“Training is good.Give us money.” This is how the training director of a largebank characterized his department’s request for money from the company’s president.They didn’t get any.
The late comedian RodneyDangerfield always complained about not getting any respect. Sometimes it seemsthat’s the epitome of the training function. In organizations facing difficulttimes, training is often the third thing that’s cut, right after travel andfree coffee. It’s obvious to most of us that investment in quality training isa good bet. So why can’t we sell it? Here are three key “failures” to avoid.
Failure to meet new expectationsfor what training should do
Historically,training was seen as a way to give employees essential skills that would enablethem to perform their jobs successfully. Almost all training was presumably rooted in identifiable tasks that could bereplicated and measured. Computer programming, sales, manufacturing, repair andmaintenance, customer service, and technical management are examples offunctions that consumed much of the training resource.
All well andgood, and still important, but companies today want training to go beyondtask-based instruction. For example, companies are asking training to changeattitudes about diversity, to shape organizational culture, and to develop leadershipand innovation capabilities, all of which are harder to define or anticipate,much less train. The problem is that training’s ability to accomplish thesemore elusive objectives, and demonstrateverifiable results, has lagged way behind newexpectations. As those expectations rise for what training should do, the risk exposure of the training function rises as well. Whentraining is called upon to solve problems it is ill-prepared to solve, theresults are often far less than what was expected.
Even whentraining is an appropriate solution to a problem, too often it takes too longto develop and deploy, costs too much, or both. Bad work settings, ineffectivemanagers, or other priorities can undermine any benefits stemming from theacquisition of new skills. Companies thatinvest millions of dollars in training increasingly find that they may not bemuch better off than before they started, and therefore view the effort aswasted. Executive sponsors of high-profile business initiatives, who jump totraining as the single or only way to solve a business performance problem,often point to training as the single or only culprit when the initiatives fail.
Failure to demonstrate businessvalue
A poor trackrecord for training, whether perceived or real, has not been addressed very wellby many training groups themselves, who havefor too long measured success by how well they are doing, rather thanhow well the business is doing. Moretuition revenue, more student days (“butts in seats”), end-of-course testscores, and higher levels of student satisfaction are all examples of internalmeasures of training activity. Even as companies put more training online, someof the most popular measures of success are how many courses are on the serverand how many times a particular course was “opened.”
There isvalue in these data, and they are easily collected (thanks to the LMS), butthey are not nearly enough. Today, many training organizations are notadequately prepared to show how their work contributes value to individual andorganizational productivity, and businesssuccess. When asked, “How has training benefited individual performance or thecompany as a whole” (i.e., “What have you done for me lately?”), many trainingorganizations are, unfortunately, ill equipped to respond.
Failure to recognize the changingeconomics of the training function
The exposuremany training organizations feel today is more intense because they arespending a great deal more of what is perceived to be “real” money than everbefore. In the past, when training organizations were almost entirelyclassroom-based, they could charge tuition to cover their costs. This waspredominately an internal transfer of budget money from one department (theparticipants’) to another (the training department). Thus trainingorganizations appeared to need farless of a direct corporate investment. Certainly, business units were spendingmoney on training, and training departments were collecting it, but becausethere was no real flow of cash into or out of the company, it was harder tospot and was mistakenly seen as less of a concern.
Today, withmillions of dollars paid to outsource service providers, technology firms, andexternal courseware suppliers, along with the significant increase ininfrastructure costs to deliver eLearning programs, senior leaders, especiallybusiness unit heads and CIOs, are taking notice, demanding more justification and rightly asking whether theinvestment might be better spent elsewhere.
Even when the expenseis justified, increasing budget pressures, and what seems to be permanentuncertainty in the business cycle, is likely to continue well into the future. Thisputs constraints on every department, and training is no exception. Simplyasking for money for training is no longer enough to ensure that you will getwhat you ask for, much less what you need.
Notthe fun stuff perhaps, but necessary nonetheless
Managing expectations,demonstrating value, and justifying costs may not seem very training orinstructional-design focused, or as exciting as a new technology, but thesethree activities may be more important for the ultimate success of any trainingeffort than the individual learning programs themselves, however well designed.This may not be in our sweet spot, but if we ignore or diminish these fundamentalareas, getting respect may be the least of our worries.
