms such as body
language, and elimination of peer-to-peer learning that are part of this
potential disadvantage are lessening with advances in communications
technologies.
2.1.9 Future of Etraining
Oehlert (2003) quotes: “A Google search on the terms „future‟ and
„etraining‟ returned a dizzying 912,000 results!” While this was in the year 2003,
today the Google’s search engine will return about 157,000,000 which is massive
rise, saying that there has been a lot of research and development being made
towards understanding and defining the future of etraining.
Today corporate world over have still not been able to completely replace
traditional classroom training with the modern etraining techniques. However with
more and more advancement in etraining technologies and with more real life
simulation and game based learning concepts being adopted the future of etraining
needs to see a time when it will override the traditional form.
Commenting on the future of etraining Oehlert (2003) future states that
as technological advancement moves into our household it is apparent that there will
be increased demand for etraining solutions. He also points out that with M-learning
and embedded training systems like Future Combat Systems (FCS) training will be
available anytime, anywhere and a lot more customised to the learners need.
Rousseau (1997) confirms this increased use of etraining and future of training to be
digital, as more and more training content is made online with the help of intranets
and internet.
The future of etraining seems to have the double edged sword analogy as
there exist many risks and dangers at the same time numerous opportunities posed
and the risk comes from factors current unknown, ones which might surface with
time Oehlert (2003). Other authors like Attwell (2007), talk about PLE (personal
The Role of Employee Satisfaction in the Success of ETraining within a Company in India
17
learning environments) applications as the future where companies will be able to
provide training and development while the develop an internal enterprise level
organisational learning.
2.1.10 Conclusion
The above chapter provides an in-depth introduction to etraining, its
benefits over the traditional face to face training and also the limitation it exhibits. It
can be very well seen and concluded that etraining is the future of learning although
there is a lot that etraining needs to prove it is definitely the needs of the hour.
Businesses have been making large investments in order to develop
the skills and competencies they need in order to have a competitive edge and
although the traditional classroom training has been effective is far more costly and
complex to manage. Etraining is the answer to the need for a faster and cheaper
mode of content delivery. It cannot be seen as a replacement to the instructor led
training, hugely because of the fact that we are more comfortable or rather more
habituated to learn from a teacher rather than lean by self. However it can act as a
perfect alternative to classroom training for now as we slowly we get used to this
new moe of learning.
Unlike the traditional form of learning, etraining has a huge
one time development cost attached to it which can act as a sole reason why
organisations feel circumspect while making the transformation. However with more
and more successful case studies of companies who are benefited from this large
startup cost are known, businesses are going to make their transition from the
traditional mode to etraining sooner or later.
However there still exists one area that remains unexplored that is how
one can evaluate whether the output of etraining is delivering the huge expectations
of the organisations (Jen and Sandhu, 2006). One conclusion can be made from the
above chapter is that with all the huge expectations from etraining in the background
and the training and development needs of today’s corporate world, the question
needs to be answered is – DOES ETRAINING DELIVER WHAT IS EXPECTED
FROM IT? The next chapter tries to understand from all the known factors that can
The Role of Employee Satisfaction in the Success of ETraining within a Company in India
18
be used to evaluate etraining performance, how much importance needs to be given
to trainee satisfaction.
2.2 Trainee Satisfaction in Indian Company
2.2.1 Introduction
Corporates around the world device varied strategies to manage their
business intelligence. With the recent business automation technology advancement,
companies are looking at optimizing their performance in order to gain a better
market position and a competitive edge. Etraining is one of such initiatives that are
luring organisations of recent times (Cheng, nd). However as highlighted earlier with
more and more funds and resources being invested in Etraining it has become only a
natural need to evaluate its effectiveness.
Ivanova (2009) studied the attitude of 12 large companies in Japan towards the use
of etraining for new hires and segregated them into clusters and found that the
companies that fall under the high cluster make extensive use of etraining
technologies and put in their maximum funds and resources possible to train
employees through etraining. The study states that these companies measure the
effectiveness of etraining through indicators like employee satisfaction. The study
also states that companies that do not much show interest towards investing into
etraining do not evaluate its effectiveness.
While few authors like Cheng (nd), found that effectiveness of
etraining cannot be measured. One fails to understand why it should be difficult to
measure any kind of investment an organisation makes and not just invest into
etraining. In case of Etraining, it is natural that trainee satisfaction is an important
criterion while development and evaluation as it’s the trainee for whom the
companies develop etraining courseware.
Trainees are like internal customers for organisations while
implementing etraining and their preferences, needs, level of learning and
availability must be considered. If they fail to do so the output even after having all
the learning it intends to impart which fail to appeal or interest the learners. And
there nothing more worst for any training programme than uninterested learner who
The Role of Employee Satisfaction in the Success of ETraining within a Company in India
19
takes the course just of formality sake and does not absorb the valuable learning
delivered. It can be very well said that the employee satisfaction is one of the most
important pillars for a successful training programme.
2.2.2 Concept of Trainee Satisfaction
It was Kirkpatrick who introduced the concept of training satisfaction
about 40 years ago (Brown, 2005) through his methods of etraining evaluation.
Brown (2005), defines – ―training satisfaction is an evaluative
judgment by trainees of training features, including, for example, the content (what
is being transmitted—is it interesting, useful, and so on?) and delivery (how it is
being transmitted—is it effectively presented, is the technology easy to use, and so
on?)”.
Schmidt (2009) says that the concept of trainee or rather employee job
training satisfaction have roots in the concepts of job training and job satisfaction, he
cites his own definition of job training satisfaction as: ―how people feel about the
different aspects of the job training they receive.”
In his study Ruiz et al. (2006) comments that satisfaction is a function
of employees views about the factors like: ―easy to use, hard to use, fun, boring, and
so forth.‖ This study concludes that learning satisfaction must be considered as one
of the key aspects to be measured to evaluate etraining performance in an
organisation.
It can be seen that Trainee’s and their views about the training form the
fundamental aspect on basis of which any training can be evaluated. Training
programmes are like products which are manufactured and targeted towards a certain
group of customers, which can be seen as the trainees. The products needs to appeal
to it targeted customers, such that they find it worth buying, the same applies for
training programmes if they appeal to the trainees they will find it worth spending
time on. Therefore customisation of the training programme based on the needs,
likes and nature of the trainees is of utmost importance. This factor becomes even
more important when the trainees are employees of a company who invest a lot of
funds in development and management of the training. The companies expect that
The Role of Employee Satisfaction in the Success of ETraining within a Company in India
20
their employees learn from the training and implement the learning to optimize first
their and then eventually the company’s business performance. Employee
satisfaction is a reflection of how well the training schedule is organised and
delivered by the organisation Schmidt (2009).
Many authors have referenced or used existing training evaluation
models like Kirkpatrick-Philips model which is one of the most widely used model
having 5 levels at which etraining effectiveness is evaluated (Ruiz et. al, 2006)
(Giangreco et. al, 2009) (Brown, 2005) (Minaya and Margason, 2005). The
diagrammatic representation of the model is shown in figure below.
Figure 2.2.2.1: Kirkpatrick-Philips Model (Clayton and Saravani, 2009)
The level 1 which assess how much satisfied the employees are from the
training activities conducted and how the employees have responded to the training.
Although the model evaluates the success of the etraining at 5 different levels, it can
The Role of Employee Satisfaction in the Success of ETraining within a Company in India
21
be easily seen that Trainee satisfaction has been considered as a real driver of
etraining success.
Sun et al. (2008) did a critical study to understand the factors that
influence learner satisfaction. This study results concluded that out of many critical
aspects the course quality, usefulness and ease of use are a few that affect learners’
perceived satisfaction. The study summaries its results are below:
The learner’s perceived usefulness and ease of use of a course is defined by
its technological design and this will impact on learner’s satisfaction.
Both Qualitative and Quantitative learning schemes are important to achieve
learner satisfaction; however in such cases the flexibility acts as an
important element in ETraining satisfaction.
Better and uninterrupted operational environments will help improving
learner satisfaction with ETraining.
The study also states that, learners’ satisfaction is hampered by user anxiety.
2.2.3 Etraining in Indian Companies
It has been said by many researchers that Indian economy is growing at a
much faster rate than any other country’s economy. Meredith, cited in Rao, 2011
who quotes that ―India and China are going to be the most successful emerging
economies with India becoming the world‟s “back office””. With more and more
multinationals as well as Indian companies emerging in the Indian market, it has
become all the more important for companies to maintain a competitive edge.
Organisations are looking delivering products and services with faster company to
customer time, which means they need to emphasis on optimizing their operations to
max.
Looking at these prerequisites of running business, Indian companies are
increasingly looking at etraining as a faster training delivery medium. Rao (2011)
comments that Indian companies with an aim to develop their employee knowledge
capital are constantly promoting etraining.
The Role of Employee Satisfaction in the Success of ETraining within a Company in India
22
Corporate India has shown a lot of inclination towards etraining
technologies, as more and more companies adopting more effective etraining over
the traditional classroom training in order to create a competitive edge (Gokhale &
Chandra, 2009).
Charmonman & Chorpothong (2004), quotes that – ―etraining is here to
stay‖ and also mentions that in 2004 the search on Google.com for etraining and
etraining in Various countries showed about 142,000 results which was the 4th
highest only after UK, USA, China and Japan, while if the same is tried today in the
year 2011, Google returns 6,430,000 which is 5 times more than in 2004.
There have been many large companies who have adopted the electronic
way of training, Unnithan et al. (2002), studied how an Indian company TIS (Tata
Interactive Systems) used etraining first as an internal training solution and then also
developed business opportunities, this case study concludes that there have been
made efforts to make effective use of etraining in India and is not limited only to the
developed nations.
Its not just corporates across India but also educational institutions have
made considerable amount of efforts towards the development of etraining education
systems. Universities like Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT), BITS Pilani Virtual
University, Visvesvaraya Technological University, Sikkim Manipal, YCMOU also
NGO’s like the Azim Premji Foundation have had taken their etraining initiates on
large scale (Bhattacharya & Sharma, 2007).
Bhattacharya & Sharma (2007), argues that although the General
Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) having a considerable impact on education
and etraining industry in India and even after critics stating that for a nation like
India the priority is investments in basics like infrastructure rather than educational
systems, there is no reasons why capable institutions like ones mentioned above
should stop the revolutionary development work they have been doing in etraining as
this is prove of great help in near future.
