Careers Voice: Making training work
pharmafile | September 10, 2009 | Feature | Business Services |Â Â careers, careers voice, trainingÂ
A senior manager in a major pharmaceutical company told me that the industry spends millions on training and next to nothing on ensuring that it works.
Certainly most of the candidates I meet have had some training in the previous few months, but it is often hard to garner evidence that their behaviours have changed as a consequence.
And of course, changing behaviours is what training should be about! To understand what makes training work, we need to focus on the steps in the process:
* Training needs assessment
* Training design
* Implementation
* Review
By my observation there is a tendency to rush to the third step, giving only a cursory thought to steps one and two, and often none at all to step four! So let us look at each step in turn and see what should be done to make training work.
Training needs assessment
To assess training needs, a person’s performance needs to be reviewed and areas where performance can be improved identified. For many companies this is in the annual appraisal system, although it is not always given enough airtime.
Traditionally trainers look at knowledge, skills and attitudes as areas that need to be reviewed. Knowledge is something that can be learned by reading or being told. Skills, on the other hand, can only be learned by practice. Attitudes are often the hardest things to change, but helping the trainee to see the need for and value of change is often enough.
Training design
For some managers, designing a training programme means reaching for the directory of short courses. While there is a real place for courses, good training extends beyond courses and often non-course training is cheaper and more effective. In my years as a trainer, I always tried to involve the trainee in this process by asking questions like “What is the best way for you to learn this?” and “How can the company help you to master these skills?” Notice the emphasis on the trainee learning rather than the company training. This puts the focus in the right place and gives control to the trainee.
Implementation
The implementation stage should utilise a variety of training methods. Again, the most effective approach is to make the trainee the person who monitors implementation and reports on progress. The trainee also needs to ensure that the job is not neglected, although clearly if training is going on then other things will be paused or take longer. Once we are away from short courses, training tends to happen over longer periods of time, so the manager needs to be satisfied that progress is being made.
Review
Training needs assessment might start with an annual appraisal, but this is most definitely not the place where training should be reviewed. That event is too far away from the actual training. Reviews should be regular – perhaps weekly – and modifying.
No one is so clever that they can get their training plans right every time, and of course things will change, so training will need to be amended ‘on the hoof.’ However, reviewing is much more than redirecting the course of events in the face of circumstances. It is about checking that learning has taken place and been ‘fixed’ in the mind of the trainee. There is also an element of reinforcement in reviewing. A wise old apprentice trainer I used to know, when asked how he trained, said: “First I tell them what I’m going to tell them, then I tell them, then I tell them what I have told them, and then I get them to tell me what I told them.” Good knowledge training and reviewing!
To sum up
What makes training work is comprehensive needs assessment, imaginative and relevant training design, thorough implementation and good regular reviews. Give the trainee responsibility for driving the whole process and, as the manager, make sure the trainee learns what they need to learn.
Peter Fortune is a partner at EJJH Email: Peter.Fortune@ejjh.co.uk
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