Stop Wasting Time And Money Training Employees

Finding value for your time, money, and resources

Many organizations that invest in employee development or training are wasting a great deal of time, money, and energy.  Don’t believe me . . .  read on!

Do you know the average retention of new material, techniques, or ideas after three to four weeks? Well, it is around 3%. So, the next time you send your employees to an all-day seminar and expect performance improvement that lasts - you are living in La La Land.

I have been in the training business for over 35 years and conducted hundreds of seminars in 26 countries for audiences between 10 and 3,500 people. I have observed hundreds if not thousands of people physically sitting in sessions while they were mentally somewhere else the entire time. Is this because I am a boring speaker or because they had little or no interest in the content being covered? Neither.

Many factors determine whether an employee will learn, understand, embrace, and apply new knowledge and skills. Some of these can be controlled by the organization, but many are the results of an employee’s beliefs, expectations, mindsets, attitudes, and agendas which cannot be controlled by the training entity whether an outside outsourced firm or an in-house training department.

If you want your employee investment to have a positive long-term return the only guaranteed way to accomplish this is by ensuring that any training initiative or approach takes the participants completely through a new approach.

Believe me, you can have the latest and greatest toys, software, products, and services, but if your employees lack the creativity, initiative, motivation, skills, attitudes, and empowerment necessary for effective performance - I will guarantee that these resources will be underutilized.

There are two ways to educate, train, or develop employees.
 

• The transactional approach 
• The curriculum-based approach

Let’s take a brief look at each.

The Transactional Approach

A transaction is a single event, a one-time interaction, or a short-term approach, like a podcast or virtual event.  Or, let us say you send your customer service representatives to a half-day seminar on how to improve customer relations and increase repeat business.  These people are exposed to appropriate and valuable material for a few hours with little interaction or participation.  They sit there all morning – and learn.  

After lunch, they head back to work dealing with many of the routine customer issues that the training was designed to help them with.

Now I ask you, if a person has spent ten, twenty, or even only five years developing mindsets, attitudes, habits, routines, and approaches do you think they are going to permanently change these because of a four-hour seminar?  Not going to happen. 

The Curriculum-based Process

A curriculum-based process is a longer-term approach where there are ongoing gradual incremental increases of information that are covered as well as some form of reinforcement, coaching, inspection, and/or accountability.

Let me give you an example.  If you took algebra when you were in high school, how did you learn it?  Let us say after your first 45-minute class on the topic of algebra the teacher gave you your final exam.  Would you pass?  Of course not.  How do you learn algebra so that after three months of classes, three times a week you could pass the final exam?

Goes like this:  Class, homework, next class two days later you discuss the homework, then new material is discussed followed by homework on the new material. Two days later this process and approach continue.  Three months later, you pass the final exam.  Now, let us apply this to a corporate learning situation.

You send your salespeople to a one-day training seminar on how to close more sales (the transaction approach) and then send them on their way.  They might improve their ability to close for a few days or a couple of weeks, but I will guarantee that within a short period of time they will default back to previous attitudes, approaches, and techniques. 

See the difference between these two training approaches? 

The curriculum-based approach has four necessary stages if you want to ensure the success and/or improvement or change in any employee’s attitudes, skills, or behavior. 

The stages are;

1. The awareness level
At this level of learning, employees have an awareness only of techniques, tactics, skills, and approaches necessary to be more effective in their roles.  However, they need more clarity and understanding to embrace the learning in a way that will allow them to put the information into practice in an effective and sustained way for the long term.  

At this level, the behavior will not change, and you will have essentially wasted corporate resources and the employee’s time. They will be alert and attentive during any training session, but will lack the knowledge necessary to know how, where, when, and why to use this new information.  The awareness level can be described as sharing information only.

2. The understanding level
At the understanding level, employees get it.  They see the relationship between the information they have learned and its value, but they still lack the ability and skill to apply what they have learned to their actual roles and responsibilities.

3. The integration level
Knowledge if it is not used, applied, or integrated into current mindsets, activities, responsibilities, or approaches is essentially useless information.  Without a doubt, the biggest challenge in any training initiative is to ensure that the new learning is used, and used whenever and wherever appropriate for the long term. At this level - learning must include a variety of activities, such as customization of delivered material, interactive participation during training sessions, homework (take-away activities for participant implementation and testing), ongoing coaching and inspection by management, holding participants responsible for implementing new tactics or approaches, management or supervision team attending the learning sessions so they are aware of what the participants are learning.

4. The mastery level   
Mastery is the highest form of knowledge applied.  This is where wisdom becomes the standard for learning and skill and attitude development.  Mastery occurs when knowledge becomes wisdom and wisdom is utilized at every opportunity when the situation or circumstance warrants it.  Participants in a typical “transaction” training session for several reasons will never achieve this level of knowledge or wisdom.  Generally speaking, people who achieve mastery in their chosen field of endeavor have made mastery their goal and they have followed through with discipline, persistence, and planning.

That is it, so, keep wasting time and money, or start using the “curriculum-based training process” that works and gives you value for your time, money, and resources.  

Tim Connor, CSP, is the CEO of Connor Resource. Tim is an international speaker and trainer who has done over 4,000 presentations in 28 countries. He is also a global bestselling author with over 75 books. Visit timconnor.com