KJ Associates' Five Top Tips To Boost Training Effectiveness
Companies wanting to boost the effectiveness of their staff training can benefit from the top five tips from management development trainers KJ Associates.
Managing director Katie Jones said: "A lot of organisations start off developing their staff, then run out of steam through lack of ideas - or worse, through not matching the programme to the real needs in the workplace.
"To get the best from training it must be focussed on producing enhancements that can be implemented at work, not lots of theory that might be useful one day."
Katie lists five tips to help companies develop fruitful training programmes:
1. Strategy. The training plan must follow the strategic direction of the organisation (with some flexibility thrown in) then, by keeping in line with the corporate plan, valuable resources can be saved from irrelevant training.
2. Stay close to the corporate brand. Whatever your customer-fronting staff say and do must match the values of your brand, and training should help develop those characteristics.
3. Ensure everyone knows the objectives. Before you implement a new development programme, make sure everyone involved understands the objectives and what they are supposed to learn. Then you will face less resistance and everyone gains more benefit.
4. Measure. If possible measure the impact of training against sales or service objectives; the training professionals you hire should be able to help you identify the results and how they affect the bottom line.
5. Behavioural change. A positive change in behaviour does not happen through a one-off theory session, it takes constant coaching by line managers, so they need to be trained in ways to get the best from their staff.
Katie said: "Review the training you have done before and consider different ways of delivering training, check out new approaches and the ways in which other industries deliver training. And above all, make sure the professionals you hire are totally focussed on what YOU need to achieve."