When does training work?

Over the last couple of days, I had a couple of calls from friends. A question that we were all concerned about: when is training effective?

Research in this area shows that the pre-training analysis and post-training assessment is crucial. In one case in the USA, 2 employees attended the same sales training. For one employee (lets call him Mr. A), this training was part of his development program. His manager discussed his lack of performance and they both agreed that attending a sales course would be important. After the sales training, Mr. A found it hard to apply what he had leant during the training. So the sales manager went on sales call with him and demonstrated some of the techniques. After a few weeks, Mr. A could apply what he had learnt and his performance increased substantially. The good thing was that the manager was able to calculate the cost (sending 1 person) and the reward (extra sales), which makes evaluating the effectiveness of training quantifiable.

A second employee - who attended exactly the same event - had a very different mindset. Lets call him Mr. B. The training was originally supposed to be for another employee but he could not make the training at the last minute. As the company had already paid for one person, Mr. B was told to attend. Unfortunately, this totally destroyed his special weekend that he had arranged. However great the trainer, Mr. B never got into the spirit of the training and never applied the concepts afterwards.

My greatest problem is to explain that training needs analysis (TNA) should be done by the trainer, not by the HR department. After the training (say after 3 months), the trainer should be allowed to meet the trainees and conduct a debriefing session. Maybe becuase of that, many organizations feel that their training dollars are being wasted. In most cases, they are right.