Training Approach within Training Functions.

You are asked to provide change management training for 150 employees, and resources are tight, restricting the training to a single half-day session for the lowest cost possible.

Your employees complain and nothing changes after slide-review “training” of standard operating procedures.
Two divisions are at war; morale is low. Quick! Deliver a team-building session.

What is the return on investment for these training activities? Will learning even happen? Are the training objectives actually linked to organizational goals? Emergency “just-in-time” training solutions rarely form the basis for a plan designed to meet business goals, increase productivity, or maximize return on investment. In the best case, a dynamic trainer may receive good ratings on a post-session evaluation form. Knowledge, behaviors and attitudes, however, are unlikely to change with these quick fixes; training dollars will be wasted.

Organizations today, stressed by enormous competitive pressures, often jump into action before stepping back and analyzing exactly what to do. This translates into programs and human resource systems designed and delivered by "crisis" management, often without integration with other organizational initiatives. Organizations, regardless of size or industry, cannot afford an unplanned approach to education and training.

The Alternative

Successful organizations plan strategically for training just as they do for the rest of their business. They look long-term and develop a training curriculum to meet current and future needs and escape the reactive environment of training to meet “emergency” requests or to use the latest training fad.

When organizations look at training as a strategy, rather than using ad hoc, one-time departmental solutions, they

• assess needs and priorities for technical and non-technical skills.
• identify learning requirements for each audience, from new employees to experienced senior managers.
• translate skills needed into appropriate development activities and training.
• build a blueprint of programs that aligns training goals with business goals and objectives.
• have processes to measure return on training investments, fine-tune offerings, and update needs.

The Process

Developing a training plan requires assessing current and future training requirements which are consistent with the business goals of the organization. By creating and using a training plan, the organization has a place to begin, a place to move toward, and measurable points in between.

The First Stage

Effective planning begins by reviewing business objectives and assessing the skills needed to meet those goals. For what does the organization want to be known? What will it take to be distinguished from its competitors? What specific skills, knowledge, and abilities will employees need in order to attain their goals now and in the future? The best training plans are tightly linked to both organizational and individual development and should include relationship skills, technical skills, and business skills.

Consider the example of a mid-size, international company whose strategy for achieving its business goals included improved succession planning. The executive leadership team identified key mid-level managers with potential to eventually fill senior management slots. Based on their analysis of the skills and behaviors necessary for leadership success in the company, we worked with them to design a curriculum. To create a baseline, each trainee participated in a 360-degree feedback assessment on the specific skills and behaviors identified. Areas of strength from which they could build and key development opportunities provided the basis for individual development planning. A group summary of all the feedback became a guide for designing course content. Evaluation of the leadership series by participants, the executive team, and our facilitators ensured fine-tuning and continued relevance for the next wave of managers. Annual individual development plans were available to those responsible for training strategy, so that training could be updated and implemented in the future based on changing organizational needs.

The Second Stage

After laying the foundation, the next stage is to collect data on current education and training activities and suggestions for the future. A needs assessment is a cost-effective approach to minimize the likelihood of misspent resources and of inappropriate solutions. It also tends to expand the number of techniques used to gather information and reduce dependence on one or two favorite strategies. It is essential to use a variety of diagnostic tools for assessing organizational development or training and development needs. Approaches include:

• analyzing employee development plans
• one-on-one interviews with senior managers
• focus groups to assess current and future skills needed in each department, division, or team
• questionnaires completed by employees in each target group to provide their perceptions of needs, interests, and delivery options

A variety of quantitative methods are generally used in data collection and analysis. For example, data can be rank-ordered in terms of priority, interest, etc. so the responses of participating groups (such as departments or divisions) can be compared. In determining organizational priorities, there are generally areas of common need as well as areas of disparate need, even within a single division.

This stage can also include analyses of performance problems, such as issues related to communication or team problems, customer complaints, process problems, and other measures of role or organization dysfunction. Getting behind assumptions and analyzing why these problems are occurring reveals whether training is the appropriate approach or if there are better, non-training, solutions.

How did one large, global organization begin its formation of a corporate university? The process started with the realization that employee recruitment, retention, and performance each benefited from ongoing development opportunities. Key leadership skills for employees, from administrative staff and individual contributors to senior executives, were identified. Core values and desired behaviors were considered and the decision was made to fund and establish a corporate university. The resulting curriculum served 22,000 global employees and was directly tied to business and employee needs. Processes ensured ongoing refinement and evaluation. Employees themselves served informally in development and implementation roles; buy-in was indicated by a no-show rate of less than two percent at training programs.

