Socio – Assessing the Training Requirements for Career Advancement and Productivity of Administrative Staff in Private Universities: a Specific Reference to NCR

 

Ms. Rupinder Kaur1, Dr. Manmohan Rahul2

1Ph.D. Scholar, Sunrise University, Alwar,

2Professor, Ansal University, Gurgaon

*Corresponding Author E-mail: rupkang@yahoo.com

 

ABSTRACT:

The administration plays an integral part in any academic institution / university. The effective administration has the potential to change the shape and size of an organization, and the administrative set up or system is executed, implemented, governed and supervised by staff members and officials whom we know as administrative staff. In any education institution students are the most important stakeholders, therefore, their satisfaction is of utmost importance.  In this study, the author has tried to assess the feedback of students & officers about the functioning of administrative staff and also that whether administrative staff is equally important for the growth of an academic institution and secondly, if they need to be trained similar to academic staff for further growth. We have also tried to assess the awareness and satisfaction level of the administrative staff about the policies and other aspects of governance. The factor loading was used to get factors that are important to understand the process. The need for training and its impact is clearly established by the analysis.

 

KEYWORDS: Assessing the Training Requirements.

 

1.      INTRODUCTION:

India is a big education hub for high quality education and with the objective to get trained and qualified manpower. This demand for manpower resulted in plenty of  Educational Institutions in the country which have grown in large numbers in all states of India. The current data of the UGC estimates that there are more than a thousand private institutes and universities in India across all states. With the increase of these private institutions in last two decades, the country has also started facing the problem of scarcity of the administrative staff because of the shortage of the experienced staff to manage these academic institutions.

 

This situation has resulted in poor quality of manpower manning the educational institutions not only in staff but also in the overall quality of faculty members. The issue of training and productivity then becomes important because of the variation in the quality of education provided by various universities as many students come from different social and cultural background. Similarly, administrative staff of the educational institutes can be from different socio culture setup creating a need for a harmonious communication between them. The only option left for the universities is to provide uniform or standardize training resources or methods.

 

The governance structure of higher education institutions4, 5 is gaining more importance considering the evaluation of institutional performance by various agencies like NAAC, UGC and AICTE because of the diversification in new modes of delivery, more heterogeneous student bodies, and growing pressure on internationalization, research and innovation1.  In addition to all these, decreasing public funding, pressure for university rankings, research and publications, increasing competition among institutions has strongly pushed higher education institutions to constitute a more effective administration system to ensure quality and survival. The quality may be directly linked to the system ensuring accountability and able management, to tackle new challenges, to create productivity and to protect participants in higher education institutions7.

 

2.             NEED BASED TRAINING AND DEVELOPMENT:

Training and development2 enables employees to develop skills and competencies necessary to enhance bottom-line results for their organization. This becomes more important in education sector for organizational performance improvement and ensures that randomness in service is reduced and learning or behavioral change takes place in structured format during the course of the service.  Training and Development can help in increasing the job knowledge and skills of employees at each level and helps to expand the horizons of human intellect and an overall personality of the employees.  We wish to analyze the status of various need analysis based training and development practices in education sector and explore the proposed link between the training of the employees and productivity8.

 

3. TRAINING PROGRAMMES AVAILABLE FOR ADMINISTRATIVE STAFF IN INDIA BY UGC-ACADEMIC STAFF COLLEGE:

The UGC in pursuance of the National Policy on Education, NPE–19866, launched the Academic Staff Colleges scheme in 1987, to ensure quality in higher education in the country.  The Academic Staff Colleges were renamed as Human Resource Development Centre in the year 20159.

 

The Human Resource Development Centres (HRDC)cater to the needs of teachers, administrative and support staff of the colleges and universities including research scholars. Apart from Orientation Programmes and Refresher Courses in various academic disciplines, HRDCs have the mandate to conduct a variety of academic programmes such as Workshops for Principals/Deans and Heads, Professional Development Programmes for senior faculty and administrative and support staff of higher education. The HRDCs also conducts Interaction Programmes for research scholars. Organizing Seminars /Workshops/Symposia has also become an integral part of the Academic Staff College in recent years. At present there are 66 Human Resource Development Centresin India with only three in Delhi and NCR, namely9.

