People Don’t Hate to Learn, They Hate How We Train Them

Do you want to excel at your work? Do you want to strengthen skills and develop new ones?

If you answered yes to all of these questions, join the crowd. Apparently there are many of us in the world still out there. Somehow, though, when most people join organizations, too often they’re left reaching for training and talent development programs that fall short. Miserably short. It doesn’t have to be that way. We can do better.

According to recent worldwide study (2,500 organizations in 90 countries), completed by Bersin by Deloitte, companies are struggling to engage our modern 21st century workforce.

Here are some statistics from the research:

• 86% of business and HR leaders believe they do not have an adequate leadership pipeline (38% see it as an urgent problem)
• 79% believe they have a significant retention and engagement problem (26% see it as urgent)
• 77% do not feel they have the right HR skills to address the issue (25% urgent)
• 75% are struggling to attract and recruiting the top people they need (24% urgent)
• Only 17% feel they have a compelling and engaging employment brand

When companies were asked about their management practices they were particularly critical of how they’ve managed performance….

Only 6% believe their current process for managing performance is worth the time, 58% called their process “weak,” with North American companies 20% worse than the rest of the world. — Bersin By Deloitte

Why? In many cases, the problem isn’t due to the lack of training.

The problems:

1. Training doesn’t directly link to work skills and business needs.
2. Talent development programs are done TO people not WITH people.
3. The “Rank and Yank” performance management approach is broken.
4. Talent development training, in many cases, is strategically flawed.

Training Doesn’t Link to Work Skills

In today’s mid-sized and large organizations, formal training lives in learning management systems (LMS). These large greenhouses of learning exist to nuture and grow the workforce. Many typically house hundreds of self-paced and instructor-led courses ranging from soft skill training like how to manage conflict to regulatory overviews, leadership training to frontline technical training. They’re thought of generally as a place employees can go to easily access learning that will help them work better. With their help, thousands and in some cases hundreds of thousands of employees can instantly access learning deemed important for further growth.

The problem is that these greenhouses can quickly become warehouses or even junk yards. Imagine. Vast rows of courses, and training that are hard to find and not directly training what employees need to improve performance.

What’s left for the employee? Feeling let down at best. Worse still, leaders are left wondering about the long-term value of the learning and development.

What We Can Do Better

First, we need to evolve how learning management systems (LMS) are designed. They need to help employees match their job need to what’s available in the system. It looks like: “I need to do X better. If I search “I need to do X better” in the LMS, resources should appear in the system that relate directly to X. Better yet, after searching, how about a visual map that shows a path of how to learn X and suggestions to further build skills? This evolution in LMS search would move learning from what amounts to today as a searchable card catalogue to a tangible performance improvement tool.

Still evolving LMS design is just part of the solution. We need to retool how learning and development divisions approach content strategy across their teams, divisions, and organizations. In many cases, learning divisions are siloed within organizations and feed mass amounts of training into their LMS. This training tends to be specific to each business units needs (if well designed). The over arching problem is that no one group is mapping the interconnectedness of this training, let alone mapping it’s value for each employee. This dynamic creates a warehouse of training offerings. Offerings that in many cases are redundant and obsure to the employee because it appears out of context from their work world.

When it comes to learning, context is everything.

As learning and performance professionals, we need to map content and its value so learners can see their success track. We need to become expert curators. We need to become content strategists, organizational effectiveness experts, and performance consultants. In a word: workologists. This means retooling instructional designers and the group think that narrows their capability to solve real business needs. Here’s what I mean. Many organizations look to these professionals to create training quickly to meet knowledge and skill gaps. The solution process tends to be driven by more by delivery tools and less about not content relativity; driven by production simplicity not content retention;created for visual effect not usability in the workplace. What happens? Training that doesn’t align to business needs. What’s needed? An efficient study of people dynamics, habits, and attitudes. What results is design that solves root causes not just the symptoms.

Development is Done TO People Not WITH People

Has this ever happened to you? After receiving your performance review by your manager, they tell you to just go get something to learn. Read a book, get a mentor. Go to the LMS. Go off-site to learn something. In all cases, the employee-learner is asked to go “somewhere to get something”…. away from the workplace they plan to use the knowledge.

