WHAT IS TRAINING ?

WHAT IS TRAINING?

Training refers to a planned effort by a company to facilitate employees’ learning of job related competencies. These competencies include knowledge, skills, or behaviors that are critical for successful job performance. The goal of training is for employees to master the knowledge, skill, and behaviors emphasized in training programs and to apply them to their day-to-day activities. For a company to gain a competitive advantage, its training has to involve more than just basic skill development.¹ That is, to use training to gain a competitive advantage, a company should view training broadly as a way to create intellectual capital. Intellectual capital includes basic skills (skills needed to perform one’s job), advanced skills (such as how to use technology to share information with other employees), an understanding of the customer or manufacturing system, and self-motivated creativity. Intellectual capital is discussed further in Chapter 2. Keep in mind that, traditionally, most of the emphasis on training has been at the basic and advanced skill levels. But some experts estimate that soon up to 85 percent of jobs in the United States and Europe will require extensive use of knowledge. Employees will be required not only to understand the service or product development system but also to share knowledge and to creatively use it to modify a product or serve the customer.

Many companies have adopted this broader perspective, which is known as high-leverage training. High-leverage training is linked to strategic business goals and objectives, uses an instructional design process to ensure that training is effective, and compares or benchmarks the company’s training programs against training programs in other companies.²

The emphasis on high-leverage training has been accompanied by a movement to link training to performance improvement.⁵ Companies have lost money on training because it is poorly designed, because it is not linked to a performance problem or business strategy, or because its outcomes have not been properly evaluated.⁶ That is, companies have been investing money into training simply because of the belief that it is a good thing to do. The perspective that the training function exists to deliver programs to employees without a compelling business reason for doing so is being abandoned. Today, training is being evaluated not on the basis of the number of programs offered and training activity in the company but on how training addresses business needs related to learning, behavior change, and performance improvement. In fact, training is becoming more performance-focused. That is, training is used to improve employee performance, which leads to improved business results. Training is seen as one of several possible solutions to improve performance. Other solutions include actions such as changing the job or increasing employee motivation through pay and incentives. 

•     Providing educational opportunities for all employees. These educational opportunities may include training programs, but they also include support for taking courses offered outside the company, self-study, and learning through job rotation.

•     Performance improvement as an ongoing process that is directly measurable rather than a one-time training event.

•     Demonstrating to executives, managers, and trainees the benefits of training.

•     Learning as a lifelong event in which senior management, trainer managers, and employees have ownership.

•     Training being used to help attain strategic business objectives, which help companies gain a competitive advantage.

Price water house Coopers is a good example of a company that uses high-leverage training. Its Learning and Education (L&E) team was restructured to better link it to the business goals related to value and impact. L&E works with the business to understand what it wants education to be. It ensures ongoing innovation in training delivery and instructional methods by evaluating emerging technologies and using them in small pilot projects. The chief learning officer in charge of L&E is a member of the company’s leadership team, which gives that individual the opportunity to discuss ideas regarding training methods, delivery, and content with other top-level managers. L&E sponsors traditional and virtual classroom courses, self-study, team-based learning, action learning projects, coaching and mentoring, and conferences, and it has served more than 150,000 users each year, with over 6,000 courses, 12,000 classroom-based training sessions, and 19,000 Web-based training sessions.

Price water house Coopers uses a learning management system to create a single access point for training activities. To help employees learn on an as-needed basis, the company’s e-learning includes video and audio conferencing, virtual classrooms, and webcasting. To evaluate the success of training, L&E considers its influence on outcomes, such as retention of top people. Also, focus groups are used to determine whether trainees and managers are satisfied with the training. A program on sustainability was designed to help partners understand how to provide solutions for their clients. The company’s investment in the program has paid off. The company believes it has achieved a return on investment of more than 1,000 percent in new business sold and reputation gains in the marketplace. In the future, L&E plans to further strengthen the relationship between training, development, and the business by focusing on how it can make learning even more accessible and closer to the point where employees need it. L&E wants to integrate learning and knowledge to speed employees’ development and improve their competencies.