Training Tradeoffs I: Efficiency versus Impact

Will Kenny, Best Training Practices

Gather the training directors from several corporations and let them talk shop for a little bit. Soon you’ll hear words like “efficiency,” “convenience” and “cost-effectiveness.” More likely than not, you’ll catch these phrases in the context of online training delivery, and everyone will nod in agreement with the notion that it is a wonderful thing to be able to set up courses that employees can take from their desktops or laptops, without classrooms or facilitators or even fixed schedules.

It can be a wonderful thing, but to make it so requires looking past the easy wins—lower delivery costs, less employee time away from desks—to take a hard look at the real impact the training has on employee behavior.

Frankly, I see a lot of companies delivering mediocre training. And I think too many training functions are patting themselves on the back for “stretching resources” through tools such as online training delivery when they should be scratching their heads looking for greater, and more lasting, improvements in employee performance.

When I design and develop training for clients, controlling costs is very important to me. But the most important consideration is the results it will produce for the company. Will employees do their work differently than they would without the training, and is the difference commensurate with the training investment?

In short, I seek to optimize efficiency, rather than maximize it. Efficiency and low-cost delivery are not ends in themselves, they are ways of managing resources to get the greatest impact possible out of any given budget.

Naturally, I understand how easy it is to be seduced by numbers. Training directors and chief learning officers are always looking for ways to demonstrate the value of their functions, and they often are frustrated by, if not insecure about, their ability to present their case when other functions are producing widgets and engaged in easily quantifiable work. In the world of training and human resources, there are still a lot of judgment calls when it comes to strategies and outcomes.

It reminds me, though, of a common complaint in the business world, that the short-term profit obsession of many stockholders makes it difficult for a company to do what is best over the long haul. In similar fashion, too narrow a focus on the delivery numbers, and the “efficiency” they appear to represent, can obscure the mission of the training department, which is to maintain best business practices among the employees, practices that contribute directly to achieving the organizations strategic goals.

For me, optimal efficiency is the lowest total cost (development, delivery and employee time) that achieves a high-impact result. Most (not all) of the time, that optimal point is somewhat below the highest possible efficiency. I am more than willing to trade a little efficiency for a lot of impact.

Avoid thinking exclusively about “stretching resources” and think more about “stretching results.” If a given budget will allow you to produce one training activity with a major impact on key corporate strategies, or two or three activities that will make a minor difference when all is said and done, plow your budget into the one that works.

Used properly, online training tools and other “high-efficiency” approaches are incredibly valuable. But when efficiency is the driving consideration in course development—and that efficiency is often rather illusory, as I’ll explain in a future post—it is all too easy to save money and time, to simply squander it on training that doesn’t matter very much.