I would bet that every single person reading this posting has walked out of a training session, or signed off an online or eLearning event and said something like, “That was pointless.” Either the content was not relevant, or you didn’t connect the reason for the training to your job. In any case, it does not matter if you felt it was pointless, it still cost the company money to provide it.
Both good training and bad training comes with a fee, so if you are going to spend the money on training then demand that it returns on the investment. If a company spends money on training that does not return on an investment, it is like burning cash. But I have an even better idea.
If you have no desire to implement purposeful training that returns appropriate skills and value to the learners and the company, then don’t train. Yes, I said it. Save the money, pay larger salaries, or throw a party. Pointless training is more damaging than no training at all, so if you are going to waste the company budget on pointless training, don’t and defer it to other line items in the budget that will be appreciated.
And while we are on the subject, if your training department cannot seem to implement training that returns on the investment, and aligns with the strategic goals of the company, save even more money and close that department completely. While every company should have a strong learning function, once again, a weak training function does more harm than good. It is time to trim the waste and improve the bottom line by closing training until you find more competent employees to run it.
Six years ago I wrote a book that outlines what it takes to have a healthy and productive training function. It is called “The Training Physical: Diagnose, Treat and Cure Your Training Department.” The idea was through a self-audit process or better yet by hiring a 3rd party that is objective, you could identify what is working and fix what is not working.
Last year I wrote the sequel, “Pointless Training: The Consequences of Inadequate Training Strategies” to emphasize by content areas how easy training could become pointless to employees and the company, and with a bit more effort how it could become purposeful instead.
I wrote these books to help organizations provide good learning environments and solid learning events for their employees. Each book is less than $15 from the publisher, and provides the necessary information for training departments to be genuine business partners. Some companies have invested $30 to become healthier, and some have chosen to remain ineffective while wasting thousands of dollars a year. Honestly, does that make any sense?
For more information go to www.TheTrainingPhysical.com
The Training Physical's Blog 