Dear friend,
Production managers do not spare their staff for the training programmes because they consider the training as interference in their job. Their action is a result the lack of training culture that prevails in the company. Conducting the training programmes is the goal of the HR/Training Department but giving production output is the goal of the production department. Your post manifests that there is a clash of goals of both the departments.
The another reason production manager refuses to spare manpower for the training is because he might not have faith on the training. He does not think that the training programmes improves the ratios associated with the production department.
Secondly, he may not have standby manpower whereby he can maintain continuity of the operations. Today most of the businesses work on lean manpower. But then lean manpower takes the toll of the training!
Hereafter, before deciding about the training programme, you may involve production manager while designing the training calendar. Secondly, conduct only those programmes whose outcome is rooted to the production department. To do this, have goal statement for each programme. Few examples of the goal-oriented training programmes are:
a) ___ % of scrap is generated in our production process. This training programme is conducted to reduce this % to _____.
b) Our Cost of Poor Quality (COPQ) is _______. This training programme is conducted to reduce the COPQ at least by ____ %
After conducting the goal oriented training programme, you need to measure the effectiveness after three or six months. For this, participants need to be told right during the training programme that they are accountable to show the results. They need to be told that how the training effectiveness will be measured, who will measure and when will it be measured.
Once you have 1-2 cases of measurement of ROI in training, you will get buy-in from the production manager and top management as well.
Thanks,
Dinesh Divekar