In a recent chat over coffee, a friend of mine (who works as a manager in retail) was expressing sheer frustration that her recent appraisal review was not A+++ solely due to her failure to deliver all the Learning & Development initiatives prescribed by her organisation. She totally understood why training was required and that in the longer term the benefits would be reflected in her sales numbers, but she’s a ‘no nonsense, get stuff done lady’ who believed she’d be judged on the store’s day-to-day performance, not on whether she had satisfactorily completed the ‘training’ requirements.
So, what are the issues in this love-hate relationship?
TIME - The all precious resource that we all lack! In my friend’s scenario, time directly equates to variable overhead costs, which eats into her profitability. Taking people off the job to complete training dents productivity, profitability and customer service. These factors are all directly measured KPIs which will impact her store’s performance, so the adage ‘damned if you do, and damned if you don’t’ springs to mind.
RELEVANCE - Frequently employees view training sessions as irrelevant to their job or inappropriate for their skill level. We’re humans, we’re inherently selfish creatures and if we can’t see the personal gain then why bother? An employee who feels negatively towards a training course is not going to engage with the content and will get little-to-no benefit from the intervention.
ACCESSIBILITY – The more complicated it is to participate in something the less likely we are to get involved! As in the above example, we have our human traits to blame for our tendency to look for the path of least resistance, seeking the simplest way to get stuff done, and if that path is complicated then we’re likely to be distracted away, and not complete the task.
What does this mean for those responsible for Learning & Development?
MAKE YOUR ‘LEARNING’ A BRAND – By this I mean give your L&D programmes all the care and attention that a brand manager would give to launching a new product to market, after all this is your product launch! This requires consideration of the ‘cradle to grave’ execution of that launch. From understanding your market need, to identifying and segmenting your audience, to creating desirable value propositions for each of your market segments, through to the conception and execution of impactful communication plans, definition & tracking of performance indicators and finally implementing a rigorous feedback loop to drive continuous improvement. Plus, you also need to create the content - the training course!
By approaching the launch of training programmes, in the manner a marketer would bring a product to market you will inherently solve some of the issues we identified in our earlier example. For starters, if you understand the market ‘need’ you will be able tailor your training proposition to solve those ‘pain-points’ or issues, thereby creating solutions for colleagues. If you have identified and segmented the audience that you are targeting with the training then you will be able to tailor the messaging and training content to be more relevant to job roles thus making sure that the solutions you have developed are delivered to the right individuals. As an example, does the forklift driver need the same level of understanding around GDPR as the marketing executive?
How you communicate the learning opportunities is also vitally important! So often an email lands in your inbox with a link to random e-learning modules that need completing. And if you are like my friend, you are left asking the following questions; Why do I need to spend my time doing this? How will this help me (or my staff) do my/their job(s)? How will the success of this be measured? However, if this was delivered as a marketing campaign then the multiple touchpoints and messaging that launched the initiative would be meaningful to the recipients; it would be positioned as a solution to a need, and ultimately would grab interest, provide a clear pathway of actions and above all motivate participation.
As in any marketing campaign there will be performance indicators that you would expect to reach in order to deem your activity a success. There is much debate on how to measure training effectiveness (a topic we’ll delve into another time!) but one thing is certain you will need to know WHAT you are trying to achieve through the training intervention so that you can measure how closely you come to that goal! Technology is evolving in the area of L&D measurement and can now provide us greater analytics around delegates engagement with learning. For example, how on-task they are during a virtual trainer led session, or gamification that can provide quantitative data on the transfer of learning. In my friend’s case clearly the importance of the L&D training cascades has not been highlighted and therefore the mismatch of perception and reality is fuelling the love-hate relationship.
Make it easy - SIMPLIFY YOUR SYSTEMS
We already touched on how technology is improving our training analytics, but it can also helps us address other barriers in the love-hate relationship. In my friend’s experience she was so frustrated by the multiple learning platforms that needed accessing, and the fact that it was complicated to locate what needed to be done and by when. Harmonising all your training interventions into a single hub or Learning Management System, which can be accessed simply will improve the access to the training, improve the learner’s experience and drive better engagement with the programmes.
These days most people ‘double-hat’ or even ‘triple-hat’ at work covering work that may have been done by others in the past. This makes us time poor but also potentially means we could be lacking in skills and knowledge to effectively cover all these roles. Training now needs to be delivered in formats that can ‘fit around’ the daily schedule to avoid time away from the day job, but that can also tie together multiple course topics so that training can be better tailored to individual learning needs.
At LearnLive.Online we create bespoke web portals to manage all your training needs, from e-learning to virtual instructor led training which can all be booked and managed online. Our systems enable you to manage your organisation’s learning needs like a product launch to deliver maximum impact, all created by and delivered by leading subject matter experts. If you would like to find out more you can follow us on LinkedIn or directly contact us at enquiries@learnlive.online.
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