Training and development professionals know the value that our work brings to organizations. We also realize that it is crucial for companies to invest in the growth of their employees in order to remain competitive.The value we bring to organizations should be obvious to senior leaders. Unfortunately, training is not always recognized for the positive impact it can have within an organization. We must take the time to make sure we have the evidence we need to demonstrate those training results.
When it comes time to cut costs, we must be ready to to communicate that value when we are put on the spot. We can do this by strategically aligning our training and development initiatives with the organization’s goals.
Many training professionals have sunk into the habit of assuming that training just works and contributes to valuable outcomes. Much of our work has had to do with creating value, however, most of us are afraid that maybe we are indeed guilty when it comes to actually creating that value.
We spend a lot of time and resources making any decision in our finance and accounting department. However, on average we do not take that same approach with training, spending little time and few resources planning the training design, preparing supervisors and participants prior to training in order to maximize the training and development outcomes.
We spend even less time making sure that the participants have learned and are in a position to transfer the knowledge and skills to the job. Therefore, we are guilty of not providing the value that we are capable of.
Once we have managed to create that value to our customers and shareholders, we rarely demonstrate that value. Even if your senior leaders are not asking for you to provide evidence of value, do no be fooled into thinking the value of the training is recognized relative to the costs.
CALL TO ACTION
As trainers, we must stop reinforcing the belief that training efforts are complete once trainees leave the classroom. Start with these basic steps:
- Determine training needs through a basic needs assessment
- Define desired results
- Determine attitudes, skills, and knowledge necessary to bring those behaviors
- Design training that will most effectively bring those results
- Provide training support
- Evaluate results
Online training can be one way to deliver cost-effective training to employees all over the world. Trainings today are more interactive, and flexible for delivering training on new policies or standard on demand to employees.
This website also addresses all the other factors that impact the training effectiveness: Culture, employee work motivation, learning styles, coaching and support. In order to really understand how to make employees learn we must also get to know where and how the learned skills and knowledge will be applied.
The goal of this site is to help training and development professionals with the pre-planning activities necessary to create value. Further, to share resources and best practices that will help us to optimize our training efforts that will also help to communicate value.
Organizational change does not come easy it requires a lot of communication and support! This is way the ability to adapt to change gives you such a large competitive advantage. What has been your biggest struggle with implementing a successful training program in your organization?
If you have any experiences or struggles with training in your organization, leave a comment because I would love to hear about it!
