After a client rolled out a new training program recently, they did something interesting. They surveyed everyone who chose not to participate, and asked them “why not?” The top three reasons people opted out of the program were:
- Being too busy
- Bad timing
- Irrelevant content
What’s interesting about the results is that, while the responses appear different on the surface, they actually all mean the same thing: “the value of this training isn’t worth my time.”
Most everyone is busy at work, but they always make time for what’s important to them. It’s easy to claim you don’t have time to go to the gym if you don’t value exercise as much as you value an extra hour of work or watching a basketball game. Every decision about how you use your time comes at the expense of something else.
Not having enough time isn’t the real reason people are skipping out on training. It’s just another way of saying the training isn’t valuable to them.
This points to a gap between what employees want from training and what organizations are actually delivering. SurveyMonkey found that 86% of employees say job training is important to them, but eLearning Industry reports 33% of U.S. workers say their current company-provided training doesn’t meet their expectations.
If you want to increase participation in learning and development programs, the question isn’t how to make people less busy—that’s a nonstarter. What will actually move the needle on participation is increasing the value of training and then communicating that value in a way that makes people realize they can’t afford not to make time.
Here are 3 ways you can increase and communicate the value of training:
1. Start at the top and align training to broader company strategy. Aligning training with company strategy is one way to create enormous value. No company is doing this better than Keysight Technologies. Every year, Keysight’s CEO holds an executive development meeting where top company leaders discuss the company’s strategy for the next 12 months and define the behaviors needed to deliver on that strategy. Then, the content is cascaded down throughout the company. During training, people receive important information about where the company is headed and also learn the behaviors and skills they need to help the company hit its goals and objectives.
“We design something new every year based on the company’s strategy and what is happening during the year,” said Leslie Camino, Senior Director of Corporate Leadership Development, Culture, and DEI at Keysight Technologies. “For example, during the pandemic, we realized that we would need to find new ways to develop our dispersed employees. We focused on engagement and innovation, and our employees responded very positively.”
Tying strategy and training together will create programs that people must make time to attend in order to effectively do their jobs. If your content is newly aligned with company strategy every year like it is at Keysight, the program will be especially relevant.
It’s also a lot harder to find an excuse not to attend training when your boss, your boss’s boss, and their boss have gone through the training. Using leaders as teachers creates accountability. Most people will show up to a training run by their boss’s boss.
2. Create personal interest. When it comes to training, you must be prepared to answer the question, “what’s in it for me?” Many employees appreciate training programs that don’t just help them do their job better, but also help them build skills to advance their careers (regardless of the organization). Others, like those seeking a promotion or looking to increase their commission, may want hyper-targeted or personalized training that will help them reach those goals faster. To increase the value of training, ask people what they want to get out of it.
Bettina Koblick, chief people officer at the Robotic Process Automation company UiPath, puts it this way: “How are you going to bake someone's favorite birthday cake if you don't ask them what cake flavor they want? It's so simple, but you have to ask. We don't know best, [the employees] know best. It’s on us to ask.”
As you survey or initiate those conversations with employees, keep in mind that people likely care less about the skills themselves, and more about the outcomes they're trying to achieve—like a promotion, or the increased credibility that would come with completing a certification. With the outcome top of mind, the value of the training will be obvious from the very beginning.
3. Communicate value through managers. What’s valuable to a manager is inherently valuable to the employee. So when an employee’s manager includes training as a priority alongside their other work, they'll be much more likely to see and understand the value—especially if it’s tied to the employee’s goals. For instance, if a sales manager’s goal is to retain all her reps for 12 months, her boss may suggest an e-learning program about how to increase employee engagement. That program is now worthy of her time because it’s tied to a goal, and because her manager made it clear that the training will help her reach the goal.
This, of course, requires that managers regularly have development conversations with their people—which means managers must, first and foremost, go through training themselves on how to lead and develop their employees.
“All roads lead to managers and leaders,” Melanie Foley, Executive Vice President and Chief Talent and Enterprise Services Officer at Liberty Mutual, expressed in a recent interview. “Think about how to strengthen your leadership capabilities aligned to what your expectations are and how you're going to achieve your own mission and purpose. And remember that people are multidimensional. It's about supporting the whole person and taking a holistic approach to continuous learning and providing employees with as many resources as you can.”
Showing Participants the Value of Training Shows Your Value Too
When you take the time to show participants the value of training, you also show the value of the work you do. Instead of a nice-to-have program, your training becomes a necessary piece of the bigger picture and the company’s strategy. This will help you to win interest and engagement from employees and to win a seat at the table with senior leadership.
Kevin Kruse is the Founder + CEO of LEADx, a platform that scales and sustains leadership habits through micro-coaching and behavioral nudges. Kevin is also a New York Times bestselling author of Great Leaders Have No Rules, 15 Secrets Successful People Know About Time Management, and Employee Engagement 2.0.
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March 29, 2022 at 06:00PM
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Why “I Don't Have Time For Training” Is A Lie - Forbes
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