Not An Isolated Approach

True behavioural change results only when employee training is accompanied by reshaping of the organisational environment.

- Rajiv Kumar And Vidyanand Jha

Organisations spend considerable resources on training their workforce. Such programmes fall broadly into two categories: functional/ technical and behavioural. Training of the first category aims to impart to employees specific technical knowledge/skills (for example, operating a new software or learning about changes in taxation or accounting procedures). The second type of training—behavioural in nature—mostly aims to change their attitudes and/or behaviour. These programmes are also popularly referred to as management or leadership training, soft skills training, behavioural skills training, and so forth. Here, we critique the dominant paradigm behind the second type of training and suggest some possible improvements.

Organisations seem to assume that behavioural training is sufficient to change behaviour and improve employee performance. They believe that the provision of training fills certain gaps in people (often identified through formal/informal assessments of behavioural competencies1). However, such an approach could be flawed and myopic.

Organisations need to see training as a part of an overall endeavour to bring about behavioural changes. Mere provision of training without any concomitant changes in other activities or parts of the organisation could be futile at the best, and counterproductive at the worst.

What drives human behaviour?

A lmost eight decades ago, Kurt Lewin, one of the most prominent psychologists ever, suggested that human behaviour could result from two things:

• the state of the person, and

• the environment in which the person operates (Lewin, 1936)

He also mentioned that the importance of these two drivers of human behaviour would vary. In other words, at times human behaviour would be more due to the state of the person. At others, the force of situation or environment would predominantly shape it.