Should Training Providers be Organizational Development Partners or MereService Providers?

How can the effectiveness of soft skills training programs be measured? How long does it take for learning in the training room to me transferred to tangible skill development or a behavioral change?



Are Training Organizations today a mere Service provider to their clients or are we meaningful Organizational Development Partners? Are we too focused on Learning Objectives to forget the relevance and utmost importance of Business outcomes?



As we progress rapidly in the Training & Industry world we get caught up in preening over the list of clients added and number of training days completed in each quarter, even pride ourselves on the impeccable feedback pattern of our facilitators. Do we once stop to wonder how the learning we imparted in millions of training rooms across different geographies affected the business outcome of our trusting clients?



What are the real discernable Start and End points for a training program? Are they defined by the learning hours spent in the training room or do they include the time taken to develop learning & transfer this learning back to the workplace?



What happens when clients ask us to deliver programs on Non Training needs? For example "Taking Ownership" – how does one present a program on a topic like this?



Performance Consulting as opposed to Learning Objectives based consulting sounds like the perfect answer to most of the questions raised so far.



The Training Process can be dissected into four distinct phases for this to happen effectively.



1. Define Business Results

Here a complete listing of all the behavioral changes and skill development that the organization requires to see in their workforce will be listed



2. Design a Total Training Experience

What happens before and after the learning is as important as the learning method, medium and learning environment. Writing compelling program descriptions keeping in mind the Business outcomes and allowing time for participants to reach their end point (on the job performance). Understand that real learning is in allowing participants time to transfer learning back to the workplace.



3. Application Delivery

The way the learning is delivered makes it easier or harder to apply it back to the workplace. Invest time, effort and money in developing workshop facilitators. Their development is key to your success as a training provider. Link training approaches to business outcomes and start to practice it.



4. Proactively Push the Learning Transfer

No matter how much learning occurred during the training event it will be of no use to the organization until this is applied on the job. Develop a strategy to ensure this happens – encourage clients to allow for a healthy transfer climate. Learning transfer and on the job performance improvement will happen when participants are held responsible & accountable for their performance improvement by using what they learned in the training. The critical role of the manager and what training providers can do to get them more engaged is crucial.

Finally the improvements in performance should be continually documented to justify and support continued investment in training ventures.

This success – On the Job Performance Improvement and continued investments in Learning & Development – is definitely worth striving for!!