The Role of Employee Satisfaction in the Success of ETraining within a Company in India
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Although a many researchers have commented that the etraining has
made its impact on the Indian market few authors like Mittal (2008), found that
etraining has not been able to influence corporate training in India but also believes
future holds good prospects as more emphasis is given to continues learning and
development of employee performance rather than the adhoc traditional face- to-face
training programs.
2.2.4 ETraining in Specific Industries
Etraining has been accepted and implemented in almost all industry
domains around the world however this research is limited to an Indian banking and
insurance firm : ICICI Prudential Pvt. Ltd. India, hence its more than required to
look at the research made in the banking and insurance domain in India.
The Indian banking and insurance industry have made revolutionary
transformation over past few years. There is been written a lot about how private as
well as public sector banks have adopted internationally proven practices (Goyal,
2010) (Choudhary & Tandon, 2010). While talking about the impact of IT on Indian
banking industry, Rajput & Gupta (2011) mentions that Indian banks have been
making continuous investments in IT for providing services like ATM’s, telephone
banking, online banking, round the clock customer services even mobile banking. IT
has impacted all areas of business from product and services manufacturing to
customer services and also the way in which an organisation operates.
Mittal (2008) in her study of evaluating etraining programs in Indian
banks mentions that technological advancement has had it impact in the way in
which training is conducted by corporate in India. She states that companies in India
adopt etraining as tool to impart learning to employees at reduced cost and faster
delivery mode. Her study targeted to Indian banking firms concludes that a very
important aspect on which she suggests needs to be researched further, was how
much importance needs to be given the learners (employees) while planning and
development of etraining modules; we need to understand if learner can contribute
towards customisation of the programme such that it suits their needs and
expectations. She suggest that research towards understanding learner needs and
The Role of Employee Satisfaction in the Success of ETraining within a Company in India
24
demands for etraining is required in order to change the supply driven approach to
demand driven approach.
2.2.5 Etraining from Trainee Perspective
Cheng (nd) conducted a survey at two international accounting firms in
Taiwan to understand what the missing element between managers and users is with
regards to satisfaction in etraining and found startling facts. He found that the
etraining courseware developed by the companies’ offshore headquarters where not
in sync with the local regulations or standards of Taiwan which left the learners
unsatisfied and also discouraged towards learning. This study also concluded that the
more satisfied the learners are with etraining the more they are expected to respond
to the training provided. One can summaries from the conclusion of this report that
trainees perceive etraining as one which is customised to their needs; environment
and learning requirements and they are put off by anything that is not in line with
what they expect.
There is very less past research available which tells us about an
employee’s perspective of etraining, however one can imagine that employees which
are predominantly of two kinds ones which will be interested in learning and
improving their skills, while others who are least bothered to work towards
performing better. The earlier might be seen as to more motivated learner, however
even they can be put off by poorly managed etraining programmes which do not
appeal to them or which are organised without taking into account the availability of
the employees.
Especially for employees who work for the company’s core business
function and for whom the time spent on training is crucial for the company’s as well
as the individual’s performance etraining needs to deliver to the point and in as short
time as possible. It’s not just the content being delivered but also other important
aspects like training schedule, accessibility of courses, work environment and also
the background of the employees that needs to be reviewed in-depth before any
etraining programme is designed.
The Role of Employee Satisfaction in the Success of ETraining within a Company in India
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2.2.6 ETraining from Management Perspective
Benninck (2004) quotes that“…there is no one right answer for how
to develop and deliver etraining effectively. Tapping into actual needs of the
organisation and the learners is the key to success.”
Etraining courseware development and management team performs
crucial activities like tapping training needs, content management, training
programme design and delivery modes, selection of appropriate technology and
tracking and monitoring learner progress. The management team is solely
responsible for the organisations knowledge base development, performance
improvement and professional skills and competency development. Each
organisation have their own set of goals, and most etraining management teams work
towards achieving these goals, and in this process they either ignore the trainee
(employee) needs or give it the least priority.
In a study Schmidt (2009), comments that the employees learning and
growth depends directly on the organisation’s training management team. He advises
that the management must consider employee preferences and need while designing
training modules. This study tries to understand if there is any impact of diversity in
employees on job training satisfaction. Many authors like Kaliski et al. (2008), state
that managers look at etraining with an aim first to reduce the training cost and time
then because of its other advantages over the traditional form of training. This can be
seen as a natural effect of the slowing down of the global economy, where every
business is trying its best to survive with limited resources it possesses.
In such testing times organisation need to look at the recession as an
opportunity, authors like Ahmed (2009), have highlighted that it’s the responsibility
of HR and the learning and development (L&D) managers to help the company’s
work force in developing required skills in order to deliver successful business
practices. He suggests that managers need to look at more creative and real problem
solving solutions like the cost and time saving etraining.
The Role of Employee Satisfaction in the Success of ETraining within a Company in India
26
Cheng (nd) finds that managers perceive etraining is highly effective,
while employees have their own reservations, he says this considering that managers
are constantly under pressure to optimise their overall business performance and see
etraining as a more cost effective solutions even when they do not evaluate the
effectiveness.
2.2.7 Comparing actual ETraining with Trainee & Management
Perspective
Cheng (nd) study on understanding the difference between etraining as
seen by Managers and Employees concludes that both had different perspective
about etraining. Demiray (2005) says that trainee work related etraining is seen by
Managers as medium to increase employee satisfaction, provide challenges and
growth opportunities and reduce stress due to low performance. He also quotes that:
“As an employer, a key factor to a thriving company is employee satisfaction.”
However it has been seen from the above literature review that in
totality there exist two type of etraining management perspective, one which looks at
etraining as a cost and time saving alternative to the traditional form while the other
is of the opinion that etraining which helps the professional development of the
employees which in turn can act as one the effectives ways to reduce the attrition
rate. Most managers also look at etraining has an effective tool to impart training on
their ever evolving product and services and stay ahead of the competition.
Although the later gives more importance to the needs of the
employees, it has been seen that in most cases etraining mangers either fail to tap
what the employees would actually need from the courses or are not able to
implement the instructions while in designing and developing the courseware. As a
result the outcome is a mere attempt to provide effective learning solution and one
which does not meet the targeted learning objectives.
On the other hand the employees look at etraining as a mandatory
activity which needs to be fulfilled by them as a formality. Since most of these
training are either too dry or appeal very little to them employees just sit through
them and do not make effort to learn. This becomes more difficult when these
trainings have to be taken by employees during their productive work hours, and
The Role of Employee Satisfaction in the Success of ETraining within a Company in India
27
with a very long list of tasks to be finished and more strict deadlines, the most
motivated employees are put off from the training delivered.
Authors like Antonacopoulou (1999) have highlighted that although
companies understand that training efforts facilitate employee learning which will
eventually serve the towards meeting the organizational goals, there has been very
less studies made towards understanding the perspective of the learners i.e. how do
they see training as a whole and what are their expectations from trainings organized
by their employers. His study concludes that there is a need to look at the
implications of the employee’s expectation from the training and also to understand
the underlying difference between the perception of the etraining managers and
employees.
2.2.8 Conclusion
Employee Satisfaction of training as a concept was introduced in the
chapter and we found that although most researchers and etraining managers as well
are aware that employee satisfaction does have an impact on the success of etraining
programmes it is one the most neglected or misunderstood factor.
It was seen that etraining is slowly but steadily gaining popularity
among the companies in India and although it has to prove a lot to be able to
establish itself as an alternative for the traditional training, it is something that
address most training and development needs the companies. There has been very
less research made towards understanding the performance of etraining implemented
by companies in the banking and insurance domain of India even when there are
very well known names like ICICI Prudential Pvt. Ltd. have been making use of
etraining for training their staff.
In general it is seen that there exist a lot of difference between what
etraining is seen from a Manager’s and an Employee’s perspective. The manager’s
look at etraining as a more cheaper and faster means of training and although they
understand that the employees satisfaction is important they either ignore or
misunderstand what the employees in reality need from the etraining courses. In can
be concluded that there exist a need to explore this aspect of training and come up
with solid answer to the question, Will inputs from employees or participation of an
The Role of Employee Satisfaction in the Success of ETraining within a Company in India
28
employee in the courseware development process will make any difference to the
success rate of a training programme.
The account of literature review made in this chapter and the past
chapters reconfirms there exist a need of further study to made towards evaluating
the importance of employee satisfaction in the success of etraining implemented by
an organisation.
The Role of Employee Satisfaction in the Success of ETraining within a Company in India
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Chapter 3: Research Methodology
3.1Introduction
A dissertation without correct methodology will be like finding a place in
the London with help of a map of the city of Mumbai. In order to meet the research
objectives and to derive a conclusion any research will need the most appropriate
methodology that will be devised for the undertaking the research. This chapter gives
a count of the research methodology selected for the study and also the reason of the
selection. The chapter lays out the research strategy, the data collection and analysis
methods used along with a few limitations posed by the methodology and its ethical
considerations.
The basic objective that was kept in mind making a selection of the
research strategy was to acquire as much valid data as possible from the correct
sources and through the best available means within the deadlines of the research. In
order to find most practical and appropriate answers to the research questions below
a very detailed literature review of all the related research topics was conducted. The
infamous quote by Sir Isaac Newton: “If I have seen further it is only by standing on
the shoulders of giants” says a lot about what is first and the most basic prerequisite
for attempting to find new answers or solve existing problems was to know the in
and out of the domain one is working on. And in order to meet the research
objectives it was first needed that we review the existing studies made and recorded.
The extensive and elaborate literature review that was covered in the previous
chapters help knowing as much as we can about the topic of this study as well as to
make selection of the most suitable methodology for conducting the research.
3.2 Research Strategy
The research was about assessing the understanding: How much
importance does employee satisfaction hold in the success of etraining. Although for
different companies the concept of success of etraining and employee satisfaction
may vary as each have their own organisational goals, it can was found that defining
a state that an employee is satisfied can be judged either by they themselves or by the
The Role of Employee Satisfaction in the Success of ETraining within a Company in India
30
etraining managers. The research methodology selection idea initially started with
the thought process that both qualitative and quantitative data collection methods be
used, however it was decided that since the idea of satisfaction with regards to an
etraining program will be subjective to any employee and hence a quantitative data
collection approach will not help our case, which is why the qualitative approach
was finalised. This can be further debated that even if we manage to get subjective
rather than more concrete data that quantitative data collection method would have
acquired would it not help in the analysis of a wider spectrum of data. However
keeping in mind the limited timelines for the research it was more beneficial that
only qualitative methodology be adopted rather than both.
