95% of training is a waste of money
I’ve been thinking about change. From where I’m sitting in the productivity space, change is everywhere. If we want to improve our productivity, we have to change the way we work. So, change management and productivity improvement go hand in hand.
One way to increase productivity is to change the way people work. And that usually involves some training. It might be leadership training, training where we hope our colleagues will improve their soft skills and interact better, or training on how to use a tool, complete a process, or do a job.
However, sadly, much of this training has been wasted. An article in the Harvard Business Review reports
“U.S. corporations spend enormous amounts of money—some $356 billion globally in 2015 alone—on employee training and education, but they aren’t getting a good return on their investment. People soon revert to old ways of doing things, and company performance doesn’t improve.”
It’s a bit like killing an elephant for its tusks. If you want the ivory, the only way to get it is to make a huge, wasteful sacrifice. Surely our training £/$/€ could be better spent?
If we want the money spent on training to become a better investment, we must rethink training completely. Cognitive science can help us understand how to create the right environments where the knowledge our team members are learning will be embedded, used, and applied.
One thing we’ve learnt from cognitive science is that when you try to learn something new if you already know something about it, you’re more likely to succeed.
So, when we are training someone to use a new tool, follow a new process, or do a new job, the more we can relate it to something they already know and understand, the more successful we will be. One way to do this is through metaphors; another is to compare the new process to the previous one and make direct links wherever possible (useful when a new tool is being rolled out).
This is even more powerful when the learner creates these connections for themselves because the more effort involved in the process, the more likely we are to retain new information.
In my experience change management programmes are often a race to get to the finish line as quickly as possible. However, we might consider that slowing down to go faster might be a better approach. After all, it worked for the tortoise.