1.       University of Delhi

2.       Jamia Milliaislamia

3.       Jawaharlal Nehru University

4.       and many other government universities which are providing training to staff. Few private universities in NCR exist who collaborate with trainers with the grant from UGC to conduct these training sessions.

 

4.   NEED OF THE STUDY:

Training is crucial for overall organizational development and success. It is fruitful to both employers and employees of an organization. An employee will become more efficient and productive if he is trained well.  Based on this background and understanding of the subject area, we wanted to see whether

a)       Training is provided to the academic staff of the university

b)       Whether training is really helpful in providing a better service to the students and other stakeholders.

c)       Whether training and productivity are helpful

 

5.      PROBLEM STATEMENT:

Despite evidence of human capital practices that will sustain leadership in business sectors3, most administrative departments in higher education sector are not having a comprehensive training and development programme model as a strategic objective. Will the implementation of training and development programme strategies produce favorable results for higher education as it has in the business sector? This statement leads us to our research to find out whether it holds the ground or it is common to all. The primary study would be limited to Universities imparting higher education located in Delhi and NCR region. Although the research would be based on National level, but its representation would be limited to Delhi and NCR region.

 

6.      HYPOTHESIS:

·         There is no significant difference between the training and career advancement and productivity of the staff.

·         There is no significant difference between the effective training of the staff and growth of an organization.

·         There is no significant relationship between training and productivity

 

7.      RESEARCH PHILOSOPHY:

This research topic allows us to understand and focus on our research variables and its underlying theory. The understanding of training needs for the staff of educational institutes is primarily done to bring a change in the service provided to students and to the institutes. The key stakeholders like senior administrators and staff are taken into account and preliminary investigation set us for a causal study to assess the training needs for the staff. The students were also questioned in a structured questionnaire to understand whether they see the service provided to them are as promised and required within a given system.

 

One of the assumptions we made while framing our questionnaire is that all institutes and universities in question claims to be the world class education providers. This brings us to the understanding that if staff is not trained and there are no guidelines to get them training in a time frame, then quality of services will be technical low and overall productivity will decrease eventually. A well-structured questionnaire was framed for staff, officers of the university and students and factor loading along with correlation equations with other multiple statistical tools using SPSS 21.0 version is used to understand the relations between the variables.

 

The overall research design was developed using descriptive data to understand the general setup and causal study to get the relationship and important factors of our research over a time period of 8 months, collecting data and analyzing it.

 

8.      RESEARCH METHODOLOGY:

In this article, our study qualifies to be descriptive and causal. Our research design comprised of causal study in a university setup where staff, officers and students data was collected, measured and analyzed using factor loading method and calculating the mean of the responses based on a likert scale of 5.The literature review gave us the information needed to structure or solve doctoral research problems. An extensive literature review was done and gaps in literature were identified to plug in these gaps. The variables were also quantitative in nature but the literature and observations helped us to describe the needs of training, staff orientation and the behavior of officers and management of university to bring progressive changes in working and day to day problem solving. The purpose of this article is to establish that the results obtained from factor analysis are accurate and all potential variables are considered while framing our research methodology and adopting good research design. A pilot test run gave the following analysis. The test – retest reliability of the factor scores as well as the total score were obtained on a small sample (N = 25).

 

Fluency      Flexibility      Originality           Total Score

0.945          0.921               0.896                      0.959

 

As it could be seen, both the factor score and the total score of reliability is considerably high ranging from 0 .896 to 0 .959. These values are highly satisfactory. So, we conclude that our questionnaire will generate 95.9% accurate results. We consider the level of significance at 0 .05.

