How To Make Your Training Programmes Super-Effective
Training and development of your staff is a big cost yet if done correctly, brings with it big rewards. Rewards in terms of increased effectiveness, efficiency and economy but also increased commitment, contribution and collaboration from the most important factor in any organisation’s success: its people.
So, how can those charged with training and development in the organisation make sure that every intervention, seminar, briefing, Teams Meeting or whatever the chosen method of delivering instruction, makes the biggest impact?
Everyone receiving training and development will make judgements on what they are exposed to and react accordingly: this breaks down into three different areas of Learning.
Surface Learning
- Focus on the text, words and content of the subject matter
- Passive learning, a focus just on completing the assessment or task, parrot-style learning with the likelihood that the content will fade and be forgotten
- Focus on detailed information, following a linear process and memorising key facts and principles
- Making copious notes with the intention of being able to reproduce the information that has been put across
- Limited interest and focus, just merely attending and going through the motions
Deep Learning
- Directed attention to the underlying meaning behind the topic being communicated
- Actively seeking out the intention behind the content and identifying the main messages
- Clear and committed interaction with the content
- Identifying the main parts of the content and supporting facts, looking into the logic of the argument
- Relating new knowledge and learning to previous understanding and connecting the content to working roles and duties
Strategic Learning
- The Trainer has a clear focus upon the needs of the learner and how they can use the content being communicated
- Encouraging conscious development of the learner’s own agenda and being aware of their needs
- The learner can take away information that is relevant, informative I need in a form that can be used readily and easily
- The learner can develop their organisational skills as a result of the content and is able to set priorities and make balanced and effective decisions about what to use and what to ignore
Training and development that purely focuses upon Surface Learning is a waste of time and resource: it merely “Ticks the Box” and achieves nothing yet, in reality, this makes up the vast proportion of outcomes/results from the activity that was planned.
Deep Learning takes the value and importance of training and development a stage further with your organisation securing some positive reactions to the content and delivery put over. The trick here is to revisit the content regularly and systematically to see how the benefits for the organisation are being seen. Can you move this into more Strategic Learning for the individual and the team?
What Training and Development SHOULD be aiming for is Strategic Learning: empowering the learner to run with and experience the full content to better inform themselves and to make more visible and to deliver improved quality systems in the workplace.
So, the Acid Test question: what type of Learning does your organisation encourage and how will you ensure that the focus is all upon Strategic Learning?
Good Luck!
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