Summary

What businesses want from training is not “training.” What businesses want is sustainable behavior change to improve business results – and business results need to be measurable!

The article below outlines what you need to know about why traditional training does not work to produce sustainable behavior change. It also includes guidance about how to change your current training to be more effective.

Tired of wasting your training budget and need help? There are proven alternatives like our Peer programs that can return a positive ROI by the time the program completes. Peer programs are available across a range of disciplines, skills, and industries.

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How to get real results from training

Everyone wants effective training.

The trainees. The trainers. The business.

The problem is most don’t know – or don’t know what to do about – the most important thing about typical “training.”

Traditional training doesn’t work – and it doesn’t provide the hoped-for ROI.

Training spending was around USD$82.5 billion in the United States alone in 2020, according to Statista. Standard lecture-based training has an effectiveness – at best – of 20-25%.

That means about $61-66 billion in training dollars were wasted. In a single year. And just in the U.S.

Why?

What businesses want from training is not “training.”

What businesses want is sustainable behavior change to improve business results – and business results need to be measurable!

Typical “all at once” training does not achieve lasting behavior change and wastes the investment. Fundamental change magnifies the problems. Transformation, for example, will NOT occur based on traditional training.

Now in the post-COVID world, training programs built on the old model, particularly those aimed at leadership development and sustainable change, not only no longer work in virtual and hybrid environments … but can trap participants in thinking that takes them backward rather than forward.

And, it’s not just as simple as moving training online…

Seth Godin reported in an interview with Tim Ferriss that online classes have a 97% drop-off rate. He even reported that his own courses on Udemy and Skillshare have an 80% drop-off rate.

What can be done?

Plenty.

And a number of actions don’t require fancy techniques or outside help.

Here are some key actions you can take to improve training ROI:

• Application. Trainees need to try out what they’ve learned and get coaching to improve for any training to work well. Business is like sports in that regard. No one can start a new sport and be a “pro” after one training session sitting in a classroom. It is the same in business. Hardly anyone can leave a single training session in a classroom – or even a series of back-back sessions – with expert competency. The fastest and most reliable path to mastery is to try on the job and learn with expert coaching, then keep repeating the cycle.
• Follow-up. The first follow-up should be in the first 2-3 weeks, if not 2-3 days or even hours. There should be at least 3 follow-ups to coach and confirm the trainee is on the correct path to mastery.
• Leadership support. If leaders do not view training as important, then trainees will not view training as important. For example, we often see leaders pulling people from training for some non-emergency issue. Simple, but profound actions like that send a strong, clear signal that training – and improvement! – is a not important and is not important to the “day job.” Leaders must take responsibility for their part in achieving training ROI. Even better – and much rarer – is for leaders to participate in training and lead the way.
• Trainee interest. If a trainee has no or little interest in the training but required to attend, the training is wasted. If the training has no linkage to success in the trainee’s work, then training is wasted. In either case trainees will comply with training but not commit to improvement. And without commitment, training will be ineffective.

Add meaningful metrics

The economic climate has caused many organizations to cut back training and development “expenses.” The core problem is “expenses” … meaning spending on traditional training and development that has no tangible return on investment (ROI). There must be a focus on the tangible now. No room for anything else. So training and development must “pull its weight” going forward.

For example, let’s say your business unit has undertaken a training program … it doesn’t matter the subject matter. If you are asked to demonstrate how effective the training has been, what information would you present to justify the investment?

Unfortunately, most training and development efforts use vanity metrics (easy to measure, but meaningless in the end) like number of people attending, percentage of training capacity used, number of programs delivered, etc.

None of this really has anything to do with return on investment.

Make sure your training and development programs can demonstrate measure effectiveness for the business in a meaningful way.