Bryman (2008), states that when a sole qualitative approach is devised
the research naturally tends to be inductive rather than deductive which is the case
when quantitative approach is used. The inductive approach was found to be most
suitable as the concluding understanding from the literature review was that
employee satisfaction is a more subjective concept for employees among themselves
as well as for the etraining managers. An inductive approach will be fruitful to
review the ideas and attitudes of the individuals who are exposed to the use and the
output of etraining.
It was decided that the research data will be collected from an Indian
company - ICICI Prudential Pvt. Ltd. which offers insurance and banking services
nationwide in India. It can be seen that since the research limits its scope only to a
single Indian company the results or conclusion that is derived might not be fully
applicable to all the other similar domain companies. Having said that, it can
definitely help in revealing some crucial aspects of the research area which can
definitely form a base for research that will be made with a more than one Indian
insurance and banking domain firm. It can be also seen that this shortcoming was
largely posed by the rather challenging timelines and limited resources that where
available. Having known that the scope of the research did pose the benefits like
better planning of tasks was then possible and all resources would be able to do an
indept analysis of the data collected. The conclusion can be far more concrete
although not generic i.e. applicable for other case studies. The initial strategy for
collecting research data included data to be collected by interviewing the employees
The Role of Employee Satisfaction in the Success of ETraining within a Company in India
31
at ICICI Prudential Pvt. Ltd. as well, however after initial talks with the Managers at
ICICI Prudential Pvt. Ltd. it was decided that the employees will not be interviewed
and rather the etraining managers which have grown within the organisation from
being a trainee to now a part of the training and development team will be
interviewed. This decision was on the recommendation of the Managers at
ICICI Prudent who were of the opinion that there is least possibility the employees
will comment negatively about questions on employee satisfaction simply because
they are too influenced by the fact that they cannot raise issues in the training in a
survey being organised by the training and development department itself.
Keeping the fact in mind that the training managers are the best judge
of the situation at ICICI Prudential Pvt. Ltd., the recommendation was considered
and the decision was made that only the etraining managers will be interviewed.
Although it would have been really helpful to include the employees views for the
analysis, one can understand that the views of someone who have an experience of
both a trainee and training manager can make up for this limitation.
3.3 Data Collection Methods
For this research purpose it was found that semi-structured qualitative
interviews would be the best method for collecting data. These interviews were
conducted over the phone and were digitally recorded. It would have been an
understatement to say that it was difficult to organise and schedule these interviews
considering the facts like the time difference between India and UK, the availability
of the interviewee who had a long list of tasks to be finished which would the first
priority for them. The decision of short listing the interviewees was done after a lot
of initial discussion with the training and development team at ICICI Prudential Pvt.
Ltd. and interviewees were finalised considering their past experience and exposure
in etraining development. There were total 9 interviews taken of 9 team members
from the training and development management team at ICICI Prudential Pvt. Ltd.
all at different levels of hierarchy and with varied experience and exposure of
managing etraining. 3 interviewees were training managers who had about 1-2 years
of experience of managing etraining and grew from either past role in the companies
where they undertook the etraining courses themselves. These interviewees had
The Role of Employee Satisfaction in the Success of ETraining within a Company in India
32
experience of being a trainee and a also a part of the team that developed the
etraining modules which was really handy as they were able to bring in the aspect of
a trainee’s view as well. The other 5 interviewees where, Senior Managers who have
been responsible for the training and development division at ICICI Prudential Pvt.
Ltd. for over 5 years.
There were telephonic interview taken on a one-to-one basis and had a set of 11
questions divided in 3 sections. A standard script (see Appendix A) for the interview
questions was created in order to make sure that the researcher does not go off track
in the conversation and stay in tune with the objective of the research. The list of
questions and the script development was given a good amount of time and was
based on:
The research objective
The knowledge and conclusion derived from the literature review
The questionnaire where are set of main questions, trigger questions
and follow up questions, however the script was taken as a reference document and
the questions that where asked were modified with understanding and comfort of the
interviewee. As mentioned earlier the 11 questions where divided into 3 sections
which targeted at different aspects like the section 1 had questions to understand the
background of the interviewee and also his views on general aspect training and
specifically etraining development at ICICI Prudential Pvt. Ltd. The section 2 where
targeted at understanding the nature of etraining solutions, their development
methods and how the etraining projects were managed and what kind of feedback
mechanism where used. The final section questions where aimed understanding how
employee satisfaction and the performance of the trainees after taking the trainings
were measured and also what kind of benefits did etraining bring for them.
The interviews that where conducted can be stated as successful as all the expected
data was collected along with some new, unexpected and interesting facts that
brought in light a lot of valuable data towards meeting the research objective as well
as create a good hypothesis for the conclusion.
The Role of Employee Satisfaction in the Success of ETraining within a Company in India
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3.4 Data Analysis Methods
After the fruitful task of collecting data the next step was to organise and
then analysis this data. Just like random jumbled characters together do not say
anything unless are organized in words that have meaning, random data is also of no
use unless is organised and put together in a way that it makes sense. This research
made use of Thematic Analysis and Concept maps for organising and analysing data
that was collected from the interviews.
3.4.1 Thematic Analysis
The research will make use of the Thematic Analysis method to analysis the
qualitative data collected from the interviews. Aronson (1994), states that with
thematic analysis one can identify the themes and patterns of person and/or his
behaviour. Braun & Clarke (2006) quotes that “thematic analysis as a useful and
flexible method for qualitative research in and beyond psychology.”
The result of the thematic analysis is nothing but a list of common ideas or
thoughts that a person subconsciously gives out in a conversation; these common
elements convey a lot about the underlying principles and patterns that influence that
person. Once such subconscious thought process of a person or a group of persons is
known providing solutions to related problems becomes possible. Since this method
can help in outlining and understanding the concept and ideas that emerge from any
conversation made with for research purpose (Aronson 1994), they form the best
method for the analysing the interviews that are conducted for the research.
This analysis is performed in the following steps:
Relevant data is collected.
Keywords, ideas, concepts or simple similarity is identified from the
available data.
These similar elements are grouped together then organised as themes.
The themes are looked in dept long with the data again to find instances of
redundancies of the theme.
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The theme identified are then interpreted and questioned when, why and
how.
Braun & Clarke (2006) in their research on thematic analysis talk about how
flexibility is one of the biggest advantages of thematic analysis; it helps the
researcher to identify existing themes within the data in a number of ways. However
they also states that one needs to be very careful will using thematic analysis and not
limited its flexibility. There are other advantages of thematic analysis like:
Simple and faster to learn and use.
Is accessible to researchers having least experience in qualitative research.
Is very useful in summarising large amount of data and creating a good
elaboration of the summary.
Both similarities as well as differences can be highlighted.
Has ability to generate anticipatory insights.
This research made use of the 5 stage process as used by Peng and Nunes (2010)
which are:
Stage 1: Understanding data
Stage 2: Coding data
Stage 3: Attaching codes to themes
Stage 4: Reviewing themes and creating concept maps
Stage 5: Report writing
A 15 point checklist (Appendix B) suggested by Braun & Clarke (2006) was
referred while performing the analysis.
3.4.2 Concept Maps
For future analysis of the qualitative interview data the research will employ
Concept maps. Freeman (2004) quotes:
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“The power and benefits of concept mapping rest in four arenas: enabling shared
understanding, the inclusion of affect, the balance of power, and client
involvement.”
The use of concept map will be helpful in representing the expert’s
knowledge, and also in identifying the gaps ideas and concepts recorded from the
qualitative interviews (Novak & Canas, 2008). (Novak & Canas, 2008) also states
that the concept maps help in better representation of data from interviews in the
form of concept maps, where the information is presented through icons on maps.
These easy to use concept maps considered as helpful in communication and
beneficial among users (Freeman, 2004).
In a concept map ideas or concepts and their relationships are depicted in
form of diagrams with concepts enclosed in circles and boxes and their relationship
shown with the help of lines connecting them together (Novak & Canas, 2008). One
such concept map example is shown in Figure 3.4.2.1 below.
Figure 3.4.2.1: A concept map showing the features of concept map and the
relationships between them. Such a concept map is read from top to bottom (Novak
& Canas, 2008).
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The benefits of using a concept map for analysis of qualitative research data
is that the underlying concepts or ideas that are indentified can be organized
graphically with important concepts placed in top to down layout and also cross
linking to other concepts which gives the diagram a multidimensional feature. Such a
diagram provides a helicopter view of the data and also helps in understanding the
interlink between all the concepts thus helping in the analysis after and more
effectively.
3.5 Methodological Limitations
One of the biggest limitations faced by the sole qualitative approach adopted
by the research is the fact that the conclusion will not have concrete supporting
numbers behind them. However, this limitation is more of a good to have addition to
the research as it research deals with thought and behavioural aspect of the
individuals dealing with development of etraining modules at work place and not any
activities whose performance can be counted or recorded in numbers.
Braun & Clarke (2006) states that, one of disadvantages of using the thematic
approach for a research lies in its biggest strength which is flexibility, since it allows
a varied range of analytical options which leads to far broader things that can be said
about data. Such a broad view does not help determining an important focus area and
result in a very generic conclusion. While there are other limitation of thematic
analysis related to how the analysis in conducted and how the themes are identified
from the data, its advantages recommended by many researchers like Braun &
Clarke (2006) and Aronson (1994) suits the best for this research.
The research also makes use of concept maps to create a framework of the
concepts and the interlinking between them although this method is seen to be very
beneficial there are few limitations which Zeilik, cited in Eppler, 2006.
They are not easily implemented, one need good amount of training.
They are too subjective to the view of the researcher.
Tutors take time to evaluate them.
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They look very complicated and may not help too much in cases where there
are multiple cross linking which makes them difficult to analyse.
