By Kyla Nicholson, CHRP Candidate

When business leaders look to lay blame for training initiatives that don’t translate into results for the business, program content and training delivery are most often the targets of attack. What is commonly not examined are the pre-existing thought patterns, behaviours, and workplace and cultural norms  that create barriers to the potential success of even the most well researched, progressive, and robust training programs.

McKinsey Quarterly recently examined five key factors that must be considered and managed, before and after training events, to facilitate workplace application of learning and support the business to recognize a measurable return on training investments.

Before a training initiative:

1. Help People Want to Learn – “Why am I here?”, “I’ve heard this before.”, and “I have more important things to do.” are natural thoughts that many people bring to a training experience. Most training initiatives mistakenly assume that attendees have already recognized the need driving the training, and their own need to build new skills and / or make changes to behaviour. Often this is not the case, and, for the most part, this it is not the responsibility of the actual training event, which should be focused on skill building, but something that must be taken into consideration during the need identification and analysis process. To be able to benefit from training, organization’s must first engage employees in identifying what isn’t working or could be improved in the work environment, recognizing the need for change, and developing the tools (e.g., training) to support and facilitate improvement.
2. Uncover Harmful Mindsets – If you are a sales associate and you believe that in-store customers are simply browsing so that they can later make purchases online, would you apply the skills and strategies you learned in sales training to the full extent possible? Beliefs drive behaviour, so understanding what your employees believe about their role, their impact, and the ability of their behavior to influence others is critical to creating an effective training initiative. The core beliefs held by people participating in a training initiative should be surfaced and examined for their implications on behavior. Incorrect assumptions should be directly challenged and overcome with facts to support employees to have the confidence and conviction to action what they have learned. 
3. Get Leaders Onboard – Yes, we’ve all heard this one before, but there’s a reason that it comes up again and again – because when it doesn’t happen, no one gets onboard. Leaders’ must not only state that they support training initiatives, when possible they must actively engage in preparing people to understand and be receptive to training . This can include, engaging employees in identifying the need for change and related process and / or skill gaps, taking an active role in selecting and shaping training initiatives, and perhaps most importantly, demonstrating the skills and behaviours that employees should be bringing back to the work environment as a result of the training. This may even mean that they must be participants in the training themselves.  

Following the training initiative:

1. Reinforce the New Skills – Part of the reason it’s important for leaders to understand and model the new skills and behaviours their employees are learning is that this enables them to put in place the systems and processes that will effectively facilitate, support, or even require the new skills and behaviours to be practiced in an ongoing way. Furthermore, following the training, leaders are then able to use their own expertise when observing and reinforcing new skills and behaviours in the workplace, further enhancing the ability of the training to translate into positive outcomes for the organization.
2. Measure the Impact – Again, this is something I think we’ve all heard before, but measuring the impact of training is rarely done and, when done, it is rarely done in a meaningful way. McKinsey found 50% of organizations captured feedback regarding training initiatives, essentially measuring if people “liked” the training, while 30% used other metrics.  Meaningfully measuring the impact of training initiatives in a way that speaks to the leaders in the business, means linking training outcomes to finances. Linking back to financial measurement for training initiatives is ultimately grounded in measuring the intended outcome of the initiative, and linking that outcome back to financial results. For more information on this see our recent article Organizational Development Initiatives – Perceived Value vs. Measurable Financial Return.

All of this is not to say that training initiatives couldn’t benefit from improved content and delivery methods, but it is to say that there are several key factors that must be taken into consideration before and after the actual training event occurs to support the success of the overall training initiative.

For more information and for a wide range of training and development resources, check out our Training and Development Group in the BC HRMA Online Community.

Kyla Nicholson, CHRP Candidate, is the Manager of Professional Development at BC HRMA. Kyla is committed to providing high-quality learning opportunities that build the capabilities and the organizational impact of HR practitioners. She also sits on the editorial committee and writes for PeopleTalk Magazine.