Warning: Training itself doesn’t lead to change

Imagine this.

You have organised a three-day training for your employees. It’s quite an investment, but necessary to change something (more sales, better communication, improve compliance). In the training, your employees will gain knowledge, learn some new skills, and maybe even change their behaviour.

Great!

But… the day after the training, they are back at the office, where they still have deadlines to meet and heaps of other tasks to do. There is hardly any time to put what they’ve learned into practice, and the effect of the training quickly wears off.

Not so great after all.

You invested time and money; your employees had a few great days of training, but there is hardly any effect or ROI.

How to solve this?

I wish I could offer you a product that would fix this problem in an instant. But I don’t have it, and if anybody tells you they do have one, they are lying. There isn’t an easy, quick-fix, one-size-fits-all, solution. However, I can assure you, this problem can be dealt with. You can offer your employees a training (in the broadest sense) and achieve that change you are looking for.

How?

First of all, make the training (be it online, offline, blended, etc) superb. Create a training that ensures your employees will gain all the knowledge and skills they need. Use different methods that will engage them and help them remember what they’ve learned. You could even end the training with a test to see if your employees actually met the learning goals.

Logical, right? Just make a superb training, let them take a test and change will happen.

Right? No, wrong!

Sorry to disappoint you, but making a superb training is just half the solution. The isolated use of a training rarely leads to the desired result. Several studies have shown that most of what you learn in a training will only be embedded if you use it in daily practice. Most of what people learn (up to 90%) they learn through practical experience and contact with others, not in a training.

Then what is the solution?

Most important of all is how your organisation facilitates the employees in putting what they have learned into practice. How you facilitate them in:
– gaining experience
– making mistakes, getting feedback, and learning from it
– expanding and sharing their knowledge and skills

It’s all about your organisation.

It’s about culture, structure, management style, etc. Of course, those are not easy to change. But you can start small and step-by-step work towards an organisation where your employees are challenged to use their newly gained knowledge and skills and share it with others. An organisation that works hard to reach its goals but also sees the importance of making mistakes, giving and getting feedback, and improving knowledge and skills. An organisation that understands that the end of the training isn’t the end of learning, but just the beginning.

So how to get there?

Contact me for a free consultation, and we’ll have a chat about it. You can’t hire me to make the change, you’ll have to do that yourself, but I’ll be there every step of the way to guide you. To give you the tools and make sure you’ll get there step by step.

I can’t wait to start! How about you?