June 12, 3:46 pm
Workplace Learning – The Problems, and a Solution
A colleague called today, and although I can’t share the name of her company, I will say that the results of a survey her company just completed are quite telling. Seems that leadership in companies of all sizes are both the gateway AND the obstacle to effective workplace learning.
Whereas a company president, a CFO, or a general manager are the people who most often authorize training, they’re also the ones who fail to emphasize its value to the people scheduled to take the training.
As a result, employees often resist a training class because they don’t see how it applies to their job, and they don’t think their leaders really care.
Another survey result was that most companies don’t know whether or not their training is working, because they don’t conduct pretest and posttest assessments to verify training effectiveness. Frankly, I’m not surprised by this, because yet another finding in the survey was that training is often a reactionary fix to address a perceived problem.
The Root Causes Appear to be Common
My thoughts on these findings? It’s not like I haven’t said it before … **Dan presses ‘rewind’ and ‘play’** … No communication, reactionary decision-making, and too many managers and leaders not understanding the role of training in an organization.
I remain firmly convinced that companies will fail to use training effectively so long as managers and leaders get promoted due to the quality of their job performance and not because of a determination that they will succeed in their newly assigned duties and tasks.
The Solution:
Managers and Leaders must open up and communicate; Use a logical, systematic approach to problem solving; and realize that the role of trainer plays a bigger part in their job descriptions than most of them realize.
Filed in Work, Business, Training, Motivation, Management, Leadership, Teambuilding, Workplace, Train the Trainer, Corporate Culture
Great post Dan! I’ve both worked in and encountered companies that do training for the sake of training. I may be naive in saying this, but sometimes you have to apply a little marketing savvy to get folks to buy in to training. A little WIIFM (what’s in it for me?) can do the trick.
However, before any of that can occur the executives and managers in these organizations need to understand that all training needs to be learner-centered and performance-based. In addition, they need to take a good look at whether or not the training is in alignment with their short-term and long-term goals, their mission and vision.
Thanks, Justin.
Sadly, I was not surprised by the survey results. Unfortunately, this was a private survey for a private company and the results won’t be made public!! (DANG!) it would be SOOOO helpful if they were. Wouldn’t it be neat to wave a magic wand that results in managers and leaders having a bigger picture?
Training for the sake of spending the training budget is nothing but a waste of everyones time. Usually the trainee resents being forced to attend training they really don’t want to attend - and in many cases don’t really need - it just happens to be in town on the right day.
Training departments need to look carefully at what they are sending their employees to - does it really solve an existing problem, correct an imperfection or just prove to be the motivating force to get that employee back on track.
We developed our website www.seminarinformation.com to give attendees and training professionals enough information to compare and contrast available training - not just fall into the pattern of registering for those programs listed on those myriad of brochures that come everyday in the mail. Imagine if we bought other goods that way - wait - maybe we do. It’s time we educated ourselves as consumers.
Amen, Mona!