Are you wasting time & money - training employees?

Are you wasting time & money - training employees?

Tim Connor

Many organizations that invest in employee development or training are wasting a great deal of their time and money.  Don’t believe me . . .  read on!

Do you know the retention of new material, techniques or ideas after three to four weeks?  Well, it’s around 3%. So, the next time you send your employees to an all-day seminar and expect performance improvement that lasts - you are living in La La Land.

I have been in the training business for over 35 years and conducted hundreds of seminars in 26 countries for audiences between 10 and 3500 people and I have observed hundreds if not thousands of people sitting in seminars while mentally they were – somewhere else – the entire time.

There are many factors that determine whether an employee will learn, understand, embrace and apply new knowledge and skills.  Some of these can be controlled by the organization, but many are the results of an employee’s beliefs, expectations, mindsets, attitudes, and agendas which can’t be controlled by the training entity whether an outside outsourced firm or an in-house training department.

Over the years, as a result of extensive study and research, I have developed a unique training process and approach that can be described as “curriculum-based training” rather than short term or transaction-focused development.  If you want your employee investment to have a positive long-term return the only guaranteed way to accomplish this is by ensuring that any training initiative or approach takes the participants completely through this process.

Believe me, you can have the latest and greatest toys, software, products, and services, but if your employees lack the creativity, initiative, motivation, skills, attitudes, and empowerment necessary for effective performance - I’ll guarantee that these resources will be underutilized.

There are two ways to educate, train or develop employees.

-The transactional approach

-The curriculum based approach

Let’s take a brief look at both.

The transactional approach -

A transaction is a single event, a onetime interaction or a short-term approach.  Let me give you an example.  Let’s say you send your customer service representatives to a half-day seminar on how to improve customer relations and increase repeat business.  These people are exposed to appropriate and valuable material for a few hours with little interaction or participation.  They sit there all morning – and learn. 

After lunch, they head back to work dealing with many of the routine customer issues that the training was designed to help them with.

Now I ask you, if a person has spent ten, twenty or even only five years developing mindsets, attitudes, habits, routines, approaches do you think they are going to permanently change these because of a four-hour seminar?  Not going to happen.

The curriculum based process –

The curriculum based process is a longer-term approach where there are ongoing gradual incremental increases of information that are covered as well as some form reinforcement, coaching, inspection and/or accountability.

Let me give you an example.  If you took algebra when you were in high school, how did you learn it?  Let’s say after your first 45-minute class on the topic of algebra the teacher gave you your final exam.  Would you pass?  Of course not.  How do you learn algebra so that after three months of classes, three times a week you could pass the final exam?

Goes like this:  Class, homework, next class two days later you discuss the homework, then new material followed by homework on the new material. Two days later the process continues.  Three months later, you pass the exam.  Now, let’s apply this to a corporate learning situation.

You send your salespeople to a one-day training seminar on how to close more sales (the transaction approach) and then send them on their way.  They might improve their ability to close for a few days or a couple of weeks, but I’ll guarantee that within a short period of time they will default back to previous attitudes, approaches, and techniques.

See the difference between these two training approaches?

The curriculum-based approach has four necessary stages if you want to ensure the success and/or improvement or change in any employee’s attitudes, skills or behavior.

The stages are;

-The awareness level;

At this level of learning, employees have an awareness only of techniques, tactics, skills, and approaches to be more effective in their roles.  However, they lack the clarity and understanding to embrace the learning in a way that will allow them to put the information into practice in an effective way and for the long term.  At this level, the behavior will not change, and you will have essentially wasted corporate resources and the employee’s time. They will be alert and attentive during any training session but will lack the knowledge necessary to know how, where, when and why to use this new information.  The awareness level can be described as sharing information only.

-The understanding level;

At the understanding level, employees get it.  They see the relationship between the information they have learned and its value, but they still lack the ability to apply what they have learned to their roles and responsibilities.

-The integration level;

Knowledge if it is not used, applied or integrated into current mindsets, activities, responsibilities or approaches is essentially useless information.  Without a doubt, the biggest challenge in any training initiative is to ensure that the new learning is used and used whenever and wherever appropriate for the long term. At this level - learning must include a variety of activities such as; the customizing of the delivered material, interactive participation during the training sessions, homework (take-away activities for participant implementation and testing), ongoing coaching and inspection by management, holding participants responsible for implementing new tactics or approaches, management or supervision attends the learning sessions so they are aware of what the participants are learning.

-The mastery level;  

Mastery is the highest form of knowledge applied.  This is where wisdom becomes the standard for learning and skill and attitude development.  Mastery occurs when knowledge becomes wisdom and wisdom is utilized at every opportunity when the situation or circumstance warrants.  Very few participants in a typical “transaction” training session for a number of reasons achieve this level of knowledge or wisdom.  Generally speaking, people who achieve mastery in their chosen field of endeavor have made mastery their goal and they have followed through with discipline, persistence, and planning.

That’s it, folks – so – keep wasting time and money or start using the “curriculum-based training process” that works and gives you value for your time and resources.  PS: If you want more information on this process – contact me – I have been using this process with clients for over thirty years.