How Effective Is Your Training System?

by Leslie Allan

Introduction

In today’s rapidly changing social and business environment, training and developing employees is a key lever in moving organizations forward. However, many organizations have failed to capitalise on the benefits of learning. This is not from want of investing in training courses, as the training business is a multi-billion dollar industry. Yet, in all too many cases, organizations continue to reap little benefit from their training budgets.

Organizations failing to achieve real returns from their training investments typically keep no training records or record activity and expenditure haphazardly. Training in these organizations is often the result of glossy training brochures arriving at someone’s desk or as knee-jerk reactions to workplace incidents. Where there is a real performance problem, in many cases, no or a half-hearted attempt is made to determine if training is the appropriate solution. Once trainees return to the workplace, little or no follow up is made to check that employees are using the new skills and to help them where they have difficulties. In those cases where trainees return to the workplace with much enthusiasm, after a very short while it is back to business as usual. In consequence, at the end of the year there is very little to show for all the money and time that was spent on training.

If you are responsible for training in one of these organizations, how can you turn this around? Where should you start? The following is a practical model to help you meet this challenge. The power of the Training Management Maturity Model lies in its ability to provide you with an idea of where your organization sits in terms of training system effectiveness and in giving you the structure you need to construct a roadmap for improvement.

You will find this model helpful whether your organization already has an established training system and is just not sure about what steps to take next, or your organization has no training system and needs guidance on the first steps. Likewise, the usefulness of this model is not restricted to organizations that use exclusively inhouse trainers and consultants. If you buy all or some of your training from outside, you will equally find this model beneficial. Whether training is developed and delivered using internal resources or external, the training system requires effective management if it is to serve adequately the needs of your organization.

The Four Levels of Maturity

Figure 1 illustrates the basic phased approach of the Training Management Maturity Model. Organizations moving along the path of continuous improvement advance through the levels, building on the achievements of the prior level. The diagram also indicates the primary objective of operating at each level.

Figure 1 – The Four Levels of the Training Management Maturity Model

Progressing Through the Maturity Levels

How will an organization look as it implements progressively efforts to improve the value of training and development activities? I have tried to paint that picture here, as well as illustrating how success at each level is dependent on performing effectively at the level below.

Organizations at the primary level, Level 1 – Visibility, concentrate on getting the basic administrative processes defined and practiced rigorously. Without knowing who has been trained in what and when, how much it cost and what they thought of it, improvement activities at the next level would be administratively unsupported and chaotic.

At Level 2 - Standards, there is a focus on improving the quality of the training product developed and finally delivered. Skill gaps are identified before training begins and designers and trainers are professionally equipped to ensure that participants have learned the desired skills following the training. If the training product remains of poor quality and does not deliver the required skills, planning activities conducted at the next level are destined for failure even before the ink has had a chance to dry.

At Level 3 – Planning, more emphasis is placed on mobilising training to hit areas of greatest organizational need. Training is used more effectively as an organizational tool for achieving strategic objectives and less as discretionary expenditure in response to ad hoc requests. Without a clear picture of where the organization is going and robust planning processes in place, improvement activities at the next level will have little direction and means of verification.

Operating at Level 4 – Performance leverages off the disciplines, systems and practices put in place during the previous three stages to achieve real organizational benefits from training. The focus is unswervingly on measurable performance improvement at the level of the organization, teams and individuals. At this level, attention to training activities and inputs is only maintained in so far as they serve the achievement of organizational outcomes.

Linking the Maturity Model to Practice

The model is more fully shown in Table 1. Looking at the model, you will see that it is structured deliberately around organizational objectives and practices. Each level of the model is defined by a Focus, a corresponding Primary Objective, Key Practices and suggested Key Performance Indicators.

The overall mission of the training and development function is to “Deliver people capability required to achieve organizational objectives through training and development activities”. Each level of the model focuses on just one of four core processes that serve this mission. This concentration is reflected in the Focus statement at each of the four levels. The model helps to make sense of those core processes and provides guidance on which activities to concentrate for maximum impact on the road to improvement. The idea here is that improvement efforts at each maturity level lay the infrastructure and embed the organizational practices necessary for achievement of the next maturity level.

The core process that is the primary focus at each level is as follows:

Linking the model to an organization’s practices is also achieved through the other parts of the model’s structure. The Primary Objective of each phase specifies the intended organizational outcome of efforts at that level. Each objective says what it is the organization will get by achieving the given level of maturity.

The Key Practices section then goes on to list what it is the organization needs to put in place to achieve that level of maturity. The Key Practices are not meant to be prescriptive. The intention is to provide guidance on what processes and capabilities are required for operating at that level, leaving it to you to decide, given your organization’s context, how this is to be done.

A range of Key Performance Indicators is listed next. You may use these indicators in two ways; firstly, to gauge the impact of your project efforts to achieve a certain maturity level and, secondly, to monitor the ongoing effectiveness of the system. The indicators I list here are suggestive only. You will need to construct indicators that match your organization’s context and specific objectives.

Table 1 - Training Management Maturity Model

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