BY ATIM INIWAKUNAM

According to a development expert- Williams 2007 “Capacity building and development is one of the major ways organization invests in the workforce for greater return today and even in the foreseeable future.
Indeed, organizational effectiveness rests on efficient and effective performance of workforce that makeup the organization. The efficient and effective performance of the workforce in turn, rest on the richness of the knowledge, skills and abilities possessed by the workforce.
Capacity building and development in most organizations is a continuous act or exercise. Suffice it to say that the inexorable march of time and the ceaseless glamour for social change combine to make adaptability and continuing preparation of the workforce as inevitable as the initial acquisition of knowledge and skills.
However, this cannot happen if employees‟ capacity building and development do not occur in an enterprise.
In other to maximize the productivity and efficiency of the organization, every executive, manager or supervisor in a public or private organization has the responsibility and indeed the bounding duty to ensure the development of their employees who have requisite knowledge and expertise .
Capacity building is like sharpening an existing skill in order to reflect the trends in technology and other social –cultural environmental changes of an organization. Productivity is the goal of today’s competitive business world and capacity building can be a spring board to enhance productivity.
The aim of this is to enable employees contribute their full measure to the welfare, health and development of the organization .It is instructive to note that the main objective of capacity building and development in of any organization is to increase efficiency o with the resulting increase in corporate productivity.
Capacity building accounts for why a large number of fund and time is expected by organization at one period or the order in the improvement of the skills of their employees at various levels.
According to studies, the principal intention of capacity building is to equip people with the knowledge required to qualify them for a particular position of employment, or to improve their skills and efficiency in the position they already hold.
Manpower development on the other hand, implies growth and the acquisition of wide experience for future strategic advantages of the organization. Capacity building and development therefore, improves the effectiveness and efficiency of the employee.
It will not be out of place to state that any organization or worker which has no plan for the capacity building and development will get obsolete when the environment changes especially with the dynamism in technological advancement.
A Popular maxim in the field of personnel management says, “If you think capacity building and development are expensive try ignorance‟.
While capacity building and development prosper organization, ignorance destroys it.
Muhtar as social scientist in 2007 corroborated this when he said that “Workers are like machines who must be updated on constant basis or else, they end up becoming obsolete or misfit”.
Training can be used as a tool for developing knowledge and skills to enhance an individual’s performance based upon the criteria of efficiency and effectiveness, besides achieving competitiveness and productivity.
Apart from this, personnel remolding through training prepares individual employees to climb the organizational ladder. Therefore, staff development is strategic both for the individual employee as well as the organization.
Personnel training encompass efforts to promote employee development to suit organizational requirements.
Again, training and development programmes are strategic functions of human capital management which focuses on developing employee competencies in order to overcome daily, routine and short-term problems.
In a research conducted in two thousand and nine on the effectiveness of training in the public service, suggests that public sector organizations have increased their concern with regards to the effectiveness of training and development since it is critical in enhancing on-the-job performance in order to achieve key performance indicators for each employee.
Thus, from the aspect of the evaluation and transfer of training elements, for effective performance, management of any organization must see the need to help workers develop skills and build new capacities necessary.
Because of the strategic importance of capacity building, employees should see platforms for training as opportunities to learn new things and a source of motivation for which will ultimately lead to positive outcomes such as up- to- date knowledge, skills, abilities and good moral values, commitment, trust and good work ethics.
It must be pointed out that not having the skills to perform a job correctly can set up employees for failure and put the organization at somewhat less-than-competitive disadvantage.
According to development experts, poor performance reviews due to inadequate job training can produce employee dissatisfaction and conflict and negative attitude.
What the time demands, is for employee and the employer in the Civil Service to inculcate capacity building mindset to enhance better job performance and efficiency and productivity.