Having considered all the methodological limitations and knowing the
advantages of other methodologies it can be said that, no matter how well optimised
the methodology that one selects, the success of research will be still dependent
various other aspect like literature review, source from which data is collected and
how well does the researcher stick to the methodology used. Braun & Clarke, cited
in Holloway & Todres, 2006 and quotes that:
―What is important is choosing a method that is appropriate to your research
question, rather than falling victim to „methodolatry‟, where you are committed to
method rather than topic/content or research questions.‖
3.6 Ethical Considerations
In order to undertake this research, it is required that there is direct
interaction learners and understand their views and feedback. In this process of data
collection utmost importance will be given to the respect to the beliefs, feelings and
point of view of the individuals involved. The data will be collected from a present
operating company, and hence will be kept confidential in all aspects.
All the conducted surveys and interviews that will be recorded, after
which a transcript will be created and shared with the interviewees and the source
company. All the research and data collection methods will adhere to the highest
ethical standards possible.
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Chapter 4: Findings and Discussions
4.1 Introduction
This chapter tries to find the results and the findings of this study, based
on this chapter the research conclusion and recommendation will be derived which
forms a part of the next chapter 5. All the literature review and the data collection
activities that have been done and elaborated in the past 5 chapters are reviewed here
and analyzed further. As mentioned earlier the research make use of qualitative data
analysis approach, the data was collected by conducting interviews of 8 etraining
managers at ICICI Prudential and insurance and banking firm in India. There were
11 questions asked to all the 8 interviewee the interview questionnaire script can be
found in Appendix A. The interviews were recorded digitally and then a transcript
for the interview was developed a sample of the transcribed interview can be found
in Appendix B.
The data from the interviews were then analysis with the help of
thematic analysis in which concept map for the data which is a diagrammatic
description of the relationships between various concepts or themes was represented.
The thematic analysis was done with the help of stage wise process as used by Peng
and Nunes (2010), the steps conducted as below:
Step 1: All the data from the interviews were first organized in a more logical form.
A document was created which collated the answers each of the questions of all the 8
interviewee together. The document which had answers of all interviewee to
question 1 was listed below the question and the same for all the questions. Such a
logical grouping of the data helped enormously in further analysis.
Step 2: The next step was to perform data coding which was done by indentifying
repeating keywords, phrases and patterns with the data. So any repeating patterns
where then listed together which helped for the next step.
Step 3: Once the coded data was made available the same was mapped with the
research objectives and the areas in which further analysis will help in answering the
research questions. The sort listed concepts or idea were grouped in themes and sub
themes.
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Step 4: These themes and subthemes were then reviewed and remapped with the
data again to identify the relationships among them and other the areas which relate
to them. This relationship was then depicted in a concept map which can be found in
the Appendix B.
Step 5: What follows is the step 5, i.e. the report of the thematic analysis and the
finding from the concept map and the relationship derived from them.
4.2 Interview Findings and Discussions
For this research purpose it was decided that the analysis finding and the
discussion be presented other that is together with the themes as it would help in
presenting the finding and its corresponding discussion in a way that links the data
analysis, findings and the discussion raised from the finding together. Such a flow
would help in creating present better understanding of the concepts being discussed.
The themes that were identified from the analysis made of the data from the
interviews and the relationships with the each other helps to derive a possible answer
to the research question. The themes and their sub themes identified are as follows.
Theme 1: ETraining Manager
1.1: Manager’s responsibilities
1.2: Manager’s attitude
Theme 2: ETraining Development
2.1: Varied etraining products
2.2: ID considering inputs from trainee feedback
2.3: Employee part of product development
2.4: Barriers
Theme 3: Trainee feedback mechanism
Theme 4: ETraining and trainee satisfaction evaluation
Theme 5: Trainee (employee)
5.1: Trainees responsibilities
5.2: Trainees attitude
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Although it can be seen that there were other aspects that formed a part of the
data the same were filtered and not included in order to maintain a focus on the topic
in discussion as the target was to look at data relevant to the research and one which
will help in answering the research question.
4.2.1 Theme 1: ETraining Manager
The etraining manager formed the epicenter of the discussion and also
the source of the data of the research. All the aspects about etraining and employee
satisfaction from the etraining were described from the point of view of all the 8
interviewees who were part of the etraining development and management team at
ICICI Prudential. It can be easily seen that for any organization it’s the training and
development managers who initiates any or introduces etraining as a mode of
training. Any organization big or small have to train their staff at some point,
whether it is the new staff to be trained on the operations or a new product or change
in the organizational strategy that needs to be delivered to the existing staff. It is the
training manager that who indentifies the areas which need training and then decides
the best strategy to deliver the training. All the decision right from knowing what is
to be trained to who is to be trained and how to be trained is taken by the etraining
manager. Hence the work profile or responsibility and his attitude towards etraining,
trainees, satisfaction of trainees or need for evaluating the performance is of extreme
importance in a study like this one which looks at what factors contribute to the
success of etraining and specially employee satisfaction. It can be easily expected
that this theme will have a relationship with most of the themes that has been
indentified for the study. Let us look at the 2 most important sub themes:
4.2.1.1 Manager’s responsibilities
Each interviewee was asked about what their normal day’s routine at work
was and what responsibilities did they serve as a part of the job profile. All the
interviewee planned their daily activities differently and performed various activities
like attending meeting, communications, addressing to urgent issues, MIS analysis,
content development review, administrative and other documentation and reporting
tasks.
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After having looked at such wide range of tasks and including
ones which are not directly attached to etraining development it is apparent that the
core etraining development task will be given very less amount of time. It is also
interesting to note that almost all of the interviewees mentioned a schedule that did
not involve a task to look at the need of training or what kind of training is needed
for the employees. This can be seen as a part of the strategy where the need is
highlighted either periodically, however even then there was no consideration given
to any task that looks at existing content or etraining development with the
perspective of whether they are in line with the needs of the employees. Although
one interviewee 3 mentions that one of the activities he performs is ―Identify new
training requirements‖, which does say that efforts are made however he does not
mention whether this activity perform daily, monthly or randomly.
All the interviewee also mentioned whole wide responsibilities that they serve like
interview 1 said:
―I m responsible for 3 major things:
1) Content development for all the verticals.
2) MIS and analytics, all the productivity related reports, observations etc which
is another responsibility.
3) ELearning‖
Interview 2 said:
―At the start of the year there is a defined architecture, which is based on 3 criteria’s:
1) The function of the domain must have knowledge.
2) Need based knowledge.
3) Good to have knowledge‖
Interview 3 said:
―See there are 2 sets of training divisions that we have
1) Page training division
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2) Complete learning and development which is for the managerial training
program.‖
Again it has been seen that not all the responsibilities of the managers at ICICI
Prudential are directly concerning etraining courseware development rather more
generic training related. It can be thought that ICICI Prudential as an employer or the
training and development team are not inclined towards etraining development and
look at as one of the domains which a part of organizing and managing training as a
whole. However this is not the case as further in the discussion where the
interviewees were asked about the kind of etraining solutions that they develop, the
response of as mentioned below.
Interviewee 1 said: ―yes we do use different types of etraining products.‖
Interviewee 2 said: ―there are different products for the different needs. For eg if I
have a certification training program which is mandatory to be taken but I don’t have
an interesting content, then I may have some gaming activities and simulations‖
Interviewee 7 said: ―at times a role based, game based or simulation based‖
This does say that the etraining and development team are involved in a lot of
etraining development. In such a scenario it can be concluded that the managers
work profile and the responsibilities they serve are not dedicated towards etraining
development and hence there is a possibilities that most crucial aspects like need of
training and employee satisfaction get lost in the long To-do list that the etraining
managers possess. This can also be validated from Gray et al. (2004) findings in his
study where he interviews a few managers and found that that among the varied
management approaches that were highlighted one of the approach was to use a
fulltime manager in order to overlook and coordinate between the learners and
developers.
4.2.1.2 Manager’s attitude
Another subtheme for the etraining manager is seen to be the attitude of the
Manager towards training, etraining, employee satisfaction and benefits of etraining.
It was seen that most managers attitudes towards training and etraining as whole was
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similar, when asked about whether they thinks etraining has an upper hand to
classroom training the below mentioned was the response:
Interviewee 1: ―I would say it depends on the audience.‖
Interviewee 6: ―I can only teach skill on the etraining, I can do behavioural training
only in the classroom.‖
Interviewee 7: ―depends on if it is a skill based training or behavioural training, if it’s
behavioural it has to be classroom, if it’s skilled then etraining.‖
When asked about their views on what is provides more return on investment and
leads to better employee satisfaction the interviewees said:
Interviewee 8 said: ―etraining will be beneficial most of the times because of the
geography that India has it helps you to reach out to people though the connectivity
remains a challenge even now, however the speed is better‖
Interviewee 5 said: ―etraining any day.‖
Interviewee 2 said: ―ROI definitely etraining is effective if you talk about
satisfaction then classroom training.‖
Interviewee 4 said: ―Trainee satisfaction is more effective when I talk about
classroom training because; in etraining some where I am not able to measure the
satisfaction level as I am not able to capture the feedback.‖
It is clearly seen from the above response that the managers at ICIC Prudential look
at using a more blended approach when it comes to providing training as whole. This
shows that they do not favour or are not confident with etraining for all kinds of
training needs; they do feel that personal touch which classroom training provides is
important even when most they found etraining delivering more return on the
investment as compared to classroom training this is exactly what Gray et al. (2004)
suggests that etraining programmes should make use of blending approach rather
than is the technology to deliver all the training. With regards to employee
satisfaction most found etraining delivering better than classroom training. It can be
said that most managers found etraining to be more effective since they thought the
employee satisfaction and ROI are better delivered in this mode.
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When asked about their views on whether employee satisfaction can lead to
improved operational efficiency and eventually the company’s growth the
interviewees had to say the below mentioned:
Interviewee 1 said: ―Oh yes most certainly because a satisfied employee whether
through training or by policy is always beneficial for our organization and that has
been our observation as well that if he or she is looking forward to suit the training
inputs than he or she is more connected to work, adds more enthusiasm towards
work puts in lot of energy around it, eventually getting better results and then it is a
cycle, it’s a positive cycle for his growth eventually connecting to branch and the
organization.‖
Interviewee 2 said: ―Yes it is. Every training that we do would have certain kind of
quantitative measure in terms of improving product training parameter. If for
example I m training to fix a particular problem of a person who doesn’t have
closing skills would expect the closing skills in terms of higher appointment to late
closures, from the employee who has undergone the training, So we try to measure
that, and hence say that every training has a lighter effect that we see in our
employee.‖
Interviewee 8 said: ―employee satisfaction is definitely important.‖
This says that most of the managers do think that employee satisfaction is of extreme
importance and can definitely impact on the employee’s performance. This states
that most managers have very high expectations from etraining and the do believe
that the organization will be benefited if an employee is satisfied with the learning
delivered to them this is further testified by Schooley et al. (2009) who believes that
improved employee performance do have a positive impact on the business success.
