How to Deliver Training and Development that Delivers the Desired Business Outcomes

By Leanne Hoagland-Smith

To be competitive and to remain a player in today’s 24/7 knowledge driven business world requires that your employees be thoroughly trained to deliver the best customer service both to your external and internal customers. The old 19th and 20th centuries’ paradigm of controlling the employee has transformed to one of freedom for today’s knowledge worker.

Yet, continued research suggests that the majority of training and development initiatives estimated at 80 to 90% whether they come from the human resource department to the executive management team fail to deliver a positive return on investment. Consequently, when training fails, the first department to experience budget cuts is human resource because of this failure.

Part of this reason that a positive return on investment is not achieved potentially begins with a failure to connect the learning with the desired results. For example using customer service, is the training about the correct procedures in processing the sale or is the training about creating a loyal customer during the sales process? A recent customer service survey indicated that the number one response customers do not want to hear is “That is not my department.” This response is probably a result of knowing the procedures, but those procedures do not necessarily create happy and more importantly loyal customers.

Another part of may reside in how the training is delivered. Most training goes against the best learning research that indicates repeated exposures to a learning event deliver significantly greater long-term memory when compared with one time exposure. From our earliest school days, we all know what 10x10 is, almost without thinking. However, to respond as quickly with the correct answer to 23x24 is far more challenging. Common sense tells us that if we can’t remember what we learn then we can’t apply what we have learned.

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Obstacles to Talent Management Strategies

The fine art of retaining winning talent has an effect on your ability to deliver business value. A recent survey by McKinsey & Company asked senior executives of global companies to rank obstacles that prevent them from having talent management strategies. Among the most critical as defined by executives:

• 54% - Senior managers don’t spend enough time on talent management


• 52% - Line managers not sufficiently committed to people development


• 51% - Silos discourage collaboration, resource sharing


• 50% - Line managers unwilling to differentiate high, low performance


• 47% - Senior leaders do not align talent management and business strategies

Read A Tightly Woven Process: Retaining Talent to learn more

Legendary Coaching Helps Everyone Reach the Net

I read an article the other day that was an interview with legendary UCLA basketball coach, John Wooden. It discussed how coaching for sports is similar to coaching people. Wooden said, “Every one of us is different. We are similar in so many respects, but we are not identical. The person in leadership must carefully analyze everyone under his supervision to the best of his ability.”

Traditionally most managers have not been looking at each of their employees carefully and coaching each one appropriately. Without motivation, support and coaching from managers that will help an individual to develop and grow, performance suffers. Yet, this is one area that new managers and even seasoned managers have had very little training on - how to effectively coach team members.

Read how Coaching Helps Jumpstart Performance

Introducing a New Way of Training: idXready

Talks about a new type of off-the-shelf course that reduces or eliminates trainer development time. Topics include team building, sales, reducing conflict and listening skills. They've synchronized online assessments to personalize workbooks to people's behavior styles. Sounds like the workbooks are numbered to correspond to the PPT slides.

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