Companies and organisations spend millions of pounds each year on management training, but research shows that much of it has little effect on improving performance – how do we stop this enormous waste of money?
There is nothing like a training course to get you out of the office for a few days. Usually you get to stay in a nice hotel, eat some good food and socialize with like-minded people, all at the company’s expense! It’s an added bonus if the course is interesting and stimulating and starts you thinking about ways to tackle problems back at work.
When you return rested, and full of bright ideas, what are you met with? The more cynical of your colleagues tell you how they have been busy doing some “real work” whilst you’ve been away. The rest give you some knowing looks whilst you try a few new techniques, thinking – correctly – that you’ll soon be back to your old ways. Soon the training course is a dusty memory.
Is this a cynical view or a realistic one? In 1993 research by US Academics Detterman and Sternberg reported that 90% of all training is a waste of time and money. A lot of business training is not producing the performance improvements that the organisation desires. How do we tackle this problem?
One approach is to properly evaluate the effectiveness of the training that is being carried out. Donald L Kirkpatrick put forward a useful model in his 1975 book Evaluating Training Programs. He suggested thinking about how effective a course had been on four levels:
1.) What was the reaction of the student to the course, how did they feel about it, did they enjoy it, did it feel useful to their job role? This can be measured by an evaluation form.
2.) What did the student learn? This can be discovered by setting an exam or conducting an interview.
3.) How has the individual’s behaviour changed as a result of the course? This is more difficult to measure and needs to be done in an objective way over time by either the individual’s manager or their peers. One approach is to use a 360-degree review.
4.) How have their business results changed? Once again this needs to be done over time and in an objective way. In some jobs, results are easier to calculate, for example in sales. For other roles, more thought is required to identify the key performance indicators.
By adopting this sort approach we can start to develop a structured and objective way of evaluating how training is helping the organisation. This should help to weed out unnecessary expenditure on courses that have been authorised for the wrong reasons.
Another problem with training is that it does not work in isolation. People need back up over a period of time to help implement new ideas. What seemed great in theory in the classroom can seem dauntingly difficult to implement in the workplace. It’s useful to have continued support, maybe by regularly doing executive coaching
Unfortunately there are still many organisations that do not approach training in this way. But by thinking more holistically about developing performance in the organisation and using training as one tool to do this, overall business results can be improved.
© 2008 David Hinde
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