Ask an Expert: Maximizing Staff Training
By Ujima Donalson, POD Director
Question: With limited resources, how can I make the most of staff training?
Getting the most out of training requires an intentional approach. Here are four strategies you can employ to help your staff members excel and boost your return on investment.
Hold Staff Accountable
Employees get more out of training if it's attached to particular goals or objectives. Having a quick conversation with staff members prior to training can help set expectations and open an avenue to discuss what they hope to learn or achieve. The key is for your employees to recognize you're interested in knowing what they think a particular training will accomplish.
According to Evaluating Training Programs: The Four Levels, a seminal work by Donald L. Kirkpatrick, "there are three things that instructors in a training program can teach: knowledge, skills, and attitudes." Keeping those three things in mind may help you and your employees think about training goals: what knowledge can be gained, what skills can be developed or improved, or what attitudes can be changed. Of course, developing specific on-the-job skills and knowledge can be crucial, but it's important to remember that working on communication and interpersonal skills—or on areas such as positive thinking or emotional intelligence—can also have major positive impacts on employees and their work.
Training can also be tied to an employee development plan, an employee's annual goals, or to larger organizational goals. And you may choose a more formal approach than a quick conversation—for instance, asking an employee to write up their goals or expectations for a particular class. POD has a Training Action Plan (PDF) that can be used by either the employee or the supervisor to identify goals and to help with follow-through on training.
Provide Necessary Support
Too often, managers approve training requests but don't help employees manage workloads or expectations around the office. I and other instructors see the result of this in the classroom. Employees send text messages, read emails, and perform other tasks—while instructors are presenting information, during group discussions, and in the midst of activities. Of course, no one can be fully engaged in learning when involved in such heavy multi-tasking, which means that there will not be a good return on the time and money invested in training.
Employees must be supported so that they can be fully present in the classroom and can engage in the training with undivided attention. When you receive a training request, you may want to consider the employee's schedule and workload—as well as the schedules and workloads of employees who will be affected by having their colleague away from the office. To ensure that work can be accomplished, you may need to, for instance, help reassign tasks or shift deadlines. If you play an active role in supporting your employees in this way, others may in turn have a more positive attitude towards pitching in when someone's out of the office due to training.
Make sure that you communicate loud and clear that training is work and that—barring a major crisis—employees should not be expected to perform other work while attending training.
Ensure Learning is Shared
Employees should be prepared to communicate what they learned to you or to others, and knowing that there will be follow-up encourages employees to be engaged and invested during their training. After training is complete, have a follow-up conversation with the employee; talk about what was learned or achieved through the training and how that can be shared with others. Revisiting what they've learned actually helps to reinforce the learning and increases the chance that learning will be retained.
You could also encourage the employee to share some of what they've learned with others, such as their unit or a project team. Give them time at an upcoming staff meeting to share key learnings from their training. This will help the employee process what was learned, and the training will benefit multiple people, not just the employee. The employee may even wish to share an activity or replicate some other small part of the training for the group.
Don't place unnecessarily high expectations on the employee, or no one will want to attend training. The idea isn't for the employee to regurgitate the entire training but to synthesize the information and pick some key points, ideas, or skills that may be beneficial to others.
Allow for Application
The final strategy for maximizing training is allowing employees to put what they've learned into action. Too often we hear from our participants that they were excited to try a new approach or practice new skills based on what they learned in one of our classes—and then were not given an opportunity by their supervisor or colleagues upon returning to the office.
By following up with your employee after the training, you can better understand what they've learned and how they hope to apply it at work. Then you can support the employee in trying or implementing new ideas, approaches, and skills. And allowing them to share key learnings with their team members can help bring everyone on board to try something new.
According to Evaluating Training Programs, the four levels of training evaluation are reaction, learning, behavior, results. Another way to think of these levels is: Did they like it? Did they learn it? Did they apply it? Did it create change? Liking it and learning it depends a good bit on the training itself—that's where POD and other training providers come in—but you have a hand in those things, too, through holding staff accountable, providing support, and ensuring learning is shared, as discussed above.
For there to be a change in behavior—for your employees to apply what was learned—there needs to be an environment that is open to change. You and the employees' colleagues need to allow the employee to try new things, to practice new approaches, to experiment with new ideas, and, possibly, to fail once or twice at something new before they get it right. Once you allow employees to apply what was learned, you create real opportunities for change—for results. And that is the final piece of getting the most out of staff training.
A bonus tip: Sometimes it's more fruitful and cost effective for leaders to bring training to the entire group rather than sending individuals out to training. People can meet when it's convenient for them, training can be customized to meet a group's needs, and the team can more readily apply new concepts because they’ve gone through the experience together. If you're interested in exploring customized training, contact alliance@uw.edu.