 

8.1      RESEARCH MODEL:

For this research, the researcher has developed a model which is given below:-

 

 

 

8.1.2.   Measures for evaluating the different perspectives

Perspectives

Conceptual Framework

Operational Framework

Student Perspective

Student satisfaction

·        General satisfaction

·        Experience with Admission Cell

·        Experience with Accounts Department

·        Experience with Hostel Administration

·        Experience with Examination Department

·        Experience with school/ departmental        administration

·        Experience with International Division

·        Students’ complaints

Student Satisfaction with student grievance redressal system

Accessibility of administrative department to the students

Trust on the administrative staff

Internal Administrative Perspective

Operational efficiency

·        Operating cost

·        Quality improvement

Responsiveness

Response time in processing

Learning and Growth Prospective

Administrative Staff productivity

·        Extent of System usage

·        Productivity of Administrative Staff

·        Administrative Staff training

Administrative Staff satisfaction

·         Empowerment of Administrative Staff

·         Administrative Staff Career Growth

8.2    Data Analysis: Discussion and Conclusions:

This questionnaire was designed based on the review of literature for my work in the area of career advancement and training and its importance in individual career and growth. We wanted to understand how career advancement, training and orientation are beneficial for individual, organizationand for customers at large as in this case it is an educational setup. The hypothesis and research objectives are already defined for the purpose of the research. In order to accept or reject the hypothesis of our study, three types of questionnaires were framed that captures the responses of academic staff officers, their deputies (staff members) and then students of the university, who we understand as the consumers of the services of these office bearers. The data was collected from various other universities staff officers and staff members and similarly students’ data was also collected from these universities and institutes.

 

8.2.1       OFFICERS DATA ANALYSIS:

A questionnaire containing 20 variables were constructed wherein the questions were asked about their role, training and their productivity and output on a scale of 1 to 5 where 1 means strongly Agree, 2 means Agree, 3 means Neutral, 4 means Disagree, 5 means Strongly Disagree.

 

Fig 1. The variable table for the officers of the university.

Var 1

Var 2

Var 3

Var 4

Var 5

Var 6

Var 7

Var 8

Var 9

Var 10

Var 11

Var 12

1

1

3

2

1

3

3

1

2

1

3

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2

2

2

1

1

2

1

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5

2

2

1

3

3

3

3

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2

1

1

4

2

1

2

2

1

2

1

2

2

1

1

4

2

1

1

3

3

1

3

2

2

2

2

4

2

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

1

1

2

4

3

2

2

3

1

2

3

2

3

1

2

2

3

1

2

4

2

1

2

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

1

2

1

3

2

Mean values for the above variables

 

 

 

 

 

 

1.44

1.89

1.89

1.78

2.11

1.44

1.89

1.56

1.89

1.22

3.00

1.89

 

Variable 1: Administrative staff role in an educational institute:

The mean of variable 1 is 1.44 or 1.5 which depicts that academic staff has an important role in an academic institute. This also means that the officers accept the importance of their work.

 

Variable 2: Need for training:

The average of the response is again 1.5 which means that there is a strong agreement about staff training needs to increase overall service aspect.

 

Variable 3: Training improved their overall quality:

The average of the response is 1.89 which means that respondents are strongly agree to this statement that training improved their overall quality.

 

Variable 4: Training has reduced process time:

The average of the response is again 1.89 which means that respondents are strongly agree to this statement that training has reduced their process time.

 

Variable 5: Training helps in better utilization of resources:

The average of the response is 1.78 which means that respondents are strongly agree to this statement that training helps in better utilization of resources.

 

 

Variable 6: Training increases efficiency of higher authorities:

The average of the response is 2.11 which means they are agree that officers’ efficiency increases when the staff is trained. In other words it means that trained staff is a good help to officers for decision making abilities.

 

Variable 7: The efficiency affects the output of academic staff:

The average of the response is again 1.89 which means that respondents are strongly agree to this statement that the efficiency affects the output of academic staff.

 

Variable 8: The efficiency affects the satisfaction levels of the students:

The average of the response is 1.56 which means that respondents are strongly agree to this statement that the efficiency affects the satisfaction levels of the students.

 

Variable 9:  Training increased productivity of work in University:

The average of the response is again 1.89 which means that respondents are strongly agree to this statement that training increased productivity of the work in University.

 

Variable 10: Training helps to accelerate overall growth process of the organization:

The average of the response is 1.22 which means that respondents are strongly agree to this statement that training helps to accelerate overall growth process of the organization.

 

Variable 11: Even without training, University can become best in the field:

The average of the response is 3 which means that university officers don’t want to accept or deny the role of training and its importance to the staff in overall contribution to the University.

