Running a Learning and Development Organization, we understand the grey areas between effective training and it being truly effective at the level of the organizational workforce. It is little wonder many companies feel ‘ripped off’ when the training fails to provide the results they sought. Disheartening as it may seem, many good employee training initiatives do not result in the transfer of immediately useful information to your workforce.
So what’s an organization to do to ensure employee training transfer to the workplace?
Well, here’s the low-down to creating an environment that facilitates better training transfer.
1. Ensure the need requires training and development initiatives.
A thorough needs and skills analysis conducted could help identify what’s working and what’s not in the organization. This determines the real need for employee training and development. Many issues in organizations boil down to mismatches in temperament and talent for a required job role and also gaps in communicating expectations to employees.
2. Decide on Timely Training Interventions choosing an appropriate Training provider.
Scheduling timely training sessions increase the pace of change, productivity, profitability and much more with a trusted training company. Regardless of a well-known name or a smaller training provider ensure there is flexibility and understanding for a productive relationship, so that you would love to work with them more than once.
3. Create an employee “training-and-development-ready” environment.
Make it public and communicate why the new skills, skill enhancement or information is important. Take steps to motivate employees to attend the program. Also ensure the employee understands the context of how the training could positively affect his job performance.
4. Check the relevance of the initiatives to the skill you want the employee to develop
Asking an employee to attend a session on communication and feedback, when it is critical that he updates his technical skills instead, is a big mistake. The initiative will be regarded as mostly a waste of time and the potential learning opportunity is lost.
5. Set clear, specific training objectives for the provider and review the same jointly with the trainee’s supervisors or managers
The vital key parts to a beneficial training objective are desired behavior, standard of performance and conditions. Ensure that the training provider understands these in explicit detail. Being on the same page will only enhance the effectiveness of the training program.
6. Ensure the training and development module has specified objectives with measurable outcomes built into it.
The employee training initiative must be designed to state the objectives clearly with measurable outcomes. Determine that the developed module drives the employee to develop the skill outlined in the objectives.
7. Arrange for managers and supervisors to attend the training session either before or along with the employees.
Immediate superiors need to know and understand the skills to be attained and why. Managers can aid the trainees as a role model for appropriate behavior and skill. An environment which facilitates application of the training and regular assessment and feedback cycles can also be maintained by the managers.
8. Have one-to-one discussions between managers and employees before the sessions.
What an employee hopes to learn and his concerns must be discussed and duly noted. Identify roadblocks in mindsets beforehand and address them. Any expected obstacles an employee may face while applying the training to the workplace should also be noted.
9. Do a 360 degree appraisal of the training results.
Get a multisource assessment of the training of the employee post training from subordinates, peers, and supervisors. It should also include a self-assessment that will help construct a better view of the training and its effect on behavior, learning and cumulative impact on the organizational performance.
10. Construct an overall Human Resource Development Process.
A comprehensive HRD process should be designed that can keep the wheels of performance improvement turning. Training will be one component of the process, facilitating incremental or exponential organizational advances. This process will make sure that such interventions will not be sporadic stand-alone events to exhaust training budgets but an integral part of organizational strategy.
These steps of course are loose guidelines and do not fall into the one-size-fits-all category. In our experience, it boils down to individual needs and having real belief in the value of training.
And while at it, don’t forget to enjoy the journey of learning :)
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Cross-blogged from
http://eduriser.com/blog/2012/02/tips-to-make-training-and-development-work/
