Training and Development Trends

Databank April 2007

Recent years have seen many organisations adopt a more strategic, future oriented and integrated approach to training and development within the organisation. In todays fast paced environment, if your staff are not learning, both the individual his/herself and the organisation are falling behind. Most would agree that todays successful businesses treat employee training and development as an essential investment. The days of training for the sake of training are long gone as training needs to be carried out in a manner that gives people the information, skills and motivation they need to do their jobs well and achieve their goals. Increasingly organisations are focused on providing the right training, at the right time, for the right people. This means the investment is worthwhile for those involved and for the organisation. To deliver focused and beneficial training, this means following four phases : assessment, planning, delivery and evaluation. Each of these steps are critical if the training and development plan is to have a real impact on the business and the achievement of corporate goals. A number of training and development trends were highlighted by IBECs HR Survey 2006. Key findings include: Respondents were asked to identify the key drivers of training initiatives over the past year and for the 12 month period ahead. The top three were health and safety training, the provision of specific job related skills and training in relation to technological and organisational change. These were also identified as being the priorities for the year ahead. A key measure of investment in training and development is the number of days spent on this activity per employee per year. This survey showed that the average number of training days per employee per year was between 3 -5 days, with 77% of companies providing between one and five days. This average is the same as that found in the 2004 survey which indicates that Ireland still lags behind other European countries in terms of our investment in this area. However, the number of days spent training staff only gives an indication of training investment as it is far more important to invest in the development of relevant and applicable skills among the workforce than to waste money and time on the wrong type of training. Along with days spent training then, the area of evaluation is critical so that the impact and effectiveness of any investment can be accurately measured. More than 7 out of 10 organisations evaluate their training, indicating a slight increase in the number of companies measuring the impact and value of the training they do. Evaluation of training is more likely to happen among companies in high tech manufacturing and the financial services sector. An interesting and related fact in this area is that there would appear to be a relationship between organisations that link their training and development plans to the overall business strategy and organisations that evaluate training. A further finding was that where training and development plans are linked to the overall business, training is more likely to be evaluated (84%). Where this is not

the case, training is only evaluated in 39% of organisations. This reinforces the need for all organisations that are committed to a strategic training and development approach to ensure every training intervention is linked to the overall business strategy. The need to have a clear focus on the measurement of the results achieved through the training intervention is central to the whole process. A further important finding in this survey was that the vast majority of companies surveyed (89%) stated they provided support to employees to pursue outside educational programmes. This support consisted of both financial aid as well as time off for both study and exam leave. Both of these initiatives may have benefits which are difficult to quantify, but areas such as staff turnover and morale are clear indicators of success in this field. Another key initiative in this area is that of providing career development plans for employees as a way of offering opportunities to grow, learn and ultimately progress within the organisation. Just less than one in four organisations indicated they had career development plans for employees. This type of plan was most commonly available in the financial services sector. In terms of staff development and career planning, just over one in four organisations have succession plans in place whereby existing staff are developed and trained to take on higher level roles in the future within the organisation. Another key trend in this area is that about one third of the companies surveyed indicated that they had a mentoring system in place whereby more senior staff shared his/her knowledge and skills in a structured way with those in more junior roles.

Although the percentage spend and number of days spent training staff may be useful in order to get an overview of the companies commitment to training and development, but it is the manner, approach and content of the training initiatives as well as their assessment and follow up that determines success. It is all too easy to throw money at a performance problem and assume that a training course will sort it out, when this may well be just putting a plaster over an open wound. Training initiatives need to be strategically aligned to the overall company mission and goals. They need to be designed and delivered with the aim of helping staff to achieve their departmental as well as personal goals, so the trend of increased involvement by line managers and employees is a positive development in terms of ownership of the training and learning. By adopting a strategic approach to training and development rather than an unplanned and ad hoc one, training and development initiatives become more targeted, measurable and effective. Other trends in the area of using training as a strategic tool include the following: More companies are focusing on building how to skills that are highly relevant and immediately applicable to the jobs people do. Research shows that more people act themselves into a new way of thinking rather than think themselves