However when asked about what is given a higher importance while development of
etraining modules, is it cost or employee satisfaction or mode of delivery the
interviewees said:
Interviewee 6 said: ―It’s a mix and match that we have to do. Important factor is
time‖
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Interviewee 3 said: ―mode of training first. Development time. Training satisfaction.
Cost also plays a role, ROI in creating a module. Budget and time both is important
in creating a course.‖
Interview 2 said: ―mode of training…Importance…Satisfaction‖
Most of the above responses are varied and there no thumb rule that is followed
however there were others who did mention preference to what a learner needs
which background to be the first priority. The Interviewee said:
―Learner, learning requirements what kind of background he comes from, his current
role, responsibilities, his competency level, what is the ideal competency level and
what is his competency level. Budget allocated for this particular module. Learning
outcomes‖
It can be concluded that most managers found to be having high trust on etraining
when it comes to delivering learning which can improve employee performance and
eventually impact the company’s growth. They also thought the when it comes to
ROI and employee satisfaction etraining is better than classroom training and
classroom training is considered to be an important part in training which Schooley
et al. (2009) also agrees in her study where she mentions with etraining the company
can expect upto 69% of ROI. But when it comes to development of etraining mode
of training, time and then employee satisfaction is considered as the priority order.
The training manager’s responsibilities and attitude towards etraining and employee
satisfaction does seem to have an impact on the central aspect of the research which
is employee satisfaction as it’s the manager’s who device process and perform
activities which consider employee satisfaction as importance. This is validated from
the interview response.
4.2.2 Theme 2: ETraining Development
The next theme identified was the etraining development activities at ICICI
Prudential; although this theme seems to be too generic one is only a broader theme
enclosing other specific subthemes that are listed below:
Varied etraining products
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ID considering inputs from trainee feedback
Employee part of product development
Barriers
The theme was indentified after grouping a few etraining development related
themes together, it would just organize theme better. Since the research objective is
to understand what are the critical factors for the success of etraining and what is the
role of employee satisfaction in specific it is all the more required that we look at
etraining development in general.
The first questions that come across are what kind of etraining development
activities are performed, what solutions are developed, what all goes into the
development and does it take the employees views or involvement. It will also be
interesting to know what kinds of barriers were faced at ICICI Prudential. With this
target in mind the interviewees were asked about the processes followed to develop
etraining courseware and based on the answers that were collected the following
themes that relate to the research were shortlisted.
4.2.2.1 Varied etraining products
When asked about the kind of etraining products developed at ICICI
Prudential the interviewee’s said the below mentioned:
Interviewee 3 said: ―As per my observation if the people see good amount of variety
in products, eventually the interest of the people improves. They do not equally
respond to all the products, what hooks them on is the proper storyline, a game based
kind of interactivity, it’s easy enough for them to get into it, however challenging
enough is for them to scratch their game, so it’s challenging to find out what they
want.‖
Interviewee 7 said: ―If i have a product for which a subject detail is to be done, then
my course has to be interactive, a stronger user interface. And if the course is feature
specific then, may be I think about the product features then there is an assessment at
the end.‖
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And when asked whether trainees responded differently to different solutions,
interview 4 said: ― it depends on how exciting the product is. We have seen programs
where they are given certain thematic modules, story based and gaming, people had
a good response to that.‖
This says that the training and development team is of the opinion that a variety in
the kind of courses brings excitement and interest among the employees.
Understanding this they target at giving a wide range of courses from game based to
story based courses. This says that the development team does consider the likes of
the employees while designing the courses, which is in a way being sensitive
towards the needs of the employees. This further confirmed by the below response
from 2 other interviewees.
―it depends on the age of the learner. Young crowd is excited for game based
courses. Senior management people won’t like those kind of hanky panky stuff;
instead they like serious content presentation.‖
―product definitely changes as per the time, and most of the etraining is game based.
Its concept based, I am talking about the vertical unlimited product. How to make the
product interesting, in which content of the product also plays an important role. It
shldnt be monotonous, some interactions should be there.‖
4.2.2.2 ID considering inputs from trainee feedback
It was found that the development team did incorporate a lot
of feedback from the learners in from of inputs from employees considered while
instructional design development of the courseware. When asked whether the team
looked at employee feedback while devising the ID strategy this is what the
interviewee said:
Interviewee 2: ―For a particular segment whom the program has to be developed we
have a 360degree feedback session, by asking them, asking their supervisor, asking
their juniors, and asking their peers as in what kind of skill set is required, so when
we have a 5 minutes of understanding as in what all is exactly expected, we workout
through knowledge we have something called as ISM instructional strategy matrix,
that gets designed.‖
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The same was confirmed by interview 5 who mentioned:
―360 degree kind of approach is taken when it comes to tele calling, what do I mean
by that, is speaking to the target audience, and depending upon the kind of problem,
a problem statement is designed, once the questionnaire is designed then the tele
calling is designed, we will s peak to the end participant who will get the training,
and if he is a superior we will also speak to his subordinate and also to his reporting
boss. And that’s what completes the 360 degree cycle.‖
This again confirms the fact that the development team has set processes which take
a full feedback from the target learners well before they plan designing the
instruction design strategy for the course. One can say that for the team at ICICI
prudential the target learners and their requirements do form a great importance and
they do so with an expectation that if the courses are based on the employees inputs
it is more likely that they will appeal to them. This is also validated by Schooley et
al. (2009) who mentions that employees feel valued if their feedback is given
importance.
4.2.2.3 Employee part of product development
One of the other aspects that investigates the use of employee
interaction while etraining development is whether or not the developers involve
employees in the process of designing and development. When asked about this the
interviews said that:
Interviewee 3: ―we have a feedback mechanism that is an online portal, where the
user enters his feedback in terms of usability, interface, relevance of subject, the ease
with which he could complete it. We also have module by module feedbacks. So one
product acts as a baseline for creating a new product.‖
However this was the closest that an employee gets to be a part of the development
process and there is seen to have to information conveyed by the interviewee. Thus it
can be concluded that although the employee inputs are considered in instructional
design development, there is no instances where the employees are physically
present with the development team which can pose a negative impact on the
effectiveness, this is in agreement to what Gray et al. (2004) highlights that problems
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may arise is there is exist a lack of face-to-face interaction with the learners which
can impact the success of development and management of etraining.
4.2.2.4 Barriers
The discussion of the etraining and it success is incomplete
without including discussion about the barriers that it faces. When asked about the
difficulties faced by etraining at ICICI Prudential this is what the interviewee’s had
to say:
Interviewee 3 said: ―we do have issues pertaining to BW, and connectivity issue is
their part of lie because it’s not only in accessing the etraining solutions but it’s also
when they access other applications. They know it’s an issue for them, but they will
still have to stay with it.‖
Interviewee 5 said: ―infrastructure issue. Not that much of cultural issues.‖
Interviewee 1 said: ―we do face issues, like content issue, readability issues, systems
are not able to handle the load, technology barrier, BW issues. Some people are not
very technology savvy, for them to get to the computers is a big challenge. We
avoid too many hours of sitting.‖
The only strong barrier that comes across from the conversation is the – Bandwidth
issue, which is an infrastructure issue. This findings differs from what Leary &
Berge (2007) found in their study that it’s only small organisations that face
infrastructural issues, and not ICICI Prudential which is a large company. Such
problems will have very bad effect on employees as they can put off by a slow
loading course. There are other issues like content issues and computer operating
difficulties faced by a few employees. However there was no mention of issues like
employee find difficulty operating or understanding high computer interaction
courses like the game based courses. One can say that it might be because the team
have been successful enough to develop courses what appeal to the target audience
are at their difficulty level or they are not open to any such happenings. So one
cannot really say that employees at ICICI Prudential do not face issues with courses
that they do not understand or find difficult to operate as there is no data backing up
the conclusion. Having spoken about the current barriers of etraining it is important
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to consider what Zhang (2003) study on the future of etraining this millennium is
will see all these barriers crossed with better infrastructure and technological
development.
4.2.3 Theme 3: Trainee feedback mechanism
One of the most important aspects that will be important for this
research is whether there exists any trainee feedback mechanism at ICICI Prudential
and if there is one is it helpful in the development process. With this view in mind
the interviewees were question whether such process is used at ICICI Prudential. The
responses recorded are as mentioned below:
Interviewee 2 said: ―we have a feedback mechanism that is the push mail, and when
it comes to organizational learning we have something called as K-Quotient, we
have also given telephonic support where we have in house call centre where we
have booked couple of seats, where we expect that within 15-20 days all the
employees must take up the etraining program. Generally what happens is people are
not comfortable writing a mail, in that case they can just call & get the query
resolved & get on, so that was an additional support we had given while conducting
a K-Quotient program. Otherwise it’s an email support that is always available.‖
Interviewee 8 said: ―we have feedback mechanism. Feedbacks vary, when there are
skill building exercises then they prefer classroom training, and featured oriented
there etraining.‖
This does say that there are processes in place for employees to provide their
feedback; however the same needs the employee to proactively send an email or
make a phone call. This although serves the purpose does ask a lot from the
employee, especially when they are not really happy with something about the
training program. It will be the most motivated employees who would go out of the
way and put in efforts to send an email or make a phone. It would have been more
fruitful if the training development and management team created surveys or make
proactive efforts to get this employee feedback which is what even Gray et al. (2004)
found in his study that large projects did give emphasis on collection of feedback
from users with the help of tools which automatically distribute and collect survey
feedback from users.
