Reimagine: The 1/2 Day Workshop

"Will you come and teach a 1/2 day workshop to our team?"

That was the request recently from a client. They wanted us to do an in-person workshop on a topic they wanted to improve. It's what they've done in the past. It's the approach to learning and development they knew best.

We then had a conversation about what they wanted to accomplish in this workshop. We asked questions like,

• Why is this topic important right now?
• What key outcomes and learning objectives do you want to accomplish?
• Who will be attending?
• Why did you ask for a 1/2 day workshop?
• What other learning and development (L&D) approaches have you tried in the past?

In the end, we reimagined what the traditional 1/2 day workshop could be and instead proposed a different solution that was less expensive, less disruptive, more engaging, and would result in a greater long-term impact.

THE TRADITIONAL 1/2 DAY WORKSHOP

The on-site 1/2 day workshop is the standard go-to in many learning and development circles. Consultants, coaches, subject matter experts, internal training managers, and HR use it in various ways. It's a significant part of the 90 billion dollars spent on training programs each year. However, the results are disappointing.

• Executives continue to be frustrated with the returns on their training dollars (Forbes)
• There remains a significant skills gap resulting in companies not having the right people with the right skillset (SHRM)
• The majority of employees remain disengaged (Gallup)
• 81% of employees are considering leaving their jobs, and many identify the lack of training and development as a key point of frustration (SMARP)

The two biggest challenges with the traditional approach to 1/2 workshops are that they're expensive and ineffective.

Traditional 1/2 day workshops are EXPENSIVE.

Let's consider the following scenario: you plan a 1/2 day workshop from 8 am to noon for 25 of your employees. The expenses would probably look something like this:

• Outside facilitator (including travel & expenses) - $6,000
• Facility (including A/V, wi-fi, etc.) - $1,500
• Food (catering for breakfast, snacks, lunch) - $1,500
• Printed materials & supplies - $500

Your employees are missing out on work. So we also must include the opportunity cost for their time.

• 25 employees
• An average salary of $70,000 (~$35 hourly rate)
• They don't return to work until 1 pm, so at least 5 hours out of work
• 25 x $35 x 5 = ~$4,500

Your 1/2 day workshop costs at least $14,000, and this doesn't include travel expenses for employees, equipment rental, higher-paid employees, work missed, etc.

Traditional 1/2 day workshops are INEFFECTIVE.

The effectiveness of a traditional 1/2 day workshop looks a lot like this.

If a workshop is scheduled from 8 am-noon, you probably only get 2-3 hours of actual workshop time due to late arrivals, breakfast, breaks, and lunch. In that short amount of time, a facilitator crams all the content, activities, discussion, small group, Q&A time, and take-aways for when people return to work.

Employees are engaged while they're at the workshop, but their learning quickly fades when they leave (check out the Ebbinghaus forgetting curve if you want to know why). Back on the job, employees often struggle to apply the knowledge to their context and role.

This doesn't even address any of the other reasons this traditional approach to L&D often is ineffective: lack of employee interest, information overload, lack of relevant content, distractions, lack of manager support, and lack of a measurement and accountability system.

The result is a workshop that took people away from their jobs for over 1/2 a day but made little long-term impact.

THE REIMAGINED 1/2 DAY WORKSHOP

Instead, imagine a four-week cumulative experience that is lower cost, less disruptive, more engaging, and provides a greater long-term impact for those who participate! This is the experience we proposed to our client.

Instead of a standalone 1/2 day workshop, we designed a month-long process that included three experiences:

1. One week of pre-workshop micro-learning
2. A 90-minute in-person (or virtual) workshop
3. Three weeks of post-workshop micro-learning and reinforcement

So what exactly happens in each of the above experiences? Great question; let's dream about what could be possible.

PRE-WORKSHOP EXPERIENCE

Purpose: To prime the participant in preparation for the workshop and collect helpful information for the workshop facilitator to target the workshop content.

Possible pre-workshop experience building blocks:

• Facilitator welcome
• Content introduction
• Participant interest survey
• Starting point measurement
• Self-assessment

IN-PERSON WORKSHOP EXPERIENCE

This is very similar to the traditional 1/2 day workshop with a few key differences:

• Shorter - Since much content is covered in the pre and post-workshop experiences, there's less need to force everything into the in-person portion of the workshop. Instead of a full 1/2 day, you could make it 1-3 hours long, resulting in less cost and less disruption.
• More in-depth - Since introductory content is covered in the pre-workshop experience, you have time to go deeper on the topic.
• Targeted - Imagine receiving the results of the participation interest survey and self-assessments before you meet in person. This is a facilitator's dream! Then, you'd be able to target and personalize the content, examples, scenarios, and discussion to topics that are relevant and applicable to your participants.
• Virtual or recorded delivery - Since the in-person workshop isn't doing everything and is now shorter, it's more conducive to being delivered virtually or even recorded. In general, virtual and recorded workshops don't work well; however, if it's just one piece of a multi-week learning and development strategy, that opens up many different possibilities.

POST-WORKSHOP EXPERIENCE

Purpose: To reinforce the workshop content and challenge the participants to apply what they learned.

Possible post-workshop experience building blocks:

• Top-of-mind content pieces
• Practice exercises and challenges to apply what was learned
• Feedback questions on how the application is going
• Closed-loop feedback from the coach/consultant/facilitator in response to status updates
• Opportunities for continued discussion and sharing among the attendees
• Measurement in changed behaviors and knowledge
• Wrap-up survey to identify opportunities for future improvements

COST & IMPACT

Let's revisit the two aspects of the traditional 1/2 day workshop we challenged above, the cost and impact.

Reimagined 1/2 day workshops are MORE COST EFFECTIVE!

Remember, the traditional 1/2 day workshop was going to cost at least $14,500. So let's see what it looks like with our reimagined 1/2 day workshop approach.

• Outside facilitator - $4,000 [since the facilitation is now virtual, we'll remove the travel expenses]
• Facility (including A/V, wi-fi, etc.) - $1,500
• Food - $500 [since this is only 2 hours now, we're only providing snacks]
• Printed materials & supplies - $500

Your employees are missing out on work. So we also must include the opportunity cost for their time.

• 25 employees
• An average salary of $70,000 (~$35 hourly rate)
• Now they're only away from work for 1.5 hours
• 25 x $35 x 1.5 = ~$1,300

Your reimagined 1/2 day workshop costs $7,800, which is a 45% cost savings!

Reimagined 1/2 day workshops are MORE EFFECTIVE!

The effectiveness of a reimagined 1/2 day workshop looks a lot like the blue line below.

Instead of trying to cram a bunch of information and content into people in a short burst, this reimagined 1/2 day workshop uses a slow cooker, barbecue approach that does micro-learning and drip content over an extended period of time.

This approach will have a greater cumulative impact.

• This more closely aligns with the spiral education model common in education today.
• People engage with the content and application of the principles in the context of their daily work.
• Having an entire group of people focus on the same topic for several weeks creates momentum in an organization.
• People don't miss out on the learning if they are out for a day, on vacation, or in quarantine.
• You can measure where people were before and after to determine ROI more accurately.

The next time you think about organizing a workshop, take some time to reimagine how it could cost less, be less disruptive, more engaging, and provided greater long-term impact!

How can I help?

I spend my days helping organizations figure out how to build, implement, and scale important employee experiences like learning & development, new hire onboarding, stay surveys, recognition, and performance management.

If you're thinking about doing this in your organization, you're facing challenges, or you're dreaming about what's possible, then let's chat! I'd love to connect and see how I can help you out.