Training Interventions and Processes in Selected Food Processing Companies in Tema, Ghana

Food processing firms are essential for the economic growth of developing countries and serve as one of the means to help enhance their performance through employee training. For training interventions to be effective, they should be adequate, provided in a systematic manner and linked with the corporate goals and strategies. The paper therefore examined training interventions and their processes in one public and two private food processing companies in Tema, Ghana. A total of 231 respondents were involved in the study; comprising three training coordinators, 14 line managers, 16 shift supervisors, and 198 permanent employees. Purposive, stratified and simple random sampling procedures were used to sample respondents and the study was both cross-sectional and comparative. Questionnaires and interview guides were used to collect data while Statistical Product Service Solutions (SPSS) version 16 and narrations were used to analyse the quantitative data and qualitative data respectively. The study revealed that training interventions were adequate, linked to corporate strategies and provided in a systematic manner in terms of needs assessment conducted before the designing, development, implementation and evaluation of interventions. Also, more of the on-the-job training activities than the off-the-job interventions were provided for employees. The recommendation was that the companies should continue to employ both on-the-job and off-the-job training methods to enable employees tap the expertise of both internal and external trainers.