How mature is your tracking of Training Outcomes?

If you are working on a comprehensive training plan for whole of your organisation, wait. Take a pause. Think. Look at you as an individual. Do you still learn something new each time you attend a training? Do you learn something new every time when you re-read a classic book (or re-watch a classic movie) after a gap of few years?

I am sure the answer is YES.

It is because we are all learners 24x7. We grow every minute. As an individual we understand this world much better today, compared to 10 years back.

If there is no end to trainings, then why are we thinking that if we complete 'xyz' trainings, our job is done.

Why are we focusing on number of trainings as a target?

The basic assumption itself is wrong.

We must focus on Outcome from the trainings.

Most of the L&D team members spend their time on planning and delivery part. Very few to almost negligible amount of efforts are spent in measuring the outcomes. Around 80% of efforts are simply spent in planning and delivery of the trainings whereas this should be reverse.

80% of our time and energy should be spent on following up with the training participants for the outcome from the trainings.

What are they using the training for? Is there any improvement they have done in their job using those learnings? Have they taught the tricks learnt to someone else? Have they created a new content which can be useful to others?

The possibilities are tremendous.

Every small improvement done on the job is going to help your company grow.

What and how much we learn is never important. What is important is how much we DO from whatever we learn

Another argument to spend less time in collating the requirements is poor clarity with managers/business and even individual employees about exactly what they need.

Most of the training requirements are simply vague.

In view of this one should never spend too much time on collating requirements.

As they say, Garbage In, Garbage out. Let us save our time and energy and stop wasting too much time onto that.

Of course this does mean that we should stop collecting the requirements.

The point is simple,

Shift the whole pivot from training plan/delivery to outcome and respective tracking. 

To help you understand where your are today and on which parameters you need to improve, here is a FREE Assessment on "How mature is your tracking of Training Outcomes?"

Conclusion :

Reduce your L&D team's time and energy spent on collation, delivery and content creation process. Instead spend that time on

• Tracking outcome from whatever trainings you deliver
• On the job implementation of new learnings by employees (every employee must DO something using new learnings, however small that activity may be)
• Horizontal deployment of good ideas coming out across the organisation and respective scaling up
• Motivating the active DOers by announcing the success stories to all

This will give you much better ROI.

Pivot your efforts from BEFORE the training to AFTER the training!

To help you understand where your are today and on which parameters you need to improve, here is a FREE Assessment on "How mature is your tracking of Training Outcomes?"

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About the Author : 

Chanakya Joshi is founder at GetAConnect.in, a Micro-learning platform to help your people do their job better by providing what they need and when they need it. He is on a mission to use common sense and Technology for everyday learning.

Source : Article photo courtesy of Pixabay