The Role of Employee Satisfaction in the Success of ETraining within a Company in India
51
This was about getting the feedback from employees, however what is done about
the feedback one of the interviewee comments that:
―It’s a mix of positive and negative feedback. Negative feedback we are very
particular not to repeat it. The feedbacks are like content is very interesting, I was
not bored. If you are able to solve doubts if you are able to get that knowledge than
you can say that yes, etraining has been successful. An if the user is not satisfied the
content is confusing then the etraining is not successful.‖
This says that the employee views are considered in future developments; especially
negative feedbacks are seen to be repeated. It is interesting to know that there an
understanding within the etraining managers that if the employee is able to absorb
the learning being delivered it is considered to be successful and if there is a negative
feedback from the employees it is considered to be a failure.
However there is no other interviewee who confirms this data it is nevertheless
important information for this study. If we go by what this interviewee says then it
can be concluded that employee satisfaction is regarded as a deciding factor
determining the success of etraining.
4.2.4 Theme 4: ETraining and trainee satisfaction evaluation
One theme or aspect that is important from the research point of view
and one that was indentified in the interviews conducted was how the evaluation of
etraining and trainee satisfaction done at ICICI Prudential. There have been many
authors who have highlighted the importance of etraining evaluation, one of which is
Greenagel (2002) who concludes in his study that etraining is has a very high
development cost and hence measuring the effectiveness is as important as
measuring cost saving. Considering etraining and employee satisfaction is important
and beneficial is one and evaluating the training in order to understand if the same is
being delivered is other. The evaluation results states whether the efforts made
towards making sure that the etraining is successful and that employee is satisfied
with the training. It serves as the most important feedback for future developments
and inputs for etraining strategies to follow. It is also considered important by many
researchers like Faherty (2002), who states that etraining evaluation is extremely
important for corporates in order to retrain or raise their competitive advantage.
The Role of Employee Satisfaction in the Success of ETraining within a Company in India
52
When asked whether there exist any such process for evaluation of etraining as a
whole and employee satisfaction in specific the below mentioned was commented by
the trainee.
Interviewee 2 said: ―Effectiveness is measured to a limited extent, immediately when
the training is conducted. But if he is using in his day-to-day life we don’t have an
mechanism. We don’t have very active follow-up me mechanism.‖
Interviewee 3 said: ―very difficult to quantify, challenge across industry.
Performance improves of the sales guy could be because of 10 other things. There
might be a new contest that is happening for which he is performing. There are no
specific factors which could be measured, due to which they go out of the box and
perform.‖
Interviewee 7: ―it’s a challenge. While in training people say that yes it was good, I
learned this I learned that but when they go back to implement the same not all is
implemented. Even if 30-40% is implemented that is a big one I would say.‖
It is clear from above that there exists no process or mechanism which evaluates the
performance of etraining or employee satisfaction at ICICI Prudential. It is seen as a
challenge considering the work profile and dynamics of the profession they are into.
This can be a major drawback as it is difficult to evaluate whether the time and
money being invested in etraining is serving any purpose this is verified by
Researchers like Schooley et al. (2009) who have highlighted the importance of
evaluation of etraining performance. However minor attempts are made with a view
to understand the performance from course to course basis which can be concluded
from the below mentioned response from one the interviewee.
―It happens with program specific. Trainer tries to keep in touch after the training
through SMS n all.‖
It can be concluded that overall there seems to be no or rather very minimum efforts
made to evaluate the performance of etraining and specially the impact of employee
satisfaction which can led to a situation where the company will not able to justify
the investment made. This seems to be in line with the argument made by Grant &
Danziger (2005),that if the company does not measure certain quantifiable returns,
The Role of Employee Satisfaction in the Success of ETraining within a Company in India
53
then the cost of etraining can become uncontrolled one with no demonstrable returns.
Having said that it is important that we look back at an interviewee’s comment
mentioned earlier where it was said that:
―The feedbacks are like content is very interesting, I was not bored. If you are able to
solve doubts if you are able to get that knowledge than you can say that yes,
etraining has been successful. An if the user is not satisfied the content is confusing
then the etraining is not successful.‖
This is says that although there is no specific data that is seen as an indicator of
success for etraining, there is an general attitude among training managers that if
there is positive feedback from trainees than etraining is successful or it has failed.
The feedback that is received then becomes either a benchmark or a challenge to
overcome in future development. One can say that as there exist no mechanism to
evaluate the etraining results, we can rely on the feedback from companies like
ICICI Prudential who have been making use of etraining mode of training deliver
since a long time, the same is in agreement with what Strother (2002) concludes in his
study which tries to assess the effectiveness of corporate etraining.
4.2.5 Theme 5: Trainee (employee)
The epicenter for the any training program be it etraining or classroom
is the trainee for whom the training is being delivered. It is natural that everything
about the training form the need to level of difficultly, knowledge and content
delivered, schedule and duration are optimized as per the needs and background of
the trainee. The trainee becomes a very important element for any research which is
targeted at understanding the aspects that impact the success of etraining. The trainee
is the sole judge of the effectiveness of the training, if the content being delivered is
easy to understand or being delivered in a way that its understood, if there is enough
interactivity in the program that can keep the employee engaged and hooked on till
the end of the course and if the trainee absorbs the training and implements the same
at his work place the training can be termed as a success.
Literature review done for this research did say that most of the times trainings
etraining development either do not consider the trainee or fail to deliver to the
trainee expectation. This research tries to understand this important aspect form the
The Role of Employee Satisfaction in the Success of ETraining within a Company in India
54
point of view of the training managers at ICICI Prudential although it would have
been extremely helpful to have it heard from the horse’s mouth, i.e. the trainee
himself. This decision as mentioned earlier was made on the recommendation of
training and development team at ICICI Prudential. The data acquired with the help
of the interviewed was analyzed and 2 important subthemes were indentified which
will be discussed further.
4.2.5.1 Trainee’s responsibilities
One most important and revealing aspect that came out of the
data analysis was how much impact does the trainee’s responsibilities and job
profiles has on first their attitude towards etraining and second on the success of
etraining as a whole. This can be seen in what a few interviewees’ had commented;
Interviewee 4: ―Today with so much of chaos at the field, for a trainee to implement
it (learning from training) into and see the result takes a little longer time. I learnt
today I implement tomorrow the result is not their attitude, audience doesn’t have the
patience to wait for the result.‖
Interviewee 8: ―there are challenges, they (trainees) don’t take up classroom training
willingly even for etraining we have to really follow up. Because the nature of the
business is that we don’t have enough bandwidth.‖
What can be seen from the responses is that there is a sense of understanding among
the managers that the employees who are subjected to the training have a very
challenging work environment which is uncertain and dynamic. In such scenarios
training and learning does tend to take a backseat as core business functions are seen
as the priority at any given moment. The training management team understands this
and tries to make up by making efforts from their end towards following up with the
trainee’s to make sure they undertake the training courses.
4.2.5.2 Trainee’s attitude
The second most important theme that was indentified from
the data and one which can be really helpful in understanding employee’s
perspective of etraining is their attitude towards etraining.
The Role of Employee Satisfaction in the Success of ETraining within a Company in India
55
One the most revealing and detailed response that was recorded is given below.
―…neither people have lot of inclination towards training or sending the team
members for training nor are they ready to read and spend some time with
themselves and with the content to understand that it would benefit their branches.
Hence we observe that there is an initial resistance for releasing this training,
however if they release it, or detach from their supervisor say, if the employee goes
through lot of handy tools which he or she can apply in their business then the
person gets overly joyed and convinced that, oh all these things I was not aware that
you guys gave is eventually helping me to solve my problems with which all these
days I was struggling with.
So it’s a moment of truth that they have to experience then only, they get inclined to
send people for the subsequent training programs.‖
This response states that not all the trainees are inclined towards etraining initially
and there is seen to be more initial resistance towards taking the courses. However
there have been instances when employees have came back to the managers and
provided positive feedback after having taken the course. After seeing what such
training courses had to offer them the employees are seen to have become more
inclined towards etraining.
Once such attitude issues raised by one the interviewee’s is as mentioned:
―Generally it’s like from the top management that the training is to be done, hence it
has to be done and the trainees have to do it. Because mostly in the sales team
nobody thinks they need any training because it’s not a skilled job, no high skills are
required. They think what they are doing is right.‖
Such issues where the employee does not consider that they need training act as a
serious threat to etraining and its success rate. There is not much any manager can do
in order to overcome such challenge except to keep educating such employees about
the benefits of etraining. It can be concluded that employee’s attitude towards
etraining is seen to be very crucial aspect impacting the success of etraining this can
be validated from Gray et al. (2004) conclusion of the study that for etraining to be
successful companies have to transform their attitude to etraining and adapt to it.
The Role of Employee Satisfaction in the Success of ETraining within a Company in India
56
4.3 Concept Map
Wallace & Mintzes (2011) quotes that ―concept mapping offers a valid and
potentially useful technique for documenting and exploring conceptual change in
biology.‖ Considering the benefits of using concept maps we tried to
diagrammatically display the themes and the relationship between in form of a
concept map. The output of the exercise was the below mentioned concept map,
which helped in determining which themes or subthemes had an impact on the other
themes or subthemes. This relationship diagram helped in first understanding and
then organising it in graphical form which was very fruitful for the data analysis and
report writing stages.
The Role of Employee Satisfaction in the Success of ETraining within a Company in India
57
Figure 4.3.1: Concept Map derived from actual data analysis.
Supervises
Trainee
Satisfaction Etraining and trainee
satisfaction evaluation
Etraining Manager
Trainee (employee)
Etraining development
Trainee responsibilities
Manager’s responsibilities
Manager’s attitude
Trainee feedback
mechanism
Trainee attitude
Varied etraining products
ID considering inputs from
trainee feedback
Employee part of product
development
Barriers
Success of
etraining
Part of
Influences
Influences
Part of
Part of
Part of
Part of
Part of
Part of
Part of
Defines has impact on
Helps in
Has impact on
Influences
Influences
Impacts
Impacts
Impacts
Impacts
Defines
The Role of Employee Satisfaction in the Success of ETraining within a Company in India
58
Chapter 5: Conclusion and Further Research
5.1 Introduction
This chapter provides the final conclusions derived from the data analysis performed
in the previous chapter. In the previous chapter we used thematic analysis and
concepts maps to look at the data collected from the interviews, the finding of the
analysis will help us derive the final conclusions. In order to do that we need to
revisit the research objectives set out in the beginning of the paper, the research
objective were:
The underlying objective of this research was to: “Understand the relationship of
employee satisfaction and success of etraining within an organisation in India.”
