A Development of a Programed Instruction Manual for Fingerhut Manufacturing Company, St. Cloud, Minnesota

The process of developing skilled and productive personnel for business and industry is an element that has plagued management with its costs and results. As each person in an organization must be given the opportunity to develop the specific job skills necessary to adjust to the organizational and individual needs, management attempts to meet these needs with some type of training program. The goals of a training program provide the opportunity for all employees to (1) make a satisfactory adjustment to the demands of business and industrial operations from the first day of employment; and (2) progress as a productive force in the enterprise through continued development of needed skills, knowledge, and attitudes. To achieve these goals, opportunities must be provided to develop the employee to his fullest capacity. Statement of the problem. It was the purpose of this thesis to develop a training program for the station operators in the Accounts Receivable Department, Fingerhut Manufacturing Company, St. Cloud, Minnesota. The programed instruction method was selected, and a training manual based on the procedures of the sttion operator was devised. The processes used in the problem included: (1) a review of the literature in the areas of training and programed instruction; (2) a study of the operations of the Accounts Receivable Department by actual on-the-job training for approximately two months; (3) the development of a programed instruction manual for the station operators; and (4) a pilot testing of the effectiveness of the manual. Importance of the study. Fingerhut Manufacturing Company is a mail-order firm dealing with car furnishings. The main offices are located in Minneapolis with branches in Princeton and St. Cloud. The St. Cloud office, which is the main concern of this thesis, employs about 350 office workers. As a result of this large number of employees and a labor turnover of about six per cent, training of personnel is costly. The training program in effect over the past years involved a method of individual instruction. Each new employee had a training supervisor that worked with her until it was apparent the trainee could perform the work efficiently. As a result of this costly method of training, the management of Fingerhut decided to test the possibilities of programed instruction as a means of reducing the cost of training. Programed instruction, it was felt, would reduce the number of trainee supervisors needed, improve the quality of personnel, and possibly reduce the amount of training time. The Accounts Receivable Department was selected as the first experimental area. The management contracted St. Cloud State College for help in the development of an appropriate training manual