The Learning Performance

One question was posed to me the other day concerning the "impact" of post-training at workplace.

In another words, have the training produced expected improvements in performance (be it hard or soft skills, attitude, etc) of the employees after having attending the training.

I remember not so long ago, I attended a course on strategic branding. It was a very informative and interesting course. I've learned much, but I didn't get to apply the knowledge and skill I've learned in my workplace due to the main reason that my bosses decided not to pursue branding exercise of the company after all.

Theoretically speaking, the training failed spectacularly. Why? you might think of following two reasons:
1) Training needs was not accessed and decided systematically
2) Company's strategic thrust (or intend) was not formulated correctly. (After all, branding exercise of a company should be a major strategy thrust that tie-to the overall corporate strategy.)

You would be right on both counts. Congratulation!

To minimize falling into the above trap and ensure certain successes of the training programme, I always advise my customers to conduct a "quick & dirty" Training Needs Analysis (TNA), unless of course the customers have other ideas about the training programme. The TNA is meant to address the training needs may be required to bridge the knowledge/skill/attitude that the company needs in order to ACHIEVE ORGANIZATIONAL OBJECTIVES.

Say for example, one of the company 's objectives is to increase sales revenue by 100% by the end of the current financial year.
Questions are:
- are the sales folks ready? Do they need to change their mindset to be in sync with new sales strategy, perhaps.
- are the back-end support staffs have the knowledge and skills to handle the increase in sales?
- Is the company culture conducive to such high increase in revenue?

No doubt, certain issues would not be able to be solved by training (eg. increase in financial funding), but many issues can be helped by targeted training interventions, like teamwork, effective sales & marketing, etc. TNA is the key here.

That is why TNA is a every effective value-added process in deciding training programme.

I took a group of 65 for a team building program in Jan 2007. We did a number of elements in the event, but I really feel that the most memorable and rather unexpected highlights came from a seemingly simple task.

I asked each natural working group to design and present a flag that says who they are, and what they would like other people to think of them.

They were only given 10 minutes to design, and 5 minutes to present to the whole group.

I thought all groups did exceptionally well. That is team work manifests in its purest form. When putting a group of disparage people together, it is amazing what they can accomplish when group dynamics, creativity, and team spirit set in. Companies that understand and take pain to cultivate positive working environment with great team work has statistically proven to do better than companies otherwise.

Currently on a project conducting a Training Needs Analysis (TNA) for a local Bursa First Board listed IT company. Last week, I interviewed two General Managers of its two subsidiaries. It was exciting to be able to help clients out in such a way, and invariably, I learn from them as much as they would benefit from my helps.

The case:
The companies have a strategic intent in solution based business, and would like to find out the training needs required for their sales team. The TNA entails following 3 steps:
1) Interview GM
2) Interview Head of Department
3) A half-day workshop with the Sales Team

I'll keep you posted as this TNA progresses, as well the outcome of this TNA.

Today is the first day of Chinese's Lunar Year. Since it happened to be on a Sunday, we went to our regular Church Service. Since myself and my wife are coming from out of Kuala Lumpur, and we have not done "balik kampung" since our eldest son started primary school six years ago, CNYs have been spent idling around the house. We tried our best not to step on each other toes, as anger or "bad mood" is not a good thing on the first day of CNY.

If you happen to chance upon my blog, I wish you personally a very big Gong Xi FA Chai.

A. Purposes of Training

Training is a planned effort to facilitate the employee to acquire high performing behaviors in order to improve their job performance. Training is also systematic process to facilitate a change in employee’s knowledge, skills and attitude with the aim to achieve organizational vision, missions and goals.

Through proper training interventions, company should be able to:

• Assisting employee in developing the mindset - Knowledge, Skills and Attitude needed to perform effectively and efficiently in their jobs

• Learning various business techniques and tools

• Changing attitudes – example, from strong technically based to more business orientated

• Enhancing team-working spirit

• Increasing team performance and productivity

B. Benefits of training

For organizations, the benefits of trainings are:

• Increased competence

• Increased productivity

• Less staff problems

• Increased profitability

• Learning organization

For employee, the benefits are:

• Increased competence

• Personal satisfaction

• Fulfilling self potential

Opportunity for career development

Coming from IT distribution background, I understand intimately the values of forming strategic alliances. Good strategic alliances are those profitable to everyone involved, it is that simple a concept. When each party in the alliances bring to the table respective added values, the sum of the whole is invariably greater than the sum of each individual parts added up. It becomes an self perpetuating ecosystem. Independent dependency could be contradictory in terms, but in a well formed and profitable alliances' relationship, is a truth to behold.

Bring it (S.A) to my training & consulting business (www.atc.com.my), I've been able to establish a wide range of my services offering, in a shortest of time. It is one of my go-to-market strategies, and has worked beautifully.

Of course, as I mentioned above, the strategic alliance must be profitable to all parties. To do that, company needs to have a set of guiding principals, written clearly in the company's charter, and follow religiously.

The guiding principal pertaining to my strategic partners read "Customers, Business Partners and Employee are treated as partners". One example of holding to that principal is prompt payment of services rendered as agreed.

Title phase borrowed partly from infarmous Louis Gerstner of the similar book's title.

We penettrated an SME account, that is after my account manager been knocking on the door for over a year. When it finally happened, it was of course a cause for celebration. It was a 2-days course in a local hotel. 90% of the delegates are long serving employee, some have been with the company for over 30 years. That was they FIRST training course. Unbeliveable? Believe it!

Talking to them during lunch time, and the feedbacks gotten from them can't help but concluded they were really enraptured by the training. Just imagined, some of them took session photos, with an atmosphere of festivities!

The point is why can't the top bosses, or person(s) in the position of making decision see the value and benefits from staff training? Ironically, in an organisation the very same person who is responsible for company performance could be the biggest obstacle, or "competitive disadventage"personified!

During my IT days, we segmented (and I think it is still like so) the markets generally into two distinct markets:- (1) The Volume & (2) The Enterprise. The Volume market in essence are dealing with fast-moving IT related products like desktops, printers, and low-end servers. Ths is a very much price sensitive market segment. On the other hand, the Enterprise is a value market, in that, the customers are more demanding, and required higher-end IT products, like enterprice servers and data storage systems. To address the Enterprise market, the organisation required higher level of competencies in terms of product knowledge, customer management, logistics, etc.

In training business, I've found that the same principal applies. There are companies, and most apparent among the SME/SMB, whom historically has not considered human capital improvement (aka. training) as a strategic intent to improve company performance, can be said fallen into the "Volume" market segment. Characteristics of this Volume Learning Companies (VLC) are:
- Resistence to suggestion of providing training to employee.
- Lacking, and in some cases, zero evidence, of business planning process
- HR is relegated to merely an administrative function
- Low moral among the employee
- NEVER has any skill improvement programme, or trainings done

It is therefore effectively impososible to preach the virtue and values and benefits of training to these organisations. That is simply because they know the virtue and values and benefits of training (who wouldn't?). The crux of the matter is these organisations are just not going spend a single cent in training. I believe that lack of a structured business planning process is the fundamental problem. If one can't see the forest, how could one appreciate a tree?

So how to get these VLC to spend money on training? The answer is you don't. You've to find a way to get the training business but without them forking out additional money. I will explain this and other thoughts next time.