Add the power of mentoring

If we think about why people like going to school or college – and why they succeed – it’s rarely only about what they learn. It is about the experience, the friends, the chance to connect, collaborate…

“We found 78% of our employees preferred to learn from their peers,” – Mr Peter Butler, the head of learning at BT, the British telecommunications firm

Turbocharge your training by including mentoring aspects, especially peer mentoring where participants help each other learn during the program. Taking a mentoring approach makes learning effective and often returns a positive ROI by the time the program completes.

Research conducted by the National Mentoring Day Summit found that 67% of businesses reported an increase in productivity due to mentoring. Many other research studies have shown that mentoring can be a powerful development and improved business results mechanism (links to sources included):

Diversity Mentoring Statistics:

• Mentorship programs can boost the representation of black, Hispanic, and Asian-American women, and Hispanic and Asian-American men at manager levels by 9% to 24%, as compared to the other initiatives which have lower results ranging from -2% to 18%
• Mentoring programs boosted minority representation at the management level from 9% to 24%
• Increased promotion and retention rates for minorities and women from 15% to 38% as compared to non-mentored employees
• Mentoring has been found to have a significant impact on the psychology and confidence level of those from minority groups
• 32 percent of minorities indicated a mentoring relationship was “extremely important” as opposed to just 27 percent of the overall respondents

Agile Mentoring Statistics:

• Agile mentorship programs can boost team productivity by 60%
• Companies with agile-mindset mentoring programs can result in 24 percent to 59 percent lower employee turnover 
• Agile-focused mentoring programs improve time-to-market delivery speeds from 37% to 50%
• Implementing agility mentoring programs can increase ability to finish on time and within budget by 61 percent to 67 percent
• Thought-leadership and agility mentoring programs grow revenue 37 percent faster and generate 30 percent higher profits

Millennial Mentoring Statistics:

• 79% of millennials see mentoring as crucial to their career success
• Top reasons for millennials wanting to quit are ‘Not enough opportunities to advance’ at 35% and ‘Lack of learning and development opportunities’ at 28%
• 63% of millennials say their leadership skills are not being fully developed
• Millennials intending to stay with their organization for more than 5 years are twice as likely to have a mentor than not (68% vs 32%)
• Where it exists, mentoring is having a positive impact on 61 percent of the millennial workforce
• In the Millennials’ ideal workweek, there would be significantly more time devoted to the discussion of new ideas and ways of working, on coaching and mentoring, and on the development of their leadership skills

General Mentoring Statistics:

• 55% of businesses felt that mentoring had a positive impact on their profits
• More than 4 in 10 workers who don’t have a mentor say they’ve considered quitting their job in the past three months
• 71% of Fortune 500 companies have mentoring programs according to an American Society for Training and Development study
• Of those with a mentor, 97% say they are valuable 
• 89% of those who have been mentored will also go on to mentor others
• 75% of executives credit their mentors with helping them reach their current positions.
• 25% of employees who enrolled in a mentoring program had a salary-grade change, compared to only 5% of workers who did not participate
• Mentees are promoted 5 times more often than those without mentors
• And mentors themselves are 6 times more likely to be promoted
• 87% of mentors and mentees feel empowered by their mentoring relationships and have developed greater confidence
• 71% of people with a mentor say their company provides them with good opportunities to advance in their career, compared with 47% of those without a mentor
• 94% of employees said they would stay at a company longer if they were offered opportunities to learn and grow

Support transformation

“Transformation” in various forms is still a hot topic in the business world.

Often, training is brought in to help bring about the desired transformation.

Doing so as an event, like traditional training, rarely achieves anything needed for transformation and will not bring about the transformation.

Significant, fundamental change like transformation raises the behavior change bar even further. Transformative change requires many application and learning cycles to achieve significant change, much less commit the new behaviors to habit. Traditional training simply can’t provide what is needed.

Adding tactics like the ones discussed in this article can help dramatically, especially if sustained until the transformation really takes effect. Effective coaching speeds up the process, but still requires focus and effort to turn the corner.

Need help?

To find out more about achieving positive training ROI and proven approaches like adding mentoring to your programs, contact Mike Russell or use the contact form on this site.