POVERTY-STRICKEN India spends $45 billion on training each year, wealthy USA nearly twice as much. If there are such great expenditures on training, it is important that we look at the way training is conducted.
 
    No one doubts the contribution that training can make to development of all kinds. Training is essential, obviously so. Doubts arise only over its contribution in practice. Complaints are growing about its ineffectiveness and waste & largely how it is run. Training like a tax, has been levied on the willing and unwilling alike.

What is required most of all is to see how training is being run and look at ways on making sure it leads to action at the workplace.

Learning and action: the link

Just because we have learnt a skill in the training room, does not mean we will be able to successfully implement it. Participants require support to implement their learning. After a training, they often find their new capabilities ignored, even resented. They look for support and find instead indifference or opposition. They begin to doubt the usefulness of the training. Enthusiasm wanes. Soon they accept their colleagues’ advice to “forget it.” And so another has been trained only to suffer disappointment and frustration.

      The simple linking of individual training and effective action ignores the manifold problems of introducing and sustaining change in an organization. In order for the learnings to be implemented at the workplace requires encouragement and support of a receptive organization.

What is required is to follow a systems approach to training.

       Instead of asking what X or Y needs to learn in order to carry out a new activity, the first training question should be addressed to all involved in the projected change. What do they, given their different functions and different positions in the organization, have to do differently to enable the change? This leads to a system approach to training.

    The system approach to furthering action often involves the following:

• Training minimum  staff at several levels of the organization
• The provision of supportive follow-up services from the original trainers, consultants and other resources in the training system -often for a considerable period  
• Allocation of resources within the working organization for various stages of the change in process.
• If we take a long term view, what is required is not an occasional change, but change on a continuing basis. In such an ongoing process the organization is both a recipient and a contributor.

Responsibility for Training

To invest trainers with the full responsibility for corporate training is unrealistic if action in an organization is the aim. If the organization holds the training department solely responsible for creating the change, this approach is bound to fail.
 
Participants, work organizations and training system are all partners in the training effort. To be effective, their collaboration should start with the definition of training goals and strategies. After training, collaboration should continue in follow-up services from the system and support for innovations from the organization.

It is convenient for other departments within the company to shift responsibility for learning and change to the training department. This is often done as creating a learning culture and being partners in Change requires time and effort. This is often in short supply within organizations. However, this is a very myopic view of training and results in a lot of good money being spent without any tangible results.

What is needed is for a systems approach to training. That training can yield great results is undeniable. We just need to rethink the approach to training, make it more systems oriented and we will be able to unlock the tremendous potential of training.