Why training so often fails and how to help employees get the best from a training program

Agenda of a Training Program

Before starting any training program the agenda should be clear why it is being conducted for. In general, management conduct a SKILL training program to impart following in employees 1. To increase effective communication 2. To make them emotionally strong and intelligent communicator 3. To grow them as a savvier negotiator 4. To handle and deliver bad news more compassionately and effectively 5. To build sophisticated cross-cultural communicators 6. To build better coaches The success and failure of a training program depend on how trainees have learned and performed during real conditions and challenges. A successful training should give an obvious solution to a real problem which should be fruitful and within a frame of time. But if it is not so, then a training seems to fail. And we find it so often fails. It is important that we should identify reasons that make a training program fail. Getting rid of short comes we can easily make a training program successful. How should star employees be recognized and rewarded?

This is why training so often fails

1. Low-quality training structure

In preparing the training structure and content the facilitator should consider the following: What they intend to do: -> goals and objectives How are they going to do it: -> content, methods and materials How will they know if they have succeeded: -> monitoring and evaluation

2. Poor implementation and run

Go for quality first and price second, not the other way around It is often seen that long-term benefits of quality are sacrificed for the short-term benefits of the price. It is vital to balance the long-term value of what you get versus the price you pay. Check if the return on training investment (ROI) is coming and continuously hunt for flaws and fix them The management team should always check if they are getting back ROI on training. They should also learn from previous mistakes and fix the flaws for a better and smooth run of a training program. Besides, other factors should be taken care of trainer's qualification, its caliber and productivity, budget allocation and role and responsibilities of facilitator, custodian, and trainer.

3. Psychological Safe Training Settings

Psychological safe training settings are conditions and circumstances where trainees can freely experiment with behavior, often without pressure and negative consequences of a mistake. They often receive immediate supportive feedback and are praised in their efforts to learn. In real practices, the atmosphere isn’t as easy and forgiving. Seniors don’t necessarily show same forgiveness nor have the same depth of patience in a real world as they do in a training environment. The stakes and consequences are typically higher.

In training it is all about learning and developing skills, whereas in real job it is all about performance and delivering results.

This is a reason that in situations such as these, employees find themselves uncomfortable and anxious. They make effort to release out their stress and tend to forget what they learned in training and fall back on their previously established habits in their comfort zone. They fail to adapt and react to new situation and challenges while applying the new skills they learned in training. It increases stress and tension between management and employees relationships.

Help Employees get the best from training

A low-quality training structure and its poor run are responsible for training failure. HR along with management should carefully watch out the entire training program, its every inventory including trainer background, schedule, training synopsis, and outline, test, and evaluation method, and criteria, etc. In many of training programs, there is often a significant gap between the rhetoric for what we hope to achieve and the reality of what we can possibly achieve given what we provide employees during the training. Having a high-quality training structure and better implementation and run of training can shorten this gap and improve employee-employer relationships and hence productivity. Now if we talk about psychological training settings and its management, it is more inclined to emotional rather practical or theoretical factors.

A gap between set expectation and real performance can be minimized if employees are given right feedback and suggestions during training. As it is about emotional management and the way how it is controlled during real exposure at work, especially by manager and supervisors determine the consequences and significance of the overall training program. In nutshell, having a clear, high-quality training structure and its perfect run is the key success point of any training while psychological and emotional factors are secondary but important factors of a training program.

According to you, what is the most important factor for the success of a training program? Share your opinion in the comment box.