Most of the money and time companies spend on training is wasted, says John Tschohl, president of Service Quality Institute. That’s because the majority of companies use outdated training ideas and boring training methods.
“Training that is poorly presented goes in one ear and out the other. It’s no wonder employees don’t change their attitudes or behaviors after they attend a badly presented training session,” said Tschohl.
“After working in the training field for more than 40 years on six continents, I’ve seen 10 reasons why group training fails,” said Tschohl, author of Achieving Excellence Through Customer Service.
- Large groups: You can’t have a good group discussion if 100 people are in the room. Try to limit training sessions to 15 people so everyone has a chance to participate. If the group size is larger, most employees will not participate and hence will not change their behaviors or learn new skills.
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- A small number of people dominate the conversation: It’s natural in groups for three people to speak up while everyone else stays silent. Facilitators must call on everyone in the room to participate. If people don’t talk, they won’t buy into the training goals.
- Stupid games: People don’t like role-playing games. Games and exercises have to do with something that builds success as a team. People need to be actively involved in the exercise.
- Complicated training materials: If the material is not easily understood, it will not be implemented. Make sure the information is easily comprehended. Test the material on several small groups. Make adjustments and then roll out the final version to the entire organization.
- Facilitator dominated: Facilitators should be seen and seldom heard. They should steer the conversation, but they should not dominate the discussion. They should ask leading questions of the participants and make sure everyone talks at some time. The facilitator is a juggler. He or she needs to keep the conversation going. The more discussion there is, the more likely attitudes and behaviors will improve.
- Lectures: Remember how you fell asleep when boring professors spoke in college? Your employees are no different. Lectures are not an effective way to get people to change their attitudes and beliefs.
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In tomorrow’s Advisor, we’ll go over the other 4 mistakes trainers make, and we’ll showcase a comprehensive online training resource stocked full of prewritten training courses on dozens of key HR topics.