Why Training By Itself Is a Waste – 5 Things to Do Now

Training By Itself Is a Waste
Without proper support and reinforcement, training by itself is a waste of time, money and resources.  Don’t waste your investments in developing your carefully hired talent.  People need targeted nurturing to produce, thrive and make a difference.

Poorly Reinforced Training Is Just Wishful Thinking
No matter how well received or how well designed, if workplace training is not applied on-the-job in a way that changes behavior and performance, all the effort, time, and dollars will be wasted. How do we know?  We measured over 800 corporate training programs and found only 1-in-5 participants change their behavior and performance from training alone.

Whereas you had hoped for maximum impact and true business results, even if the skills were mastered by the learners, if they are not used in the workplace, your return on investment will be close to zero.

Starting Off on the Right Foot
It is so discouraging to see learning and development organizations do everything right at first. They spend time

• Aligning learning objectives with high priority business objectives
• Identifying key learning and performance gaps
• Designing high quality, interactive and relevant learning solutions
• Using engaging, experienced and highly skilled facilitators

But Then Learning Fails
Even with the best of intentions, too many L&D practitioners fail to create the circumstances for participants and their managers to:

• Follow up on what was learned
• Ensure the new skills and behaviors will be applied, measured, and rewarded on-the-job

Don’t Let This Happen to Your Company.
To impact behavior and performance change, you need to manage the entire learning process to ensure that those skills are transferred and applied on-the-job.

5 Steps to Ensure Training By Itself Is NOT a Waste
Here’s how to see that the training sticks and is actually applied on the job.

1. Create High Levels of Relevance
   Ensure every learning solution is relevant enough to three key stakeholders: (1) The Target Audience, (2) Their Bosses and (3) The Business.  Without business relevance, learning leaders often struggle to get initiatives off the ground or fully implemented.

   Make sure all three stakeholder groups understand their role in communicating and reinforcing the need for and benefits of the training.

2. Ensure the Active Involvement of Key Stakeholders
   Actively involve and proactively enlist your target audience, their bosses and the business in assessment, design, delivery, reinforcement and measurement of your learning and development effort. They are the key to its success.
3. Set Crystal Clear Expectations
   Managers need to clearly and consistently communicate skill, knowledge, behavior and performance expectations. Leaders must spell out a clear and compelling plan for supporting and applying the new learning through incentives, consequences, and recognition.
4. Design a Mutual Partnership
   The target audience, their bosses, and the business need to work actively together to ensure continuous improvement through frequent and consistent coaching, mentoring, follow-up, and refreshers.
5. Design Effective Adoption and Impact Measurement
   All impactful and relevant learning should be measured to track and measure business results and, if you are making an impact, to drive accountability for execution and to provide feedback for coaching that is simple, relevant and actionable.

The Bottom Line
Before you launch a learning and development program, ask yourself how you plan to manage and fully execute your training investment to get the results required for the people and for the business.

If you liked Why Training By Itself Is a Waste, download 3 Steps to Building a Smarter Training Initiative