Training and Professional Development

 

Unless you and your company are in the unique circumstance of having extra people and thus a surplus of time, you aren’t looking for additional things to do.  On the other hand the world keeps moving, and it seems like it is moving faster all the time.  To keep up we all have to learn and adapt to new challenges.  We have to learn how to operate new equipment. We have to learn how to use and exploit new software and communications tools.  We have to learn about new research findings and how to adapt them to our situation.  These things take time.

 

Since most of us are not in the unique circumstance of having extra time, we have to use the time we have better.  And one of the areas, from my experience, that we could all use time better is in the area of training and professional development.  Put in a more crass way, there is money involved here.  I know of a company that tracks their employee time very carefully, because that is how they get paid by their customers.  In this case every minute not spent on production is less income.

 

My past experience, when accounting for the cost of training and professional development, was generally limited to the cost of the course, the trainer, and/or the cost of travel and lodging not the cost of time away form the job.  When the value of employee time is added to the cost of training and professional development, deciding to send someone to learn something new becomes a weightier decision.  So knowing that in many ways we don’t have a choice, we need to get the most from the money and time we spend on training and professional development.

 

Here are some basic principles of great training and professional development.

 

1.  It should be organization based. 

 

The idea is to bring leaders and workers together to develop a plan based on the needs of the organization.  Too often choices for training and professional development are made in a haphazard, shotgun manner.  When the needs are identified, then focused choices can be made.

 

Too often the training and professional development is slap dash, grab bag, what ever comes along.  A company planned approach allows for continuity, progression, and managing of the effort. 

 

Another consideration of being organization based is to have someone on staff do the teaching.  This does several things.  The material can be relevant to the work at hand.  The individual teacher will have to learn the material well enough to teach it.  There is usually less time wasted in travel.

 

2.  It uses coaches and other follow-up procedures. 

 

The best training and professional development involves a series of learning experiences spread over time.  It involves some theory, demonstration, practice and feedback, and coaching.  Ideally the learners attend the training, hear, see, and try it.  They then return to their workplace and try to use it.  At this time they are provided a way of asking questions about things they don’t understand, and they have the opportunity to visit with an expert/coach to discuss what is working and what isn’t.

 

Research shows that people who experience only theory and/or theory and demonstration almost never incorporate what was taught into their daily work.  While people who experience theory, demonstration, practice and feedback incorporate to some degree what they learned into their work, people who also get coaching are four times more likely to incorporate the learning into their work.

 

3.  It is collaborative. 

 

An important ingredient in happiness in the workplace is the opportunity to collaborate with others.  If the culture is right this is also true while learning.  It isn’t true if the training is set like a competition.  But it is definitely true if there is a cooperative atmosphere in which everyone shares a common vision and goal for the training and professional development. 

 

There is great evidence that sending one or two people to training and expecting something to change back at the work site is a mistake.  In general, when four or more people attend the same training with an organizational goal in mind, the chances of learning are improved immensely.  There is peer pressure to try what was learned.  What one person didn’t master at the training, someone else may have understood.  The peers can act as coaches for each other.

 

4.  It is embedded in the daily work. 

 

Sometimes this is referred to as “just in time learning.”  How many times have we attended training and not used what we learned immediately following the session?  A perfect example is when we attend computer software training.  We come back from the training and don’t immediately apply what we just learned.  Then, maybe months later, we could use what we thought we learned.  Almost always we can’t remember what we thought we learned, and we either have to go back to training, or we spend a lot of time figuring out something we thought we knew – three months ago.

 

5.  It focuses on the work being done and its effectiveness is evaluated at least in part on that basis. 

 

When all is said and done, there needs to be payback for the time and money invested in training and professional development.  Processes that are affected by the training should see improvement – fewer mistakes, higher quality products, faster cycle time, and improved relations as examples.  So measurements need to be established and taken periodically to see if the investment is paying off.

 

6.  It is geared to the adult learners and their learning styles.

 

Howard Gardner list seven inclinations in styles of learning.  He calls them multiple intelligences.  They are Visual-Spatial, Bodily-Kinesthetic, Musical, Interpersonal, Intrapersonal, Linguistic, and Logical-Mathematical.  Each of us can learn in all styles, but we more easily understand and learn in the style of our preference(s).  Therefore insist on presentation of training and professional development material so that all learning styles are considered.

 

Adults generally don’t like to just “sit and git” as in the general school model.  They feel at risk when asked to try a new behavior in front of fellow students.  They need to know if their personal expectations for the training match those of the instructor.  Training of adults should tap into their life experiences - new knowledge should be integrated with previous knowledge.  Adults like to be more “hands on.”

 

In summary, since we don’t have the luxury of extra time and money for training and professional development, we need to do it right the first time.  The above six principles if followed will help insure that the time and money we do invest will have the greatest chance of success.