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Training Follow-up

Guest post by: Harris Silverman

Article Overview: Managerial follow-up is an integral element in the success of any training program. But it is a step managers sometimes do not take.

Training Follow-up

Managers sometimes feel that training efforts do not succeed in changing employees’ behavior, or the way they do their jobs, to the extent expected when the training was planned (and budgeted for).

There can be several reasons why training fails to “take”, but one of the most common, and most commonly overlooked, is a failure on the part of managers to engage in any kind of follow-up.

When employees return to their desks from training, there are several steps that managers should take to help entrench the training.

The most important point is that managers should ensure that the training is being applied. The take-aways from the training should be put into effect on the job immediately and wherever it applies. Managers should monitor the employees’ work, and, where possible, measure it, to ensure that the employees are doing things the way it was demonstrated in training.

This has several effects. For one, it guards against drift, whereby employees apply one or two points of what they learned, on occasion, in a haphazard way, ignoring the rest and slowly drifting back to the old way of doing things. If nobody says anything about the training after it’s over, everyone just forgets about it. Managers should have more to say about it than, “How was the training?”

Secondly, management follow-up helps to entrench the learning in the employees’ minds, by supporting them in using it. If people don’t use skills they have learned frequently and soon after they learn it, they will forget it and ignore it. Drift back to the previous methods becomes highly likely.

Another key point is to measure the impact, and thus the value, of training. If training is changing behaviors in the desired way, or improving processes to the extent foreseen, or increasing the quality of employee’s work, then it is of value; if not, it isn’t. Training plans may need to be revised based on the results of the measurement.

Finally, where possible, a monetary value should be put on the return from training. How much money was saved due to what was taught? What is the value of an improved process? How many customers were retained as a result of training, and what is the value of their business? Do these savings justify the cost of the training?

Some things are difficult to monetize, however, and managers should only go so far in creating value calculations. Sometimes a subjective measurement or estimation is required.

Management follow-up should be regarded as an integral part of training. Training is important in inculcating desired behaviors in personnel, too important for the time and money spent on it to be wasted due to a failure to follow up.

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Article Tags: coaching, management, managers, training



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