Practical Ways to Ensure Training Investments are Effective

One of the things many companies struggle with is ensuring that the training they invest in for their employees is effective. We know from research that having opportunities for development is a key contributor to employee engagement; and with employee engagement levels at an all time low, we need to do everything we can foster engagement and encourage high performance. And with budgets stretched even tighter these days, it is more important than ever for companies to make sure they are getting a return on their training investments. Here are three practical tips for ensuring training investments are effective.

Make Sure the Development Activity Has a Larger Context

So often, what we do in our work does not have a larger context. We have responsibilities and goals, and even competencies that are specific to our role or identified as core to the organisation, but we don't understand how any of them contribute to the organisation's success.

It's the same with our development activities. Many employees don't really understand how the learning activities they're signed up for relate to their performance or their job. So they go through the motions of taking the training, without really being engaged or accountable for the results.

Employers can change this scenario by making sure employees have a clear context for their learning. They should link or tie all assigned training activities to the employee's performance of a specific goal or competency, either to address a performance gap, or to expand their knowledge/skill/experience so they can enhance their performance of goals or competencies. This is even more effective if the employee's goals are linked to higher level organisational goals and their competencies reflect organisational competencies and values; this helps them they truly understand how their work and learning contributes to the organisation's success.

By making sure employees understand why they are assigned a particular learning activity, how it should impact their performance, and why it's important to the organisation, we give them a context and value for their learning, and increase their engagement and commitment to their growth and development.

Consider the Employee's Learning Style

We all learn differently, and have a preferred or dominant learning style. One of the common models breaks out four styles: auditory (learn by hearing), visual (learn by looking), reading/writing-preference (learn by reading and writing), and kinesthetic (learn by doing). But there are many other models that categorise and explain different learning styles.

What is important is to understand how an employee learns best, and then provide training activities that cater to their dominant learning style. Sending a kinesthetic learner to a lecture will likely be less effective than sending them to a hands-on training session or letting them work side-by-side with a mentor on some practical tasks. Assigning reading materials to an auditory learner will be less effective than giving them a podcast or having them attend a webinar. Here, e-learning materials can often offer the advantage of catering to more than one learning style.

A manager may need to do some probing or experimenting to help the employee figure out their preferred learning style, but once they have identified it, they should do everything they can to cater to it; the organisation and the employee will reap the benefits.

Measure the Effectiveness of Training in Terms of Improved On-the-Job Performance

We have traditionally measured the effectiveness of training with pre and post testing. Many organisations also look to "training satisfaction" surveys that ask the employee if they think they'll apply the things they’ve learned to their job. These are all important, and can certainly give us an indication of what an employee has absorbed and retained from training. But they do not really tell us if the training has had an impact on their on-the-job performance – and that is really what we are after: improved on-the-job performance.

So what if you looked at and compared performance review ratings before and after training and looked for improvements? If you have tied the employee's development activities to their performance of a specific competency or goal, you should expect to see a correlative improvement in performance review scores. That would be a far better measure of training effectiveness. And ideally, you would look at performance review score improvements not just for one employee, but for all those who took a particular course or training activity in order to evaluate its effectiveness as well.

When it comes right down to it, that is the true measure of the value of your training – did it improve employee performance and in so doing support improved corporate performance? By adopting these practices, you can help ensure your employees and your organisation gain value from your training programmes.

About the Author

Sean Conrad is passionate about leveraging performance management processes to drive employee development and organisational success. He's a senior product analyst at Halogen Software.