Making Employee Training Effective

How often do you provide training to your teams?  What kinds of training are most effective?

As an employee, I was fortunate to receive various technical and managerial training throughout my career.  The knowledge, skills, and experience I gained allowed me to grow continually.  As a manager, I planned and sponsored training for my teams.  As a trainer and consultant, I have designed and delivered training ranging from statistical methods to executive leadership.  It is always gratifying whether I am a student or instructor.

I believe that people in every organization have tremendous potential for greater creativity and productivity.  Employee training is an important aspect of capability development.  Few people would argue its value.  However, training requires substantial investments in time and resources, and its benefits for the employees as well as the organization can be hard to measure, especially in the short term.  

How can we ensure a good return on investment in employee training?

Based on my experience, one effective approach is to integrate the training into the normal business operation so that the benefits are immediate and measurable.  This necessitates customizing the training to each organization’s needs.

Ideally an organization has the internal resources to deliver customized training.  But most have to rely on external vendors or consultants.  Evaluating and selecting the right vendor and services to build and deliver customized training requires more careful considerations than standard, off-the-shelf solutions offered by many.

As examples, here are a few questions you may want to ask when evaluating a vendor, its trainers and services.

Planning

• Does the vendor inquire and seek to understand the specific need of the training with respect to your business objectives and strategy? 
• Does the vendor discuss about your short- and long-term goals of the training?  How are they being measured?
• Does the trainer discuss with your managers, subject matter experts (SMEs), and staff being trained to understand how the training materials fit in their current or future jobs or projects?
• Does the trainer request and acquire specific client information to build relevant and engaging examples and case studies for the training? Do they build it themselves or with your SMEs?
• What alternative training approaches does the trainer present?  Do they present the risks and benefits of each, given your specific business situation and needs?
• Are different levels or scopes of training offered to employees based on their roles and special needs? What are some roll-out options if you have multiple business units or sites?
• Can the vendor provide change management and communication support so that the new capability is fully adopted in the organization?
• Is there a train-the-trainer plan to allow you to deliver your own training in the future?
• How much freedom do you have to use and/or reproduce the training materials for internal training and capability development?

Training

• How effective and engaging is the training, including pre-class reading, hands-on exercises and discussion, simulations, team activities, assignments, and knowledge reviews?
• Does the trainer encourage feedback during the training? Are they able to make same-day or next-day modifications based on feedback?
• Does the training continue to incorporate real business problems raised by students during the class?
• Does the training include facilitated sessions to practice skills to solve real or simulated business problems?
• How often are the concepts, methods or tools taught in the class used right away by the employees in their jobs?

Post-training

• How much do trained employees continue to use the knowledge and skills in their jobs? How much do they recommend the training to others?
• Can the trainer coach employees in applying the skills in their jobs?
• Does the vendor provide you a summary of feedback and improvements made?
• After each session, does the vendor discuss with you to refine the training content, delivery, and/or the roll-out plan?

Not every organization needs customized training.  For many, it can be a powerful way to unleash the potential of its people while delivering measurable business outcomes.