I read with great
interest Training Magazines Top 125 in 2015. Here's what I noticed:
1. Award-winning
companies spend an average of roughly 6% of payroll on training. For a $40,000
a year employee that's roughly $2400. Which is more than twice the normal
training spend of $1200 according to Association for Training and Development.
2. Online
training has now moved to a 50-50 position with classroom type training. This
trend will continue for years to come as the cost
of delivery lowers and quality improves.
3. Successful
training companies do three things: they conduct employee satisfaction surveys,
help employees create competency maps, and tie management compensation to
development of their direct reports. Rocket science – find out what people
need, help them navigate a road to get it and make sure the managers support
their journey.
4. Two words that
express what leaders most want from training: Value and an ROI
5. The goal of
any training is to change behavior that increases productivity and job
satisfaction.
6. Training succeeds where it is relevant, timely, and
immediately applicable
7. It is the learner that must be placed at the center of
any training program or system
8. Active
learning involves role-playing, gaming, team-based, interactive, collaborative
9. The greatest
training budgets will be created by industry disruptors, innovators, and
continuous improvement freaks
10. All companies
can do a better job of managing their compliance training. Both management and
rank-and-file employees must undergo sexual-harassment training, diversity
training and conflict resolution. Most workplaces have some safety training
concerns that need training as well.
11. Training
programs do best where they have high completion rates, training adapted to
various learning styles, where the training creates a desire for additional
training, where it comes with coaching, and where it is active.
12. You can
measure success in terms of both quantity and quality of production, customer
satisfaction, reduced errors and accidents, and other relevant benchmarks
13. You can
encourage training by branding your effort, creating the awards and rewards,
contests, branding, etc.
14. Not all
employees should be trained equally. All employees should get basic compliance
training but then employees should be trained in proportion to the value they
bring to the company. Someone with twice the salary should have twice the
training budget, if not even more. The most important employees to train and
retain are your winners.
George Gilder
wrote we are in a Knowledge Economy. Fact is: to earn and retain we have to
train, train, train!
One more reason
to take full advantage of ThinkHR Learn.
Don Phin, Esq. is VP of Strategic Business Solutions at ThinkHR, which helps companies resolve urgent workforce issues, mitigate risk and ensure HR compliance. Phin has more than three decades of experience as an HR expert, published author and speaker, and spent 17 years in employment practices litigation. For more information, visit www.ThinkHR.com.