Increased return on your training investment

Savvy leaders and organizations recognize that training is a valuable tool for personal and professional development, and therefore they set some type of annual training budget.

Almost everyone I’ve talked to has had excellent training (hopefully!) And training that, well, it wasn’t that great. In a perfect world, we could connect the best training experiences with the best workplace application. This would make the equation easier: Pick excellent training, making sure people apply what they have learned, and the result would be a tremendous return on investment on funds spent on training.

As a training provider and someone who has helped hundreds of people become better trainers through training-the-trainers programs, you wish the equation was that easy.

Unfortunately, it is not. It takes more than good training to ensure a good return on the money (and time) invested.

What organizations and individual leaders need to do then is look beyond the training event just to find ways to increase ROI. They need to take some responsibility themselves.

Here are 6 ways to increase your return on this investment:

Align training investments with business needs. Some organizations use training to an advantage for good artists. This “training as a reward” approach may motivate some people (especially if the training takes place in a desirable location) but generally this is not the best way to invest these dollars. Have a plan that links the skills that need to be developed to the group’s strategic plan. Make sure the participant knows why the skills they are learning are important to the group and the overall organization. In this context, the participant has the opportunity to be more focused and will treat the training as a serious business activity and not as a vacation from work.

Invest in good training. Once you’ve decided to spend money on training, spend it on the good stuff. While this is not the only success factor, please refer to testimonials and materials to determine that the training focuses on important skills and delivers them effectively. Typically this means training in smaller groups with more interaction and practice time and therefore a higher cost. In training, like many other things in life, you get what you pay for. The cost increase is generally not significant compared to the possible improvement available from the experience.

Facilitate pre-workout conversations and set expectations. As a supervisor or manager, your job doesn’t end when training is identified or scheduled, it has actually just begun. Sit down with the employee who will be training. Discuss why this training can be valuable to them and to the company. Ask them to think of their goals for the training. Recognize that the first few times you do this, people will look at you like you are crazy. They may not have an answer and that’s fine. Be patient and help them identify an objective or goals for their attendance and ask them to write it down and bring it with them to training. Then schedule a meeting after the training event to review what they learned and how it can help them reach their goals.

Encourage partnerships. If you have more than one person attending the workshop, encourage them to join when they return. A “learning buddy” provides support to individuals and some coaching and peer support when they return to work. Help people take responsibility for doing something with what they have learned. If you are sending just one person, encourage them to “make a friend” in the training and form a partnership with that person.

Have a follow-up meeting. People should come back from training prepared for their follow-up meeting with you. Sit down and review what you learned. If they haven’t yet come up with a specific action plan to test and / or use what they learned, help them build this plan at the meeting. Make sure this conversation ends with a defined action plan with a timeline.

Wait (and inspect) the results. People now have a plan and it is your job as a leader to help them take responsibility for that plan. Schedule follow-up meetings, consult or do what you can to support them and encourage them to follow through with their plan.

Note that five of these steps do not require an additional monetary investment. The investment they require is time, thought and energy. These additional investments are the activities that will transform the money spent into real organizational improvement.

All of this is true because training is an event, but learning is a process. To maximize the return on your investment you must invest in more than the activity or event, you must invest in the learning process.