The research questions were:
1. What are the most crucial aspects of etraining that define its effectiveness?
2. What is the role of employee satisfaction in the success of etraining?
3. Do employees respond better to etraining which gives utmost importance’s
towards understanding what do they need?
4. Does employee satisfaction lead to improved business performance and
eventually impact profit margins?
This chapter makes an attempt to use the finding from the data analysis to first find
answers the research question and then make conclusions to check if the research
objective was fulfilled.
5.2 Summary of Findings
In order to summaries the findings in a way that will help us answer the research
questions we need to look that answers to each questions individually. What follows
is summary made which try to answer each question individually.
Question 1: What are the most crucial aspects of etraining that define its
effectiveness?
Conclusion:
It was found that having a blended approach towards the overall training to be
delivered is beneficial, as etraining is seen to provide the return on investment and
The Role of Employee Satisfaction in the Success of ETraining within a Company in India
59
employee satisfaction better than classroom training, while classroom training helps
in providing a the much needed human touch. From the response of most of the
managers it can be concluded that employee satisfaction form a very important
aspect that delivers the effectiveness. The training and development team at ICICI
Prudential Pvt. Ltd. strives towards providing a variety of courses and have found
that they bring excitement and interest among the employees, thus it can be said that
avoiding monotony in etraining courseware development does help improving the
effectiveness.
Another important aspect that is revealed in the analysis was that insuring employee
feedback is considered while designing and development of the instructional design
strategy helps in creating solutions which employees will be satisfied with which
will impact towards the effectiveness. Employee attitude is also seen as a major
indicator that defines the effectiveness, it was seen that the employees at ICICI
Prudential Pvt. Ltd. had initial resistance towards etraining but with efforts from the
training management team when this barrier was crossed the employee started
showing inclination towards etraining, hence it can be also concluded that proper
follow up from the training management team etraining can be successful.
Question 2: What is the role of employee satisfaction in the success of etraining?
There was a unanimous consensus among the managers that employee satisfaction is
of extreme importance towards the success of etraining, hence we can concluded that
employee satisfaction do led to the success of etraining. Having said that it was also
seen that this is a general expectation and thinking and there was no supporting data
which the managers can backup this thought process. The only one thing that can be
considered as an evaluation was the kind of feedback that were received from
employees. If there is positive feedback etraining was considered as successful and if
not than the etraining has failed. If we go by this logic then it can be concluded that
employee satisfaction is a major driver of success for etraining.
The analysis also points towards a few activities that are proven to have led to
employee satisfaction, there are:
A good mix and match of types courses like game based, story line based etc.
The Role of Employee Satisfaction in the Success of ETraining within a Company in India
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Making sure that employee negative feedback is not repeated.
Considering employees inputs in the designing and development phase.
Another aspect that can be summarised is that with regards to employee satisfaction
etraining delivering was found to have a better hand over the traditional classroom
training.
Question 3: Do employees respond better to etraining which gives utmost
importance’s towards understanding what do they need?
Conclusion: Yes employees to respond better to etraining when it gives utmost
importance to what they need. This can be concluded from the responses from the
Manager’s who have highlighted that when they looked at providing a blend of
courses, incorporate employee feedback and made other efforts to develop
courseware as per employees preferences they have responded positively. However
it can also be concluded that even if there are efforts made towards optimising the
courses to employee needs they have been instances where employee’s initial
resistance have created a barrier.
Question 4: Does employee satisfaction lead to improved business performance and
eventually impact profit margins?
Conclusion: Although most of the managers do think that employee satisfaction is of
extreme importance and can definitely impact on the employee’s performance and
that the organisation will be benefited from this, they themselves agree that there is
no data backing up this conclusion. It was also seen that there exist lack of measures
or process that evaluate the performance of etraining and whether a satisfied
employee performs better than an unsatisfied employee.
Few other conclusions:
From the data analysis we can very well conclude that there exists a clear cut bias
towards etraining as compared with classroom training with regards to ROI and
employee satisfaction deliver. Etraining is preferred mode of training but classroom
training to bring in the personal touch to the trainings. It was sent that infrastructural
The Role of Employee Satisfaction in the Success of ETraining within a Company in India
61
barriers form a larger part in issues that impact the success of etraining and one
which can upset the learner.
Having seen the conclusions formed for the individual research questions, we can
now attempt at the overall conclusion which can help us determine is the research
objective was met or not. The research objective was: “Understand the relationship
of employee satisfaction and success of etraining within an organisation in India.”
We can say that the research objective have been met largely as we can now say that
we have developed an understanding that there exist a strong relationship between
employee satisfaction and success of etraining within an organisation, however the
same cannot be backed up by actual data which would have been possible if ICICI
Prudential Pvt. Ltd. had devised a set process to evaluate the performance of
etraining and difference between the performance of a satisfied and an unsatisfied
employee.
5.3 Overall Limitations
The research met with two limitations which did have an impact on how much the
research questions could be answered and how much the research objective was
fulfilled.
The research was not able to interact or interview the employees at ICICI Prudential
Pvt. Ltd. this meant that there was no data which would have brought new insights
from the employee’s perspective. Having said that the data from the interviews of the
Managers at ICICI Prudential Pvt. Ltd. did serve a lot towards the research objective,
however one can state that the research could have been 100% complete at least from
the availability of data perspective.
The second most crucial limitation was the inability to get concrete data about the
performance of etraining and the difference of performance between and satisfied
and an unsatisfied employee. This data would have provided a good hypothesis and
would have made sealed a strong conclusion.
The Role of Employee Satisfaction in the Success of ETraining within a Company in India
62
5.4 Recommendations for Further Research
After having successfully completing the research it was found that there are a few
aspects or areas that ask for more detailed study further. These aspects or areas will
need future exploration and in-depth study.
One of the areas which need further research was towards exploring ways by which
etraining performance can be evaluated along with the performance when an
employee is satisfied and when not satisfied with etraining. This study will help in
understanding whether a satisfied employee performs better. Research in this area
will be really important for the corporate world as they will be able to develop and
organise more successful etraining programmes.
The other aspect that needs further exploration as well is in studying the employees
perspective towards etraining and whether do they really feel more attached to the
training if they are made keeping their inputs in mind. Although most organisations
developing etraining solutions for their employees will in some way of the other take
some inputs from their employees, it will be really important for the organisations
know whether there is worth investing time and effort towards understanding an
employee’s needs.
One minor aspect which does need further study is to understand whether etraining
managers who are responsible for the etraining development for a company need to
be dedicatedly working on development activities or also be a part of managing
training as a whole. This need comes across after knowing that etraining courseware
development process has many critical areas which need constant supervision by a
manager who needs to overlook at the process at every step in order to ensure high
success rate.
[Word Count: 19,081]
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Chapter 7: The Appendices
Appendix A–Interview Questionnaire for Evaluation
University of Sheffield University
Department of Information School
Pre Interview
Dear Sir/Madam,
My name is Sheetal Thawal and I am a postgraduate student in the Information
School at the University of Sheffield in the UK. The purpose of this interview is to
evaluate the Employee satisfaction of your company which in return will lead to the
success of the Etraining conducted in your company.
I take this opportunity to thank you for participating in this interview.
Before conducting these interviews, let me assure you that the questions asked
during the interview will not be directly related to anything sensitive. For data
collection purpose I will be using a software-voice recorder during the interview.
The recording would be accessed only by me for my research purpose, and it will be
erased once the dissertation is completed in September 2011.
The results of this discussion will be treated as confidential and your name will be
made anonymous. If the company wishes then I would share the research report so
that they can evaluate the analysis and hence upgrade the training methods if wished
which would satisfy both the employees (trainees) and the company. I would also
create an executive summary of the entire research which might be useful for the
company.
Please do not hesitate to share your extensive experiences and options about the
interview questions with me.
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Interview Questions:
Section 1: General Questions
1.1 As Learning Development Manager of the Insurance department what is your
daily routine?
1.2 In your opinion is your employee satisfaction in the etraining you conduct
beneficial for the company’s growth?
Follow-up Question:
Does it improve the operational efficiency of the project?
Is your team supportive towards the etraining?
1.3 According to you what is more effective, the traditional classroom training or the
ETraining.
Trigger Question:
To be more specific in terms of Return on Investment (ROI) and employee
satisfaction?
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Section 2: ETraining products
2.1 What type of ETraining product do you usually develop?
Follow-up Question:
Do you develop same product for all etrainings or the product changes as per the
requirement of the ETraining. e.g.: CD-ROM, Game based, Multimedia
simulations…Etc.
Do the employees respond to the different ETraining products?
2.2 Do you use any Instructional Design Methodology? If so, does it consider inputs
of future trainee satisfaction?
Follow-up Question:
If Yes, please describe.
If No, please explain why not.
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2.3 Do you use any Project Management Methodology? If so, does it consider inputs
of future trainee satisfaction?
User Involvement
Workplace environment
Follow-up Question:
If Yes, please describe.
If No, please explain why not.
2.4 Do you ever face any issues while conducting ETraining? If so, does it consider
as inputs of future trainee satisfaction?
Follow-up Question:
Like whether the existing technology infrastructure can accomplish the training
goals?
Cultural issues where the demographics and psychographics may predispose them
against using computers at all?
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2.5 While developing an ETraining course what are the basic criteria’s you consider?
Follow-up Question:
Do you evaluate the development cost, or the trainee satisfaction or mode of
etraining?
Section 3: Trainee (Employee) Satisfaction
3.1 Do you conduct any specific measures to keep a check if the employee (trainee)
is satisfied with the etraining?
Follow-up Question:
If Yes, what is it that the employees liked the most about the ETraining as compared
to classroom training?
If No, what could be the specific reasons?
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3.2 According to you how successful are the trainees in implementing their action
plans?
Follow-up Question:
Did you personally support the trainees to implement the same after the etraining?
3.3 How do you evaluate the benefit of conducting the etraining?
Follow-up Question:
What specifically did the learners learn or be usefully reminded of?
What commitment have the learners made about the learning they are going to
implement on their return to work?
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Appendix B – Sample Interview Transcript
Section 1: General Questions
Interviewer: 1.1 As Learning Development Manager of the Insurance department
what is your daily routine?