Third Stage

The data-gathering process generates an enormous amount of information which is synthesized and prioritized by function or project area and developed into one, two and five-year plans. The third stage creates a report of training recommendations. Included in the analysis may be recommendations on the many training delivery methods available.

Often, recommendations coming out of a needs analysis process form the basis of both short-term and long-term plans. The data is analyzed to prioritize needs and create an implementation plan. Generally, this prioritization occurs in several steps:
Rank ordering data by importance, desirability, frequency selected, etc. 
Presentation of ranked data and preliminary conclusions to one or more representative groups able to weigh all the information, assess relative importance and priority, and come to consensus. This process is a fine-tuning of the results and leads to step three.

Incorporating recommended modifications and revisions.

For example, In order to develop training and development priorities out to five years, a large amount of information was collected to assess the skills and training needed for the R&D and manufacturing divisions of a large organization. The information analyzed came from

• one-on-one interviews with directors.
• half-day meetings with representatives from each department to analyze needed present and future skills.
• developing surveys to collect input from all employees.
• data collection and collation.
• meetings with representatives from each department to discuss survey results, fine- tune conclusions, and discuss implementation plans.

The results were a final report with an implementation plan and curricula based on both role and job level.

The Delivery

Whether via a small training function or a corporate university, companies today have many development tools and approaches available, for example, instructor-led and computer-based instruction, multi-media and self-paced modules, mentoring and on-the-job coaching, outsourcing and partnering with external suppliers, off-site conferences and professional meetings, affiliations with local and electronic universities and colleges, and tuition reimbursement programs. Offering a variety of resources and options helps appeal to the myriad types of learners in organizations. Many of these resources tend to be “generic” rather than designed for technical specialists such as those found in the technology-based pharmaceutical industry. Customizing training for technical professionals is essential, and there are several critical success factors for such training:

Credibility of the instructor(s)

Do they personally have the training and experience to align with technical professionals? Have they demonstrated their own technical and managerial competence? Do they communicate that background effectively?

Relevance of the material

Are the examples and exercises used in the training clearly pertinent to the participant’s environment or must they be interpolated? It is not enough to articulate the needs and differences of technical specialists and then use generic situations in training programs.

Discussions and exercises targeted to the experience and needs of the participants

Individuals from drug discovery, chemical process, clinical development, manufacturing, information science, technical sales and marketing, and other groups face specific challenges. The training designed and delivered needs to consider on these specifics.

Trainer’s facilitation skills

Do subject matter experts inherit the role of trainer? Many times, employees who possess product or process knowledge also design and facilitate the training. Do their facilitation and instructional design skills match their technical expertise? If not, subject matter experts can collaborate with trained designers and facilitators to create better learning experiences.

The Design

The design of all programs in the strategic learning plan should be built around the ways we learn best. People need both “heads-on” and “hands-on” experience; either alone is insufficient.

Do we learn by listening to experts?

Our assumption is that if an expert talks and we don’t learn that we weren’t listening. But we listen with filters and hear what we want to hear, not necessarily what is said. Many tests show that people are generally unable to apply information to which they simply listen. So…

Does experience lead to learning?

How many pennies have you seen, spent or lost in your lifetime? By the age of thirty, most of us have had “experience” with about 20,000 pennies. Even with all that experience, could you accurately draw both faces of a penny? If you attach a small mirror to a wall, would you move closer or further away to see more of yourself? Most of us look into a mirror daily and would say we should move further away. Yet the answer is that mirror size, not distance, impacts what we can see. In neither example does extensive experience lead to learning. So…

Does hands-on learning work best?

One would expect that a group of Harvard and MIT graduates could use a bulb, wire and a battery to light the bulb. When asked, all indicated they could. Yet few were actually successful. Science students (after hands-on use of a socket, battery and wire to light a bulb) were unable to take the battery and wire alone to light the bulb. Researchers concluded that none of these individuals had learned or understood the principle of electricity, despite their hands-on experience.

The most effective designs include small-group opportunities to experience, discuss and apply concepts. Innovative games and simulations designed around business content and processes have proven to be ideal learning tools.

The Impact

When an organization approaches a comprehensive training plan as strategically as it does the rest of its business, the results are measurable.

• A strategic training plan supports your business goals and enhances productivity
• Training dollars have greater impact.
• A process which provides ongoing data means you can refine and update the plan as organizational demands change.

Some argue they can’t afford to plan for or provide training. I suggest they can’t afford not to.


Republished from my earlier blog series in February 2010