 

Variable 12: Training is essential for their career advancement:

The average response is again 1.89 which means that the respondents are strongly agree to this statement that training is essential for their career advancement.

 

Variable 13: The University has well defined policies for administrative staff:

A high number of respondents confirmed in yes that university has well defined policies for administrative staff. This clearly says that officers’ doesn’t want to say no to any policies for admin staff that may not be there. On the other side it is entirely possible that there are policies that look after admin staff and their training and promotion policies.

 

Variable 14: The University has career advancement scheme for administrative staff:

70% respondents say that University has career advancement schemes for administrative staff while 30% deny it.

 

Variable 15: Training of administrative staff is linked to performance appraisal:

55% says yes while 45% says no means there is no clear policy or established norm about performance appraisal been linked to training of the staff.

.

Variable 16:  Is feedback of students sought on quality of administrative staff and their services?

66% respondents say that students’ feedback is taken about the quality of staff services. This may also mean that students’ feedback may not be a regular feature in assessing the performance of the staff.

 

Variable 17: Are frontline staff members empowered to take decisions required for improvement of services?

66% Yes, frontline managers are empowered to take decisions. The responses are on a higher side of positive empowerment, which may also mean that decisions are taken by staff members to serve the students.

 

Variable 18: Can administrative staff avail special or academic leave to attend training programme elsewhere?

88% respondents say yes to the question of administrative staff availing academic leave for training elsewhere, other than the University. This means that academic leave may be provided to the staff but financial help may be a constraint.

 

Variable 19: On an average, how many incidences of major mistakes by administrative staff are recorded in a month?

Around 55% respondents say that there are incidents of major mistakes. It is on higher side andtherefore to reduce the mistakes there is a need to control the incidences via training.

 

Variable 20: On an average, how many incidences of minor mistakes by administrative staff are recorded in a month?

Minor mistakes are also on a higher side which means that mistakes are committed by the staff members and regular basis and there is a strong need for training. The above variables clearly highlight the importance of training for staff members as their officers also see it. It is also clearly established that training may lead to higher productivity and lower mistakes in serving organization and students.

 

 

 

Variable 13 to 20 is a nominal scale where respondents are asked to answer in YES or NO OR Low or High.

VARIABLE 13.

VARIABLE 14.

VARIABLE 15.

VARIABLE 16.

VARIABLE 17.

VARIABLE 18.

VARIABLE 19.

VARIABLE 20.

 

 

 

8.2.2   STAFF ANALYSIS:

A factor analysis was run on the variables which were categorized as under

1.       System of the university:

Containing variables or statements which defines the university working system like career advancement policies, orientation for new generations, easy to understand work and support for staff, etc.

2.       Training andProductivity:

Contains 7 variables that states whether there is a provision for regular training, training in the past, improvement in job quality and quantity, handling procedures efficiently etc.

 

 

 

3.       Training and Career Advancement:

Contains four variables stating that the training is a part of performance appraisal, regular promotions are given to staff and importance of training.

 

4.       Empowerment of Administrative Staff:-

Contains four Statements like discussions of important matters personal in nature, encouragement in jobs and Working conditions.

5.       Future Needs:

This contains three statements like upgrading qualifications for growth, skills enhancement and training oneself for competition in the working environment.

 

Factor Analysis yields 4 important factors with KMO test sampling adequacy to be  0.861 showing that the data is sufficient 4 factors are identified showing approximately 75% of the total variation explained.For the first factor variable 1, 3, 4, 9, 13, 15 and 16 are forming one factor which means well defined career advancement policies, orientation.

 

In second factor, nearly all are negative in relationship other than variable 12. In the 3rdand 4thfactor few are negative and showing little variation. Therefore, from the above, we draw the analysis that

1.       University has well defined career advancement policies.

2.       University has a system for orientation.

3.       University does regular performance appraisal.

4.       University has a Government support system for Administrative staff members.

5.       Training has influenced job performance.

6.       Training enables employees to use procedures effectively.

7.       University provides training to its staff members.

 

It is also noted that variables like regular performance appraisal, a good support system, performance improvement in job, effective use of procedures and university aided training are part of first factor. All these variables are positive and loaded in the first factor indicates the importance of staff assessment of training and development.

