Training experts say companies continue to repeat old mistakes. They offer off-the-shelf courses or seminars that aren’t aligned with employees’ everyday responsibilities. They schedule classroom training when the trainer is available rather than when employees need to enhance their skills. They offer lectures, even though adults generally fare better with interactive learning.
They pluck trainers from within the ranks, even though these subject experts are unlikely to be skilled facilitators. They allow managers to skip the training sessions offered to lower-ranking employees, which means they won’t know how to reinforce what their employees have learned.
Worst of all, companies don’t follow through; they offer a training program, check the task off their list, and forget about it.
“Organizations do that all the time,” says consultant Marc Rosenberg of Marc Rosenberg and Associates, in Hillsborough, New Jersey. “They launch programs or events with great fanfare and then say, ‘Well, we delivered it, we gave them a feedback form, and they liked it.’ Then people go back to the same bad work environments, where they don’t have the tools or reinforcement they need to carry what they’ve learned over to their jobs, and no experts to turn to if they have a problem. Those organizations are not designed or structured to support what employees have learned in class.”
It doesn’t have to be that way. Training professionals have plenty of experience with what does and doesn’t work, as do many companies. General Electric Co.’s management training program is legendary. (Action Learning Based . Ed)