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The development of the human resource is no longer an option but it has become a must. Out of the five M’s- Manpower, Machine, Money, Method and Minute (for Information Technology industry) accepting, neglecting, training and retaining the manpower is the most vigorous task (Baroudi & Ginzberg, 1986). No Organization is run out just by using money, machines, method and minutes, rather everything here is brought about by the Man. If the organization wants to seek excellence it’s important to have the best of the talent available otherwise to cater the present needs and to stand firmly and kinetically the training and development is infused as one of the major activities in the organization (Carlson, Bozeman, Kacmar, Wright, & McMahan, 2000).
The advent of 21st century is marked by the hill-top growth of the Information Technology (IT) industry. It has become one of the largest and the most prominent high growth industries. According to the NASSCOM, the IT industry is expected to clock export revenues of $84-87 billion in the fiscal year 2014 as against $76 billion in the fiscal year 2013 (Garg, Gupta, & Sharma, 2014). As the expectation from this service industry is increasing, a prodigious pressure is also building up for this industry to be more innovative, productive and quality driven in terms of products and services (Burianek, Ferdinand, Bonnemeier, & Reichwald, 2011). The growth and productivity is directly proportional to the sum of ‘employee’s skills, their commitment and the job enrichment (Kathpalia & Raman, 2014).
To become a competitive organization, it’s important that employees gain proper knowledge and skills needed to meet the environmental changes (Mora, Manuel, et al., 2011). This can be best facilitated by the training programs tailored according to the needs of the employee and their current job (Burke & Baldwin, 1999). This century has marked with the adoption of contemporary and next generation information systems, mergers and acquisitions, every day changing technologies and exponentially increasing competition, it becomes important that employees grow with these changes and advancements to give the real business benefits (Career management in information technology-a case study, 2001). Training can help achieving this by carrying the smooth transition of the employees, focusing on their specific job roles, area of expertise, and by doing an effective career planning (Fleishman & Mumford, 1989).
Training activities are like an investment done (Cannon-Bowers, Salas, Tannenbaum, & Mathieu, 1995), to reap the crops of competitiveness, learning, achieving and building a better workforce to drive the organization towards success and glory. This should not be carried out like a blanket program rather this should aim three basic things: a) Benefiting employee in their current job-profile, b) Benefiting employee during their job transition, in case of any prospective offer and c) Benefiting employee in their career development. A rigorous training-chart should be built and maintained in collaboration with the needs of both employee and the organization (Ford, 2014).
The perceived importance of the training programs in the eyes of the employees makes them more effective. This becomes important to do training need analysis (Clarke, 2002) in detail and delineate every individual skills and gaps before contouring the training program. This paper is an attempt to do the profiling of the employees based on the Employability Skill Set and forming a ‘Training-Chart’. Using K-means cluster analysis twenty-four cluster profiles of the employees has been created, where every profile is indicating about the skill-segment of the employee.
Further, the profiling of the skill segment is done on the organizational hierarchy to know which skills are needed where (Foshay, Villachica, & Stepich, 2014). This classification is a vital to do an effective training need analysis as this will enable individuals to learn at their own level, as well as learning only what they need to know, saving the time and cost. This ‘Training-Chart’ can be seen as a framework based on skill typology which aims on the bird’s eye and is a straightforward evaluation process for both employee and the organization.