I hope all of you are well. I met many new colleagues and rekindled past friendships here in San Diego over the past 4 days. I did a lot of teaching and book signing, but I learned a lot as well. Many of you reading this will be people that I am referring to.
What Causes Training Failure?
In the past few weeks I came across some data from the American Society for Training and Development (ASTD) that I would like to expand on – from my own thoughts, and the struggles I heard from friends and colleagues I talked with this week. They conducted research in 2006 to determine what causes “training failure”. Here, training failure is loosely defined as ‘training that did not yield expected or desired results’. Specifically, they looked at three categories of reasons. First, did the “failure” come from a lack of preparing the participant for the training event? They entitled this category “Preparation and readiness” and it manifested itself with an unprepared, unmotivated, and/or inappropriate learner. It would commonly include a situation where someone was ”sent” to training rather than saw training as an opportunity to learn, to perform, and to contribute (not those 3 short phrases align perfectly with Kirkpatrick’s Level 2, 3, and 4 respectively.)
The second reason they call “Learning Intervention” had to do with the delivery of the session itself. This would include many of the things us “good trainers” focus on – the relevance of the content, the atmosphere of the training room, the delivery methods and modality, and the training materials. The third reason is the environment in which participants return after training, and is called “Application Environment”. This includes such factors as opportunity for the participant to put what they learned into practice, conflicting priorities, and the type of reinforcement and coaching they receive from their supervisors.
If you know me, you know what is likely coming. The results of the ASTD “reasons for training failure” study are as follows:
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Preparation and Readiness: 20% |
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Learning Intervention (aka Training Event): 10% |
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Application Environment: 70% |
Let’s take a closer look at this. ASTD identified a number of BEST award winners for 2008. These companies were selected for superior training and learning methodologies, and the demonstrated ability to meet the needs of their business partners and stakeholders. It should come as no surprise that they had certain common characteristics. With specific relevance to the above statistics, they all implemented the following methodology – supervisors and learning professionals communicated with program participants prior to training to help create excitement and make expectations for follow up and application clear. They also had extensive follow up processes that took what participants learned in the programs and reinforced those knowledge and skills through coaching, level 3 evaluation, support and accountability. In short, they sent the message, “What you learned is important to you doing your job better, and making a positive contribution to our business. We are doing all we can to support you in that effort so that you success in applying what you spent time learning.” In other words, they spend much of their time guarding against 90% of training failure causes.
Conversely, do you know what most training departments do? They spend their time tweaking the 10%! As I was teaching these concepts to a large group, I asked them, “Why do you think this is true?” The answers were all of one theme – “Because we are comfortable in that arena, and we can control what we are doing.” This is both true and ominous. I have written about ‘training being on trial’ in the eyes of many key business stakeholders, and one of the main reasons is that we do not attend to the factors that can most influence training success.
What is my recommendation here? Attend to the 90%. Leverage the before and after (training) in order to maximize the benefit you bring to the bottom line, and minimize the possibility of training failure. If you know how to do it, great. Do it. If not, allow us to help you.
SMR USA's Public Sessions, 2008
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Asia HRD Congress™ 2008
Asia HRD Congress is scheduled for July 22 - 24, 2008 in Jakarta, Indonesia. The Vice President of Indonesia has confirmed to open the event. The Honourable Minister of Human Resources, Government of Indonesia has consented to deliver the keynote. The Honourable Minister of Human Resources, Government of Malaysia has also been invited. We look forward to welcoming you at the event. Visit the website at www.hrdcongress.com or email to enquiries@smrhrgroup.com for more details.