Interviewee: ―I will have to tell you about my job profile, which will define my daily
routine. Part of head office I m responsible for 3 major things:
1) Content development for all the verticals.
2) MIS and analytics, all the productivity related reports, observations etc
which is another responsibility.
3) ETraining
These are the 3 major areas that I am responsible for my organization, so that in a
way defines my routine.
The first couple of hours in first half are primarily decided by some urgent important
work areas that I have, it could be related to MIS analysis etc. or at times it could be
related to content development delivery review, or it could be on ETraining depends
on what is the high priority on which the first 2 hrs get decided. Next section till
lunch is reviewing the Content development activities that are on. Post lunch
answering mails, because the mail rate in India, and particularly our company is
quiet high, if u are away from your desk for couple of hrs you have around 40 odd
mails to answer, so clearing then up and then again moving to checking on MIS
statuses, planning for next day, next week, and the final review of all these 3 i.e. MIS
productivity reports, content development between verticals and Etraining
development activities.‖
Interviewer: 1.2 In your opinion is your employee satisfaction in the etraining you
conduct beneficial for the company’s growth?
Follow-up Question:
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Does it improve the operational efficiency of the project?
Is your team supportive towards the etraining?
Interviewee: “Oh yes most certainly because a satisfied employee whether through
training or by policy is always beneficial for our organization and that has been our
observation as well that if he or she is looking forward to suit the training inputs
than he or she is more connected to work, adds more enthusiasm towards work puts
in lot of energy around it, eventually getting better results and then it is a cycle, it‟s
a positive cycle for his growth eventually connecting to branch and the organization.
Every survey or any book that I have read it always says a positive answer. However
in my organization if you are saying do I have any data to substantiate it, No I don‟t.
But my generic understanding is that a satisfied employee must be better
contributing to the project.
If you ask me that has been exactly my personal experience in the charge that I have
taken in the last 110-120 days. See one of the typical issues that we have found under
the name of multitasking people or the supervisors who are handling branches they
are the ones who release their team members for training. So what is the impetence
for one to release the team for training,
1) He should be naturally inclined towards the importance of training
2) Or he should understand what is in the offering and is it importance for his
team members to take up training and then take a call.
Now the problem is that both these things are not seem clearly in most of the cases,
neither people have lot of inclination towards training or sending the team members
for training nor are they ready to read and spend some time with themselves and
with the content to understand that it would benefit their branches. Hence we
observe that there is an initial resistance for releasing this training, however if they
release it, or detach from their supervisor say, if the employee goes through lot of
handy tools which he or she can apply in their business then the person gets overly
joyed and convinced that ,oh all these things I was not aware that you guys gave is
eventually helping me to solve my problems with which all these days I was
The Role of Employee Satisfaction in the Success of ETraining within a Company in India
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struggling with. So it‟s a moment of truth that they have to experience then only, they
get inclined to send people for the subsequent training programs.”
Interviewer: 1.3 According to you what is more effective, the traditional classroom
training or the ETraining.
Trigger Question:
To be more specific in terms of Return on Investment (ROI) and employee
satisfaction?
Interviewee: ―I would say it depends on the audience.
Like for example for the audience we have like the frontline sales team members they
are more inclined towards classroom training, interactivity, discussion , learning
sessions listening to people, visual effects etc. There is another set of audience who
is a little season then the mature audience; they are more inclined towards the
etraining due to the convenience of learning and they are themselves wise learning
these concepts. So we don‟t have a peer pressure to feel good or bad whether they
are able to understand the concepts or not so they would prefer etraining.
Our observation is been that the entry level employees are not generally very
comfortable with etraining. Subsequently they have to be mature to get on to the
curve to be able to get along with the etraining program. I believe that it would be
the case way we mostly because most of the academic orientation has never been
through learning through computers or something like that it has always been
through classroom training lectures and all. We do have a defined architecture for
the first 6 months which is a mix of classroom as well as etraining, and these are
compulsory programs so the employees have to undergo them, this way we train
them, make them comfortable to etraining. Etraining will be beneficial most of the
times because of the geography that India has it help you to reach out to people
though the connectivity remains a challenge even now, however the speed is better.
In this case the initial development cost, that is the infrastructure cost is the only
cost that has to be taken care of, otherwise it‟s a readily available platform on which
people can learn.
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That‟s more of physiological effect for the beginners of classroom training they are
still accumed to having a feeling if they have got something only when they see
people around, when they interact with them, that is what happens with most of us,
irrespective of the hierarchy. However with the limited time available with the
employee, and the infrastructure limitation that he may have the time, people are
getting more and more convinced about the benefits of etraining. At the same time
there are more and more new concepts, which are getting the trainees hooked on
and taking up etraining.‖
Section 2: ETraining products
Interviewer: 2.1What type of ETraining product do you usually develop?
Follow-up Question:
Do you develop same product for all etrainings or the product changes as per the
requirement of the ETraining. e.g.: CD-ROM, Game based, Multimedia
simulations…Etc.
Do the employees respond to the different ETraining products?
Interviewee: ―Yes we do use different types of etraining products. My personal
experience is that web based solutions was always appreciated by people, they liked
the change and the response rate improves. By this what I mean is that as per my
observation if the people see good amount of variety in products, eventually the
interest of the people improves. They do not equally respond to all the products,
what hooks them on is the proper storyline, a game based kind of interactivity, it‟s
easy enough for them to get into it, however challenging enough is for them to
scratch their game, so it‟s challenging to find out what they want.‖
Interviewer: 2.2 Do you use any Instructional Design Methodology? If so, does it
consider inputs of future trainee satisfaction?
Follow-up Question:
If Yes, please describe.
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If No, please explain why not.
Interviewee: ―Yes we do have methods:-
1) VOC-World Cup Customer
2) FGU-Focus Group Discussion
For a particular segment whom the program has to be developed we have a
360degree feedback session, by asking them, asking their supervisor, asking their
juniors, and asking their peers as in what kind of skill set is required, so when we
have a 5 minutes of understanding as in what all is exactly expected, we workout
through knowledge we have something called as ISM instructional strategy matrix,
that gets designed.
There are established methodologies like ADDIE, Assess Design Develop Implement
Evaluate. Blooms Taxonomy. These scientific tools are better understood by the
designer and it all depends on the time available for designing the content and which
would really apply.‖
Interviewer: 2.3 Do you use any Project Management Methodology? If so, does it
consider inputs of future trainee satisfaction?
User Involvement
Workplace environment
Follow-up Question:
If Yes, please describe.
If No, please explain why not.
Interviewee: ―We have not formalized any methodology as of now, however our
aspiration would be really to put that structure around. Based on the past
experience, wisdom, things that are available to you in terms of VOC, FGU and
ISM.‖
Interviewer: 2.4 Do you ever face any issues while conducting ETraining? If so, does
it consider as inputs of future trainee satisfaction?
The Role of Employee Satisfaction in the Success of ETraining within a Company in India
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Follow-up Question:
Like whether the existing technology infrastructure can accomplish the training
goals?
Cultural issues where the demographics and psychographics may predispose them
against using computers at all?
Interviewee: ―I have not come across cultural issues so far. There are certain
guidelines within which the content is developed so there are no religious sentiments
that get involved in the content development at all. It more generic then any region
specific example at all. However we do have issues pertaining to BW, and
connectivity issue is their part of lie because its not only in accessing the etraining
solutions but its also when they access other applications. They know its an issue for
them, but they will still have to stay with it.‖
Interviewer: 2.5 While developing an ETraining course what are the basic criteria’s
you consider?
Follow-up Question:
Do you evaluate the development cost, or the trainee satisfaction or mode of
etraining?
Interviewee: “It‟s a mix and match that we have to do.
1) Important factor is time, which we have to take in account, many times that
become a deciding factor,
2) We work backwards, if that is the time available, then who is the training partner
or the development partner we need to finalize, what are their efficiency levels, cost
also is a factor but it is negotiable, but time can‟t be compromised, so time becomes
more deciding factor.
See there are instances where trainees get really bugged up with 2-3 aspects, one is
constant disconnection due to BW issues, sometimes they find it boring, if managers
are around they can see the reactions coming from the employees, you can find out a
mechanism o get such kind of feedback in central office so what we generally do is
The Role of Employee Satisfaction in the Success of ETraining within a Company in India
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when we release the learning program, and we release a communication around it,
we usually give them a mail id, in our case it is [email protected] so
the trainees can email their feedbacks, which in turn helps to design the forthcoming
programs or update the current programs if there is a need.‖
Section 3: Trainee (Employee) Satisfaction
Interviewer: 3.1 Do you conduct any specific measures to keep a check if the
employee (trainee) is satisfied with the etraining?
Follow-up Question:
If Yes, what is it that the employees liked the most about the ETraining as compared
to classroom training?
If No, what could be the specific reasons?
Interviewee: ― We have a feedback mechanism that is the push mail, and when it
comes to organizational learning we have something called as K-Quotient, we have
also given telephonic support where we have in house call centre where we have
booked couple of seats, where we expect that within 15-20 days all the employees
must take up the etraining program. Generally what happens is people are not
comfortable writing a mail, in that case they can just call & get the query resolved &
get on, so that was an additional support we had given while conducting a K-
Quotient program. Otherwise it‟s a email support that is always available.”
Interviewer: 3.2 According to you how successful are the trainees in implementing
their action plans?
Follow-up Question:
Did you personally support the trainees to implement the same after the etraining?
Interviewee: ―See we have a set of trainers across the country, so after the etraining
program there is an objective with which the program gets conducted, post to that
definitely there is a support available, which is generic for the learner to implement
these learning‟s in actual reality. So to summarize they are implementing it in their
actual work and they do have support if they get stuck.‖
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Interviewer: 3.3 How do you evaluate the benefit of conducting the etraining?
Follow-up Question:
What specifically did the learners learn or be usefully reminded of?
What commitment have the learners made about the learning they are going to
implement on their return to work?
Interviewee: ―One preliminary check is to get their understanding in any training
that we develop whether classroom or etraining.
On the implementation part as mentioned earlier, there are other departments,
called as MIS an productivity analysis. So each program has a certain objective.
When we generate MIS after a particular frequency that gives a fair idea if a person
is able to implement it in his situation and what are the delta movements happening
around him. And those are periodically highlighted to their supervisors.‖