Wednesday, February 28, 2007
Adaptive Training on Training Impact
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.
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.
# posted by Dr Roland Chia @ 6:20 PM 
Subscribe to Posts [Atom]