into new ways of acting. Therefore it is the training that produces measurable results in terms of behavioural change that is more likely to make a real difference in the long term. More companies are investing in post training coaching and on the job support from managers when a participant comes back to work after a training course. Research conducted by Motorolla showed that when training was reinforced as the person returned to work, there was a 33$ return on every dollar invested. Xerox also conducted research within the organisation and found that only 13% of skills were retained by trainees 6 months after the training took place if there was no on the job support when they returned to work. Therefore, the follow up process is critical to the success of any training intervention, yet this is an area that is often overlooked when devising training and development plans within the business. There is a growing trend which includes cascading training down from senior management throughout the organisation, with top managers being present to deliver some of the programme as well as to launch each event. This shows there is a real commitment to the outcomes of the programme as well ensuring training attendance is high. Increasingly the focus is on learning and transferable skills as opposed to the training activity itself. More organisations are recognising the critical position of hiring for attitude and training for skills. Organisations are investing more in the recruitment of the right people from the outset. If this is done well, the training and development of these people is more successful. By investing more in the assessment of potential candidates, organisations are reducing the incidence of getting the wrong person from the start. There is a greater recognition now that no amount of excellent training and development will work on the person that is not the right one for the job. Training specialists are those in the organisation who can provide a performance consulting service whereby all training interventions are geared towards the real needs of managers, staff and the business. To do this well, those working in the training area need to understand organisation development, the business strategy, how people learn and how to make a real difference in every training intervention.

The integration of training and development into the performance management system is a pattern which is more evident in organisations today. Companies are increasingly moving away from the annual one to one appraisal meeting with staff towards a process of more regular reviews and often including 360 degree feedback. As part of this approach, individuals are given personal development plans outlining their training needs for the year ahead. Each individual plan helps the employee to continue to develop his/her skills and abilities. The training plans devised will also include learning activities on the job such as special projects,

working on cross functional teams, skill stretching assignments as well as attending specific programmes and courses aimed at developing certain skills. Training in the area of these individual plans is being delivered just in time, a trend we already mentioned earlier as being of real relevance today. The training function in the organisation is now not one that purely designs and organises a range of courses for staff. Increasingly those working in this area of the organisation have a role in the area of performance consulting whereby they help the internal of external customer to identify their needs and design the necessary intervention or plan to address these needs. In order to do performance consulting well, trainers need to be knowledgeable in the area of organisational development, group processes and the skills involved in conducting an effective training needs analysis meeting that gets to the real root of a person, team or departments training needs. The trainees motivation to learn and attend training has an effect on skill acquisition, retention and willingness to apply the newly learned knowledge, skills and attitude on the job. Training motivation is influenced by a set of individual characteristics, such as age, conscientiousness, self-efficacy, cognitive ability, anxiety and situational characteristics, such as organisational climate characteristics. In order to enhance the learning of participants on a training programme, impediments to training motivation need to be identified (such as anxiety) and as far as possible are dealt with prior to training. Establishing learning styles is a useful process, which is implemented prior to developing the training program. The concept of learning styles preferences is based on the recognition that some individuals prefer learning in one way compared with another. In order to optimise training effectiveness, meeting individual preferences regarding learning styles will go a long way. Using Honey and Mumfords (1982) Learning Styles Questionnaire aids in the establishment of learning style preferences, which can be taken as the basis for the development of any training programme. According to Honey and Mumford the learning cycle embraces the processes involved in all kinds of learning, on the job, off the job, solitary or shared (See Figure1).

Figure1: Learning Cycle Having an experience Planning Reviewing

Concluding Some methods of learning are often more associated with one stage than another. Team building games or outdoor games are often most clearly geared to the having an experience stage and lectures are often geared to the reviewing stage. Many activities with good learning potential fail because they concentrate too much on one stage of the learning cycle. To take an example, business games sometimes concentrate too much on exciting activities and provide too little time for reflecting on what has happened whilst engaging in the game. Balancing the four stages of the learning cycle provides a complete rather than a partial learning experience.

Overall then, there are a number of important trends now evident in the field of training and development in Ireland. The need for training to deliver real results in terns of the business and the individuals needs is clear with all parties now having higher expectations about the training process and the results it needs to yield. In the past 30 years the science and practice of training has progressed dramatically. Now, more than ever, organisations must rely on workplace training, learning and continuous improvement in order to remain competitive. For this reason, there is an increasing concern in organisations that the investment in training must be justified in terms of organisational performance, increased safety, profit and enhanced market share. Recent approaches to training include action learning, just-in-time training, gearing the learning to the individuals style, mentoring, coaching and organisational learning. Todays organisations need to cope with the training needs associated with the changing demographics of the population in terms of increasing age and diversity of the workforce while maintaining a real business focus and emphasis on the bottom line in the organisation.

Jenny Hayes Head of Management Training, IBEC