The prevalence of barriers known to prevent transfer of skills in the case of the Lusaka City Council
Date
2014-02-17
Authors
Mpembamoto, Aaron
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Abstract
This study investigated the prevalence of barriers known to prevent transfer of skills at the Lusaka City Council (LCC). Transfer of skills is the application of skills acquired by trained employees to their workplace. Barriers to transfer of skills are obstacles that prevent employees from transferring their skills to the job. Notwithstanding other barriers known to prevent transfer of skills, our study focused on selected barriers which were related to the workplace environment. These barriers were (1) the behaviour of supervisors and peers (2) opportunity to use skills (3) equipment availability (4) Rewards. These barriers have been known to prevent organisations from maximising the benefits of their training investments. The study was descriptive in terms of its design. The sampling frame for the study was all non-management LCC employees on the council payroll. The total number of employees on the payroll was 806 out of which 200 employees were selected using systematic sampling method. The data for this study were gathered from both primary and secondary sources. A field survey was undertaken to collect data from primary sources. Questionnaires and interview guides were used to collect this data. A desktop survey on the other hand was employed to gather data from secondary sources. The findings of the study indicated a high likelihood that barriers related to the workplace environment known to prevent transfer of skills were prevalent at the LCC. It is however, imperative to mention that not all barriers that are related to the workplace environment were investigated in our study. Further, it is imperative to mention that the presence of barriers related to the workplace environment did not in any way imply that employees at the LCC did not have the ability to transfer their skills. This study, as stated above, was not designed to investigate the extent to which the barriers related to the workplace environment affected transfer of skills at the LCC. The purpose of the study was to confirm the presence of the said barriers. In this regard, suggestions for future research have been proposed in this study. For instance, others may wish to investigate the effect of the workplace environment related barriers on the ability of the employees at the LCC to transfer their skills by employing a different research design.
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Keywords
Skills transfer , Training , Work Environment