Are Trainings Really Effective?
Sanjay Goel
Soft Skills, Behavioural and Leadership trainer, Outbound/ Experiential trainer, DiSC trainer and assessor, Coach, Counsellor - NLP and Hypnosis Practitioner, L&D specialist, Learning Consultancy, Sales Consultancy
Initially, as a beginner, when I started delivering trainings, I did multiple sessions for participants at junior and mid-level from manufacturing and chemical industry.
I faced huge challenge in terms of participant absenteeism from training (many would report sick on the day of training) and many a times when participants were interested in attending, their supervisors and managers would call the participants back in the plant. (Since these sessions were conducted in or very near to the factory premises). Participants would return after some hours but losing some critical learning and the flow.
When I spoke to their managers after the session to understand the level of emergency, and when dug deeper. they would confess that trainings are for fun and time pass (read waste). Participants go to attend the trainings to eat food and enjoy, have a break from their routine and it really has no value or contribution (This is what happened when they attended trainings when they were juniors). This somewhere made me not use too many fun activities because I didn’t want my sessions to be just feel great and fun without any learnings and behavioural change.
This is not just the problem at junior or mid-level in factories. I happen to deliver a session for a very reputed IT BPO where participants from different location had come to attend the customized workshop. When I reached the training centre (Mumbai to Bangalore), I was told to wait as the head was giving them a briefing. I lost more than an hour on the day one. On day two again, they took away one hour in the morning and then around two hours after the lunch as the participants had a critical client interaction. Though they did give me an hour extension, I was unable to complete the content and felt I didn’t do justice to the workshop. The head who had asked me deliver the session took away my valuable time!
Today was a rewarding day. A participant who had attended my session around 7 years before messaged me on my facebook post that the goal he had taken to upgrade himself was finally complete. He added one extremely valuable certification necessary in a factory to his profile.
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To summarize, behavioural training would take time to bring about some visible change. But the seed of change has been sown. How much change it will bring and when, would vary from person to person but there will be some change for sure.
What do you think about trainings? Are they really effective? ?
Thank you for reading.
Written by Sanjay Goel
Manager -Electrical and instrumentation
2 年Yes they do
Freelance Trainer - Leadership, Team Building, OBT plus other topics - all industries including Healthcare / HR - Consultant & Trainer / India & Middle East / Mentor, Coach & Guide
2 年We trainers are enablers and facilitators. Our job is just 25% of the total effort. The trainee has to contribute atleast 50% to implement the learning and the organisation has to chip in their 25% to facilitate implementation of the learning. Training has become perfunctory in many organisations.as the with frequent interruptions Heads of business, staff from office etc. which loosen the tempo of learning due to digression of thought process! As regards hijacking of training time, i can write several hundred bytes in my 12 year experience!
L&D Professional ll Certified Lean SixSigma Black Belt Professional ll Certified NLP & Psychometric Testing Professional ll Design Thinking Practitioner & Certified Lean Manager ll
2 年Well explicated article on the training effectiveness, RoI and post training behavioural changes, Sanjay Goel Sir.