One of the best things you can offer your people for unlimited opportunities for growth and development is world-class training.
Here’s how training is usually conducted…
1. Identify competencies that need to be developed.
2. Select training providers.
3. Evaluate training programs.
4. Set a schedule.
5. Share the schedule with the managers.
6. Managers assign selected team members to go to the training.
7. People go and have some fun outside the workplace.
In my opinion, this is a TOTAL WASTE of time and money!
Starting today, you need to shift your thinking from training plans to training campaigns. And there’s a big difference.
The training campaign consists of three main parts.
1. Marketing
Oftentimes we see people going to training programs just to spend time off from work, enjoy some fun activities, and be away from their desk. That is because they don’t understand the value of training.
You must invest in MARKETING & SELLING the training program to the attendees and make them want to go there so they can rise to new levels of excellence.
They must see the value of the training to the degree that even if you ask them to pay for it from their salaries, they will agree.
2. Experts
Please, avoid facilitators by all means. Give your employees world-class training from EXPERTS.
Yes, experts are expensive whilst facilitators are cheap. But think of the value that you are going to get from an expert who has been there and who is living what he’s teaching. There’s a BIG difference. You get what you pay for!
It’s not about someone who has good presentation skills and that’s it. Experts add real life application to theories. They show people how to apply what they learn in their specific situations. They can teach with their stories and experience.
3. Coaching
When employees receive this world-class education, something very important must happen. They must believe they can apply what they learned.
For example, an employee goes to a stress management course and he gets amazing tips from the expert. But, inside, he is 100% sure that when he goes back to work he will still have a manager who overloads him with tasks and work, and he will find a company that never cares about his work-life balance or his personal life. He can’t see how to actually implement the skills he is learning. That’s a total waste of time, money and effort.
One of the key roles of a manager is coaching. You must coach your team to apply the skills they learn in training.
You can even ask the expert to check in and provide follow up sessions to coach people on what they have learned.
These three steps form a fully integrated training campaign.
Start with marketing so that employees are warmed up and eager to learn. Then, deliver world-class training from experts who can make a real difference. Finally, coach them through a clear action plan, give them a firm promise to help them apply what they learned and carry out that promise!
This is how you get the biggest return on your training investment.
