Death By Clipart- Why Internal Training And Development Is Boring

An alarming discovery has just been made. Eyewitness reports have confirmed that numerous employees are ruthlessly being subjected to insipid clipart presentations under the disguise of training material. Research has revealed that many of these clipart style presentations have side effects including reduction in reflex speed, mental fatigue, and unconsciousness.
You can almost hear the headlines now. All kidding aside, training and development is one of the most important contributors to organizational success. It is effectively used by the best companies in world. It is illuminated by many successful leaders as the cornerstone of the companys success. Yet recourses and opportunities provided to these departments is fractional compared to the support provided to other departments including advertising, marketing or research.
There are a few problems with the standard approach to organizational training and development. One is the fact that most training and development staff do not have frontline experience. Nor do they have firsthand experience from the executive level and therefore do not fully understand the learning requirements from their point of view. This naturally lends itself to the development of training material which is disconnected from reality based on that persons role. This may be a key reason why training material does not always resonate with the employees taking it.
Another issue is the forms of training provided. Some organizations are still providing thick training manuals or electronic PowerPoints for team members to read, but that encourages many employees to turn to a trial and error method for learning their way around a new role. It is not uncommon for company leaders to receive negative feedback on this type of training which may result in departments adding clipart to their PowerPoint presentations in order to take them up to a level.
The other big challenge is logistics. The training is not often where it needs to be when someone needs it. In addition, it is not always available when they need it. It can be a challenge for organizations to coordinate groups of 20 or 30 people together in a training room for a few days to explain new procedures or train on new products.
Many other factors come into play when it comes to training and development. Is the training that is provided relevant for all people in the session? Some people are new, some are more experienced and a one program-fits-all approach is not always appropriate for the entire team. In addition, the question of classroom learning versus real life experience looms over every debate around the most effective methods. Finally the question content quality in most organizations, we all know that some training is brilliant and some is painfully boring which makes you wonder, do boring training programs have to be boring?
There are many solutions and organizations that can effectively implement them into their business will not only be more effective, but can become a threat to their competitors. This is evidenced by fast growing competitive businesses like Dell Computers. They use a system called Stealth Learning which provides training direct to all technicians at Dell, where they need it, when they need it, and it is in short, easy to follow electronic form. A great way for business to apply this is to add training tips and videos, directly into their intranet or on their website or even integrated into their electronic online systems allowing their people to learn on the fly as they work.
Another great example is JV Driver Projects with their JV Driver online University. They have access to a number of online safety training courses from many safety training companies through the online safety training network powered by BIS. They also have many internal courses that they are continuously building to keep their team fully trained and up to date. It is all centrally managed through the LMS which provides the company leaders with instant access to training productivity results and it offers individual team members full access to courses from WHMIS and WINTER DRIVING FUNDIMENTALS to Blanchard Courses like the NEW ONE MINUTE MANAGER to internal customized courses like CONFLICT RESOLUTION. These courses are available anytime and anywhere they have access to high-speed internet.
The following are five key strategies that can be used to improve the effectiveness of training and development within your organization.
1.GO VIRTUAL Take all training from manuals, video tapes, DVDs and put them online. Using the internet is an effective way to provide everyone access to the training they need wherever they are and when they need it the most.
2.MANAGE CENTERALLY Using an online learning management system (LMS) you can upload and store thousands of courses. As the popularity of online training systems increases it becomes easy to find an effective system that is flexible enough to upload video, PowerPoints, text documents and other formats which become accessible by the entire organization. Many of the reporting systems integrated in the LMS provide high-level reporting on total company results with drill down capabilities to any location, or employee in the system and even allow access individual test results by user or course.
3.UPGRADE THE TRAINING When updating courses and content use video, images, voiceover, text and interactive activities whenever possible. This supports the three main learning modalities including visual, auditory, and tactile/kinesthetic. This simple change can make a dramatic difference as some auditory learners can read pages of a manual, but then realize that they were thinking about something else and missed most of what they read. Others can listen to hours of an audio book or audio training program and notice the same thing happen. Offering all three provides the opportunity for any of the three to preferences to be used.
4.MAKE IT INTERESTING The key to great training is how interesting you make it, which can help it become more memorable. Many people can remember lines from a movie like Caddy Shack with Bill Murray and Chevy Chase word for word, but could not list the 3 most critical points of the safety training course they just completed. In the book Made to Stick by the Dan and Chip Heath the concepts of making information more memorable is outlined brilliantly. It provides a lot of insight on ways to make training more interesting.
5.CUSTOMIZE IT When it comes to training its always best to customize it to your business or to individual departments. It might require some investment to customize online training, but for the few thousand spent there it can save many people from wasting hours taking courses with content that is irrelevant for their job. If the average wage is $25 per hour and customized training saves 5 hours in one course, for 300 people over the course of a year that translates to $37,500 in wage savings. This doesnt include missed opportunity costs that the hours could have produced if these employees were being productive on the job instead of being tied up in the irreverent parts of the training.