4 Strategies To Maximize Your Training Dollars In 2018

Taking a little shift of gears today, because while I had been blogging on personal development and Steemit success strategies over the past few months, I thought today I'll show another side of me, as the founder of a talent development company, Plaseed.

We've been around for the past six years, consulting, coaching and training clients on anything learning and development related. Once in a while, clients would ask for advice on maximising their training dollars, and that's what today's post is about.

Often times, well-organized, well-intended and well-communicated corporate training strategies sink and fail at the hands of corporate bureaucracy between those who created it and those who carry them out. On many occasions, training programs are forced on to employees without really digging deeper into what each individual are good at and what are the qualities that an organisation can polish to improve and see visible results.

It’s like taking your kid to piano lessons every week, paying top dollar to send him or her to learn playing piano with the best music teacher you can find and yet still finding them quitting and later on stop learning altogether. The piano you bought suddenly became a dusty decorative stand for framed family portraits.

2018 started strong and it’s only getting better. These are 4 strategies that should be the core when you’re whipping up a training program.

Eat, Sleep, Dream, Employee Engagement!

Gallup’s 2016 Global Great Jobs study revealed that 26% of employees have good, but not great jobs and only 6% have great jobs. Seems like a loud shrieking alarm bell to all employers, folks!

Gallup classifies “good, but not great jobs” as an employee who is thriving at work but are emotionally disconnected and are less likely to be productive - even with a “good job”. Meanwhile the 6% “great jobs”, represent those who are engaged at work, more involved and are enthusiastic, even more so, they are loyal and productive. Gallup says the gap represents a potential barrier to jobs and economic growth as well as personal prosperity.

So how can you change this in 2018? A logical way would be to review your training modules. And don't just stop there. You need to find out what motivates your employees to undergo the process of learning and change and build a training module around that information.

Let us paint an example. Have you ever told your subordinates to attend a training and leave them to it when the day arrives? If you have, stop that now! This may be petty for some of you managers out there but engaging by taking the lead and showing up to the training you recommended to them, will surely motivate them to believe in the learning process, just like you have, and hopefully turn into loyal and productive individuals.

Apply “What’s In It For Me?”

Subconsciously this is a sentence that plays at the back of your head every day. What to eat today, should I go to the gym today, or what music on Spotify should I play now? The decisions that you make every day must benefit and make you feel good and because it does, you don’t mind actually doing them.

This is the same question you should always be asking with your employee’s perspective in mind when designing a training program. In most cases, training opportunities are ready and available for employees to choose, but they aren’t necessarily informed or aware of how beneficial it could be to them, not just for work but for life outside of work as well.

Generally, this is what goes on in an employees’ mind before deciding to attend a training:

“I’d rather be doing something better than attending this training.”

“It’s not important.”

“I heard that its boring.”

“What’s it got to do with my work?”

“I’m already good at this. It’s nothing new.”

“I’ve already attended this last year. Why should I attend it again?”

In some cases a training incentive may be the key motivation for learning and change, like in sales training, but for an employee in a product development training, he or she is simply motivated to come up with the most creative and actionable product for consumers because being creative drives them to be engaged at work - relevancy is key!

Bite-Size Your Training

We’ve all had at one point in our life, have had a temporary zoning out moment in class. If at any point in this circumstance, the retention of new information in the first 5 minutes and the last 5 minutes would be the highlight of the hour. Anything in between makes you feel like a zombie.

Break your content down into easily consumable chunks and incorporate class interaction activities rather than attempting to explain a 3-hour long topic by just talking. If it is a web-based training or self-learning tools, ensure that the program interacts, engage with learners, and allow learners to save and continue the program when it’s convenient. This will encourage positive response and frequent visits to your learning portal.

Use a Preferred Medium That Fits

By now, the workforce in any organisation can consist of 4 generations. In some instances, like start-up companies consists of only one generation - the millennials. Either way, as an employer, you need to identify the best tools and resources to deliver your training - a training that will keep them engaged.

Look into mediums like gamification, mobile learning, web-based learning, simulation, scenario training and social learning.

Let’s take gamification for example. If you have many employees who have little time to spare, your training needs to be easy to digest, precise and allows easy access while your employees are on the move.

The reason why people get training is because they want to progress and develop skills and if you have skills and you’re good at it but no one knows, then, there really is no point in training. Gamification is one good way to acknowledge good work.

Gamification allows the employee to earn points and be rewarded with badges. And every time an employee completes an x number of courses he or she will be awarded a coveted seat on the leader board. What a way to make everyone in your team feel like a champion in their area of expertise. If you look at it on a bigger scale, you promote a knowledge-sharing atmosphere and possibilities of internal job transfers.

If you find these tips useful for 2018, watch out for the next piece on How To Match Trainers With Employees Of Different Generations useful too. Leave a comment and share with us your strategies to maximize your training dollars and perhaps we can all learn a thing or two from each other.

Hi there! Thanks for stopping by. I mostly blog about Steemit Success Strategies, business, marketing, entrepreneurship, psychology, community and random thoughts.

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