Training Methods: Induction, On-the-Job and Off-the-Job Training
Induction training introduces a new employee to the business, for example health and safety procedures, company policies, key contacts, and their specific job, usually in the first days or weeks of employment.
Method
- Identify which training method the case describes: induction, for a new starter, on-the-job, learning while working, or off-the-job, away from the workplace.
- Learn the purpose of induction specifically: reducing early mistakes or accidents and helping a new employee settle in and become productive faster.
- Learn the advantages and disadvantages of on-the-job training: cheap and specific to the business with output continuing, but the trainee may copy an imperfect trainer's habits and mistakes happen on live work.
- Learn the advantages and disadvantages of off-the-job training: expert, unbiased teaching and wider transferable skills, but costly, with the employee producing no output while away.
- For explain questions, give one point about the method's features plus a linked consequence for cost, quality or time specific to the case.
- For evaluate or recommend questions on which method a business should use, weigh cost, urgency, and how specific the skill needed is to that particular business.
Worked example
A hairdressing salon trains new junior stylists by pairing them with a senior stylist for their first three months, watching and helping with real clients under supervision. Explain one advantage of this on-the-job training method for the salon.
- Identify the method: on-the-job training, working alongside a senior stylist with real clients.
- Identify the direct cost comparison: no external course fees, and the junior stylist can still help serve clients, so the salon is not paying wages purely for lost output.
- Identify the specificity of the learning: the junior stylist learns the salon's exact standards, products and client style, not generic techniques from a course.
- Link this to the benefit: keeping training relatively cheap while producing a stylist trained to the salon's own standards.
- Write the explained answer, combining the cost saving with the business-specific nature of the skills learned.
Practice questions
Try each question, then tap to reveal the answer.
Q1State when induction training typically takes place.Show answer
Answer: In the first days or weeks after an employee joins the business.
Q2Identify one purpose of induction training.Show answer
Answer: To familiarise a new employee with health and safety procedures, company policies, and their specific job or team.
Q3Give one advantage of on-the-job training.Show answer
Answer: It is relatively cheap and specific to the business, and the trainee can keep producing output while learning.
Q4State one disadvantage of off-the-job training.Show answer
Answer: It is more expensive, for example course fees, and the employee produces no output for the business while training away from the workplace.
Q5Explain one disadvantage of on-the-job training.Show answer
Answer: The trainee may copy poor habits or mistakes from the person training them, and mistakes made while learning can directly affect real customers or output.
Q6Identify one example of off-the-job training.Show answer
Answer: An external course, for example at a college, or training run by an outside provider away from the normal workplace.
Q7State one benefit of off-the-job training over on-the-job training.Show answer
Answer: Training is delivered by an expert away from workplace distractions and can teach wider, more transferable skills.
Exam-style questions
Written in the style of a GCSE Business exam paper, with a full mark scheme.
Explain one advantage and one disadvantage of off-the-job training compared with on-the-job training.
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A hospital trust is training newly qualified nurses to use a new type of infusion pump. It is deciding between a two-day off-the-job course run by the pump manufacturer, costing 400 pounds per nurse and taking each nurse away from ward duties, or having experienced ward nurses show new nurses how to use the pump during normal shifts. Patient safety depends on the pump being used correctly. Evaluate whether the hospital trust should use off-the-job training rather than on-the-job training for this pump.
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