At CTS, we regularly deal with organisations with a perceived need for training: often, the perception will be based on nothing more than a manager’s feeling, or – even worse – a need to deliver a training and development plan to tick the necessary boxes and spend the allocated budget.
A couple of things we believe about training:
- Training should be linked to a measurable ROI. Meaning that training should address issues which have been identified through measurement and should consequently deliver an improvement on the same measurement. Training-for-training’s-sake does not achieve this, and is thus potentially wasted money
- Training should be backed up by ongoing coaching. The training-room rarely, if ever, generates sustained behavioural change, but usually only serves to impart the theory of why change is necessary. Change only occurs on the job, with constant support, coaching, feedback and mentoring
- Training should involve ALL levels of the organisation. Change tends to be driven from the bottom, operative, level upwards. Often we see organisations where training is really only offered down to supervisory or management levels….hence, the lowest unskilled level remains just that: unskilled.
If you are involved in L&D, Training Management or OD, you may want to ask yourself the following questions:
- What is the process capability of your corporate learning process?
- How has it been designed?
- Is its capability such that it can produce the desired end result, which is satisfying customers or creating wealth?
- Can you directly measure the ROI on your training?
If the answer to any of the above questions is “no”, perhaps your corporate learning process needs redesign to improve its process capability. Talk to us: we can help you unlock the potential of your employees and deliver trackable results.