The Fortune Group has developed and run countless sales, leadership and change management training programs over the last four decades, with businesses of all sizes, in all stages of growth, in every industry there is. For some of the thousands of clients we've worked with, we've been the only training company they've engaged. But for plenty of others – especially the larger corporations – we've been one of many.
It's from clients that have worked with other business training services prior to us that we've heard some frightening stories of training programs gone astray. We covered one such example in Effective sales training is a two-way street, but that story is just the tip of the iceberg.
Because so much time and money is invested in professional development training, we've compiled a short list of the top reasons workplace training programs fail – the red flags you should look out for when identifying an effective training solution for your business.
1. Training that isn't actually training – it's education, masquerading as training
Before you even start to analyse the training program, ask yourself: Is it even training? Or is it education? Because education is not training! This may sound obvious, but we've found many people have trouble separating the two.
When the "training" is simply a transfer of information from the "trainer" to participants, all about 'what' and not 'how and why', and its purpose is to provide people with knowledge, then it's education. The provision of knowledge or information is not training.
Training is about changing (habitual) behaviour. The purpose of training is NOT to provide people with knowledge; knowledge is simply a vehicle or tool used in the process because the purpose of training is to get action. And this action or, expressed another way, behaviour change can't simply be achieved through a one-day lecture or seminar; there has to be a commitment to ensure people ingest and understand the 'what, how and why' of training, make changes to how they behave and progressively improve on it.
2. Training that isn't presented in context
Training needs to be presented in context so that participants can absorb the principles and practice the skills, in the context of their daily roles. We wrote about an extreme anti-example of this in
Effective sales training is a two-way street, in which one business tried to "train" their sales team by having them read a book on sales. Even if you haven't read that post, you can guess how effective (not) that initiative was.
Training like this can bore participants to tears and turn them against learning. How easily people can become disillusioned, sceptical and even cynical about training. If the training isn't shaped and interactive so that it can be experienced in context, then it won't be (emotionally) engaging, and not only will your investment be wasted, your people will resent being put through the process!
3. Training that has no buy-in from management
You'd think that line management, frequently responsible for bringing training into a business, would be (fully) committed to supporting it from beginning to end. But too often this is not the case: managers will put the onus on the facilitator and walk away, thinking their job is done in arranging it. But far worse are the stories of management directly contradicting the training!
"I know what they taught you there, but here we do it differently." Words to that effect kill training stone-dead!
In order for training to be effective, management must be fully aligned with it, and work at providing significant, continual support. And the statistics bear this out. As we quoted recently from a Knowledge Pool white paper in
Business training isn't a one-day workshop, a massive 94% of learners who receive line management support apply what they've learned.
Training is literally one of management's greatest tools.
It's not always easy to distinguish good training programs from the less so. We hope this list will provide guidance on some things to look for when identifying an effective training program for your business.
If you're ever in doubt, please feel free to ask us for our opinion. Email us at innovate@fortunegroup.com.au.