Demonstrate the value of training
Article Type: How to … From: Strategic HR Review, Volume 8, Issue 1
Practical advice for HR professionals
Gerry GriffinGerry Griffin is with Skill-Pill.
In times of credit crunch and economic stagnation, training may be one of the first budgets to get pared back. Organizations have to realize that if they are trying to get more productivity out of the workforce, they need to put something more in. An investment in training can deliver productivity gains, such as employees learning to multitask more efficiently, once that training is delivered in such a way as to realize its value.
There is no doubt that the workplace has become a busier environment characterized by information overload and the need for colleagues to deploy their skills on a broadening agenda of requirements. To have a chance of meeting these demands and gaining organizational investment, the training function needs to show how it can demonstrate value. Those developing and delivering training can start this process by focusing on the following key areas:
1. Training on the move
Training needs to break out of its prison. Up until now, training has been very location-specific; even e-learning is tied to the desktop. Fixed locations mean delegates shifting from one location to another, which causes an automatic productivity loss. We need to get training on the move, release it from fixed locations and allow it to follow the user – down corridors, into taxis or into meeting rooms – whenever and wherever they actually need it. Training has to have fluidity.
2. Dabbing, not slabbing
The time constraints that delegates are under mean that increasingly they are unable to give up large portions of time from their working week. Value will lie in demonstrating that training is malleable and can be broken into smaller“dabs,” rather than slabs of time. This means that the training model must shift from larger segments of time that are repeated periodically, to smaller dabs of learning repeated frequently. If training is to demonstrate its value, it needs to demonstrate that it can change its shape.
3. Formal versus informal
Most corporate investment goes toward formal learning. But much learning is achieved informally, for example, on-the-job experience or skills transfer between colleagues. If training is to demonstrate its value, it needs to try and capture the processes going on behind informal learning. We should configure informal learning to be more coherent, focused and business goal orientated. How we go about this is by looking at the principles of informal learning and investigating how they can be enabled. Mobile technology that allows the user to draw down content when it is actually needed is one way in which this could be achieved.
4. User-centered
One of the challenges at the center of training is the attempt to increase the knowledge of the user, in the hope that increased knowledge will equate to increased capacity to perform the job at hand. This puts the focus on the knowledge itself, rather than the user. What we need to look at is focusing on individual needs, not batches of employees who get trained collectively. This will obviously be more complex to organize, but HR directors need to realize that users can assess where their own gaps are. This calls for candor and trust but also for systems that are able to break learning into smaller parts and allow users to access knowledge banks as and when they need them.
5. Look to the future
Learning and skills transfer within organizations can often be untapped– constrained by process rather than driven by the material use and content retention of training. To overcome this, learning will have to re-invent itself, in much the same way that the music industry has had to reinvent itself in the digital age. All the systems and processes that HR directors currently use need to be assessed with regard to flexibility, their user-focus and how atomized they are, i.e. can their overall principles of learning be broken down to deal with specific situations and challenges? Finally, they also need to be assessed in relation to how interactive they are, i.e. do they reflect individual user growth patterns, rather than being fixed and aligned with personal development planning skills goals?
This is clearly an exciting time. E-learning is not the success it could have been due to mismanaged expectations and an over-emphasis on compliance learning. The digital world, particularly through mobile learning, represents a brand new chance to achieve the points raised above, but it will take a shift in attitude from the HR industry to see this disruption as an energizing threshold toward demonstrating real value.
About the author
Gerry Griffin founded Skill-Pill m-Learning in 2006. He is founder of the Business Communication Forum and a former director of London Business School. He has 15 years’ experience in training and has developed online solutions for companies such as Sun Microsystems, Kraft Foods and Diageo. Griffin is author of six business books. He can be contacted at: gerry@skill-pill.com