 

8.2.3       ANALYSIS FOR STUDENTS:

As already stated, a questionnaire was prepared to find out what students feel and experience about the preparation of staff in performing their duties. The questionnaire seeks valuable information from the students about how they feel and experience services provided by University staff in their day-to-day work. Various dimensions as given below were developed and large numbers of questionnaires were distributed to students to get the desired responses:

 

a)       General work

b)       Work of Admission department

c)       Account’s department

d)       Hostel Administration

e)       Examination

f)        School/college administration.

g)       International Division.

h)       Accessibility and reliability of information.

i)         Overall rating.

 

The questions asked focused on the co-operation and support provided by administrative staff to the students and their knowledge about the job at hand. The overall purpose of the responses were to understand what students’ feel about the various officials with which they interact in the university or education set up and how far the staff is able to understand the students’ problems and  help in solving them or providing relief for their comfortable and pleasant stay in the university. In this research we believe that the feedback of the students and their experience in any education entity will bring positive name for the university and enhance its brand image which will help in bringing new admissions to the university. The basic assumption is that a trained staff should serve a student in a better way. The training of the staff becomes even more important when international students are also part of the university and are sources of word of mouth publicity (both positive and negative).

 

The student factors indicate that training is must for staff and there are several factors which show that services were not up to the mark.Therefore, the hypothesis were analyzed on the 5% level of significance by the factor analysis. The first hypothesis is rejected and it is accepted that there exist significant difference between the training and career advancement and productivity of the staff. The second hypothesis is accepted that there is no significant difference between the effective training of the staff and growth of an organization. The reason can be employee hesitation in responding that universities and institutes are not providing them training which they need.The third hypothesis is rejected and it can be accepted that there is a significant relationship between training and productivity.

 

9.   CONCLUSION:

The discussion leads us to believe that training is very important for the staff because the student feedback clearly emphasize on the quality of service. It is yet to be seen that universities gear up to that role and take an initiative to understand the problems of students and also understands the needs for training their staff and officers.

 

 

10.       REFERENCES:

1.        Alberto Amaral A. Jones and Berit Karseth (Eds.), (2002), Springer-Science Business Media, B.V., ISBN 98-90-481-6200-0, ISBN 978-94-015-9946-7 (ebook).

2.        Atwood, C. G. (2007). Succession planning basics. Baltimore: American Society for Training and Development.

3.        Bolden, R., Petrov, G., Gosling, J. (2009). Distributed leadership in higher education: Rhetoric and reality. Educational Management and Leadership, 37:2, 257-277.

4.        Boer, de H., Huisman, J., Meister- Scheytt, C. (2010). Supervision in ‘modern’ university governance: Boards under Scrutiny. Studies in Higher Education, 35:3, 317-333.

5.        Hénard F., Mitterie, A. (2010). Governance and quality guidelines in Higher Education: A review of governance arrangements and quality assurance guidelines. OECD.

6.        National Policy on Education, NPE–1986.

7.        SuatTeker, DilekTreker, Pinar Sayan (2013) A comparative study for appointment procedures of University Presidents, European Journal of Business and Social Sciences, Vol.2, No.8 pp-123-1.

8.        SyedaRida-E-Fiza, Muhammad Farooq, FariaIbad Mirza, Shamas -Ud-Din, (2015) Barriers in Employee Effective Training and Learning, Mediterranean Journal of Social Sciences, Vol 6, No 3 S2.

9.        Websites: University Grants Commission: https://www.ugc.ac.in/oldpdf/xplanpdf/academisstaffcollege.pdf Jawaharlal Nehru University: https://www.jnu.ac.in/hrdc) Jamia MiliaIslamia University: http://jmi.ac.in/hrdc/orientation-programe University of Delhi: http://cpdhe.du.ac.in/

 

 

 

 

 

 

Received on 06.10.2017          Modified on 01.11.2017

Accepted on 08.12.2017           ©A&V Publications All right reserved

Asian Journal of Management. 2018; 9(1):359-365.

DOI: 10.5958/2321-5763.2018.00056.2