Learning and Development - 17 April 2007

Most of the funds that companies spend on training go to waste. There are four main reasons for this. Firstly, upon identifying a skilling gap, companies provide training without taking into consideration each employee's preferred learning style. Training needs to be customised to suit each individual. Secondly, in order for employees to absorb information, they must be exposed to it about three times and in various methods. It's just like sales. Prior to purchasing a product, consumers are first exposed to it several times (such as advertisements, referrals, and shop windows) before they eventually buy it.

Thirdly, the majority of training that companies provide is for technical skills. Even though these skills are important, they're not as engaging as providing training on soft skills. These can include communication, negotiation, presentation delivery, relationship-building, etc.

And finally, if your employees aren't being entertained while they're learning, they're probably not learning at all. No matter how dry the topic, in fact, especially if the topic is dry, you need to find some way to make it fun.

If you use internal training or external providers (like me!), make sure they encompass all of the above so that you're getting the most out of your training dollars.

I was told last week by a clever CEO, "The only thing worse than training staff and having them leave, is not training them and having them stay!" How true that is.

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