All Aboard!

September 2, 2008 – 3:38 pm
Will Kenny, Best Training Practices How do you turn new hires into long-term, valuable employees? Getting off to a good start can make a big difference and whether you call it orientation, a core curriculum, onboarding or something else, that first round of communication and training can make a significant contribution to the company's bottom line. Why, then, do I often see programs of this kind being cobbled together without the detailed attention, the serious application of professional resources, the rigorous evaluation and improvement, which is routine for other training provided by the organization? That first round of training is often neither efficient nor effective. That's always a concern, but it is particularly worrisome when the economy is down and resources are tight. What's missing from many onboarding initiatives? Clear, Modular Objectives: Look at post-onboarding training for specific functions within an organization and you'll usually find a nice list of clearly defined desired ...

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Training Tradeoffs II: Costs, Costs and Costs

August 26, 2008 – 1:54 pm
Will Kenny, Best Training Practices “Training cost” is a favorite topic of conversation among training professionals and between training staff and management. As convenient and affordable tools are applied to move training to online delivery, one factor, delivery cost, has shrunk. I’m not convinced this is entirely good news. People talk about “training delivery” very glibly when they should be talking a little more thoughtfully about design, development and delivery. Changing employee behavior to establish and sustain best business practices requires more than mere “formatting” to produce a “deliverable.” Too often “training costs” refers only to the delivery step in the training process, when participants actually work with content. Driven by low delivery expense, apparent convenience (see “Your Inconvenience-O-Meter”) and overall “sex appeal,” this focus on delivery method sometimes obscures the value of sound design and development. The Decline of Design and Development Both training staff and management can be seduced by an ...

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Training Tradeoffs I: Efficiency versus Impact

August 19, 2008 – 11:34 am
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 ...

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“Training”? Watch Your Language!

August 12, 2008 – 2:06 pm
Will Kenny, Best Training Practices Training is a key tool in spreading best practices throughout your organization. But if you don't think about how you throw the word "training" around in your company, it could become a dirty word. Now, I don't mean that people will gasp at your impropriety in saying "training" out loud. I mean that it is "dirty" when it works against you, when it leads key audiences—managers who approve your projects, colleagues who support your efforts and participants who apply what you tell them—to undervalue your services and your messages. The simple word "training" carries a lot of baggage that can weigh you down on the way to achieving better business results for your company. What & Why Training is what you do to achieve business results, to apply strategies to reach the organization's goals. Too often, conversations about "training" focus on activities and events, and we just assume ...

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Your Inconvenience-O-Meter

July 24, 2008 – 8:19 pm
Will Kenny,  Best Training Practices Does your organization truly value training? How do you know? I believe that the value an organization places on any given training can be measured by the inconvenience that organization is willing to impose on trainees, their supervisors and the company itself. Unfortunately, I see a lot of companies claim their training delivery methods are "more flexible and convenient for employees," when most of the convenience really accrues to the company, rather than to the participants. Employees automatically compare their own sacrifices to the company's. They learn to read the "Inconvenience-O-Meter" very quickly, which tells them: When management really believes training will produce performance enhancements that outweigh the temporary inconvenience to employees, to management and even to customers; When managers and supervisors consider just about everything else to be more important than training; When management shifts most of the inconvenience onto the trainees, with little sacrifice from the company. If a "best ...

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