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Warning: Why Employee Training Might be Hurting Your Career and Professional Development Efforts

According to Gartner, 70% of employees claim they don’t master the skills their jobs require. How do you like attending employee training?

Like most companies, your employer might need training on how to run effective and practical employee training to create a learning culture that leads to high performance.

If your employer isn’t good at providing effective training, where does that leave you when you rely on in-house training to improve your skills?

What I am saying is, you might think employers know how to train, lead and increase employee performance. But think again.

In October 2019, Steve Glaveski, CEO and co-founder of Collective Campus, a consulting firm, wrote an article titled: “Where companies go wrong with learning and development” in the Harvard Business Review. In his article, he took a critical look at the effectiveness of corporate training.

Steve specifically discussed the return on the $359 billion budget organizations worldwide spent on training in 2016. Let me share with you the list he came up with:   

  • 75% of 1,500 managers surveyed from across 50 organizations were dissatisfied with their company’s Learning & Development (L&D) function;

  • 70% of employees report that they don’t have mastery of the skills needed to do their jobs;

  • Only 12% of employees apply new skills learned in L&D programs to their jobs; and

  • Only 25% of respondents to a recent McKinsey survey believe that training measurably improved performance.

The very department in charge of employee learning fails to understand how learning or skill-development works. Isn’t that alarming? 

The issue is that the root causes of mediocre or infective employee training lie in how companies and managers view training and learning. “What do you mean?” you wonder.   

The hidden purpose of most employee training…

Could companies do better in the area of employee training and development? Yes, they could. But do they want to? The sad reality is,

  • Most training sessions are based on a lie. They make false learning-and-performance-improvement promises. On top of that, they often waste employees’ time and energy.
  • Most training sessions are there to cover management’s back. They enable managers and supervisors to check the box, claiming they are promoting learning.
  • That way, it’s easy to blame employees for performance issues―or a company’s systematic and leadership shortcomings―instead of taking on the responsibility to build systems that promote peak performance and growth.

 

Thus, no amount of training will compensate for ineffective management systems and flawed organizational culture. So, if you are serious about mastering your job or becoming the best at what you do, you will need your own learning system.   

Have questions? Read the chapter on employee training is not for employees  or Shoot the CBL Team an email.

 

PS: A few posts that you might have missed:

The coach
Coach Teddy Edouard is a lifelong learner, public speaker, writer, blogger and vlogger. He is the founder of Coaching for Better Learning, where he helps people and institutions build systems that lead to lasting improvement, growth, and success. He also teaches professionals how to protect their careers and use artificial intelligence (AI) as a career improvement ally.

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