It is estimated that nearly 65
billion dollars will be spent on management training and development this year.
Without an effective method of planning and conducting training you are wasting
your share of that 65 billion.
As the proverb say's, "Unless you know where you are going, you will
never know when you get there."
To often organizations and their business units, base the success or failure
of their training efforts on undefined outcomes. It is illogical to expect
sustainable change to happen in this type of environment. In order for training
to be effective there needs to be an understanding, and acceptance, of its
importance throughout the entire organization.
To ensure that you are doing the very best that you can in the situation in
which you work, here are six steps you can take to make sure that your training
program is a success.
Identify what is driving the request for training
Is the request specific or vague?
Is the request focused on a specific audience?
Is the request training related (skill, knowledge, attitude gap)?
What other organizational issues, needs or performance areas are related to
this request?
What are the desired or future performance
requirements?
What are the future needs of the organization, and the audience?
What are the characteristic activities, and standards for performance of the
audience?
What are the key competencies that will be required of the audience?
What are the expectations in terms of outcomes?
What are the current organizational needs and problems
as related to future opportunities?
- Strategies?
- Business trends?
- Market share?
- Resources?
- Competition?
- Market position?
- Crucial business issues?
- Impact of job performance to company profitability?
What is the current state of the proposed target
audience?
General characteristics including age, gender, and educational level.
Special characteristics in terms of job function; level in the organization;
experience; geographic location; attitudes and values; cross-functional
dependence; initiative; productivity; quality; etc.
What are the times, human resources, and budgetary
constraints?
- How will transfer of learning to the job take place?
- What will happen if nothing is done?
- What are the benefits of this training to the organization?
- With what other training initiatives (future or planned) must this training
integrate?
- What are the time & budget constraints associated with this training?
What has already been attempted?
- What previous training has been conducted (related to this need)?
- What was the result of that training?
- What was the reaction to the training by the target audience?
