3 easy ways to make training more relevant
Don’t Deliver Training. Deliver Outcomes!
Eric’s Insights is dedicated to sharing new learning ideas and research to help you deliver better training outcomes.
Speaking of better outcomes, my article How L&D Can Prove Training’s Value to the Business seems to have struck a nerve because the feedback keeps pouring in.
I recently received this message from a F500 L&D veteran:
Great article Eric. You speak the truth! Without impact, without a direct correlation to performance improvement, you become only a cost to the business, a burden to the bottom line, and a waste of our most important asset, time. There must be relevance.
Do you want your programs to be more relevant? The article dives into three achievable things you can do today to make yourself irreplaceable at work:
- Create operational alignment by running your team like a business. Too often, training is a tactical reaction to customer requests, creating missed opportunities for L&D to play a more strategic role. You know the importance of proper discovery before training design, but often what is important takes a back seat to what is urgent. Spending effort delivering tactical remedies to problems that haven’t been properly diagnosed is wasted time for both your limited resources and for the trainees. We need to break the cycle and do things the right way every time.
- Migrate from event-based training and toward a continuous learning culture. Memory research proves that shorter learning interventions spaced over time have a greater impact than drinking from the fire hose. Also, the next generation of learners has far shorter attention spans requiring us to adapt learning accordingly.
- Deliver proof of training impact. Many factors affect employee performance, which makes proving training impact practically impossible (note I said practically). An A/B test, done properly, isolates training impact from these other factors so you can offer evidence that your programs make a difference. I’ve done it several times, and it’s quite effective. Anecdotal feedback from your audience will always be part of the evaluation equation, but when you back it up with performance metrics you’ll always get leadership’s attention.
The article is a little like watching a video that shows you a delicious cake, but doesn’t share the ingredients, the steps involved or the baking instructions. My goal for the article, however, was just to show you the cake by introducing the what? and why? to serve as a foundation. Future installments of Eric’s Insights will show you how to bake it, guiding you step by step on the when? and how?
Until then, remember: Don’t Deliver Training. Deliver Outcomes!
PS: One of my favorite learning researchers, Dr. William Thalheimer, wrote a thought provoking article suggesting an alternative to using Net Promoter Score for training evaluation. He calls it Net Effectiveness Score. Read his article here (he is worth following!)