What Can We Do Better

More emphasis is needed in finding ways to embed learning and performance development into the workflow. Learning designers need to be ethnographers of sorts and uncover the habits of how information is consumed, shared and used within teams. They need to find pragmatic ways to put information in the hands of learners in the moments they need it.

The Rank ‘Em And Yank ’Em System Is Broken

The 1 through 5 performance management approach is demoralizing. Ranking people creates power struggles between managers and unhealthy competition between employees.

Today, more than 70 percent of all employees work in service or knowledge-related jobs. Their performance is driven by their skills, attitude, customer empathy — and by their ability to innovate and drive change by working through teams. These skills must be built over time, and successful performance management must be focused on constantly developing these capabilities rather than ranking them at a moment in time. — Alex Nabaum

What Can We Do Better

First, move away from annual performance reviews to a continuous process of improvement. It requires a shift by managers.

The days when managers could lead from a position of command and control are over. In today’s high-performing teams, employees must take ownership of their performance and act on their own to improve their capabilities. Managers become coaches, rather than evaluators. — Alex Nabaum

When managers make the shift to coaching vs. evaluating, it will dramatically impact any organization wanting to become a sustainable learning organization.

Second, de-link compensation from the performance review all together and focus bonus achievement on project team performance. Focusing performance achievement on project teams will encourage collaboration, innovation, and knowledge-sharing. Key elements of sustainable learning cultures.

Talent Development Training is Strategically Flawed

You’ve heard that old saying. Culture eats strategy for lunch. The same goes for this knee-jerk learning strategy: more knowledge will fix problems. Unfortunately, more training will not override cultural forces. Here’s why:

In many cases, employees aren’t given enough time or support to develop their skills, or they’re managers have out-dated management practices. The flaw occurs when leaders believe more knowledge will fix the problem. No matter how much training is offered, if employees don’t have time or aren’t supported to develop, performance will remain stagnate at best. Why? Because the broader cultural characteristics are playing against any real return on investment for training. Some of these characteristics include support of an imbalance between work and life, a belief that employees should be yanked from their roles vs. coached, a focus on performance management approach that makes managers evaluators vs. coaches, and a lack of flexibility, inclusion, and trust.

What happens when training is implemented in an organization with these cultural characteristics? Why the bump of course. No we’re not talking about the 1980's popular dance. I mean a small lift occurs in performance after training is implemented, then slowly dissapates over a short period of time.

But there is more impact beyond the bump.

When training is implemented in these types of organizations, a backlash occurs over time. Cultural forces begin to erode the learning experience. The employee/learner becomes more and more impatient and beligerant about how they are using their time and how much time they are spending on training. Training feels like a “pain” and begins to be seen as a roadblock rather than a bridge. Training design begins to evolve to a more transactional experience to try to alleviate the pain. It becomes more of an event than an experience designed to change behavior. It leads to a disconnected learning experiences that ultimately feel of little value.

What Can We Do Better

Let’s move away from this flawed group think: more knowledge = better performance. Better performance isn’t about more. It’s about what, when, and why. Emphasis on the why. It’s simple and it’s evidence based…when people get why they need to learn and perform better, have intrinsic motivation to do better (sourced partially by the support of their manager), as well as have manager support, they will perform better.

Bottom Line

Today’s training misses the mark when pre-conceived notions and habits are left to drive decisions. Building sustainable, re-generative performance requires a look at and disruption of the systems it resides. The very systems it works to support. It’s time we view training as a performance support practice it really is. It requires managers and employees to be held accountable for results — results that require coaching, development, regular feedback, and learning product and organizational effectiveness strategy based on needs. Needs that are met within the workflow…in the moment it’s needed. People don’t hate to learn, they just hate how we train them.

MariAn (M.A.) Klein, has been a organizational development and performance designer of successful learning and performance solutions used worldwide in Fortune 100 companies, government agencies, education, and non-profits for the past 20+ years.

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