Maximizing Your Return on Training and Development of Employees

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Training and development is an essential element of organizational performance. Often, though training does not produce the expected results, which means improved performance of the employee on the job. This is especially true for behavioral skills, which is often harder to change and to measure.

Three steps to success

There are three things management needs to do in order to ensure that the desired results is achieved from the training of employees.

The first thing is to clarify expectations by setting goals and defining what the expected outcome of the training will be. This needs to be communicated to those receiving the training so they understand what is expected of them, as well as the benefits to both the organization and themselves.

The training program.

Training works best when it is spaced over time, rather than a one day a workshop. This approach allows both the trainer and the trainee to adjust themselves to sure that they will meet the expectations and goals the training program and of the organization.

Follow-up plan.

The third component of a successful training program is to plan a follow-up schedule in order to measure if the desired skills and behaviors are being applied on the job. Follow-up plan should include measurement of results that are linked to the original objectives of the training program.

Management needs to communicate the follow-up schedule with the employee and set specific goals to be achieved within that timeframe.

By following the simple plan of setting goals and expectations for the training, monitoring the progress of the training and then putting in place a follow-up system, you can ensure that your training program will produce the desired results.

The 4 Stages of Learning to Develop a New Skill or Behaviour

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Learning a new skill or making a change in behavior as a result of a training workshop or learning program does not happen just from your participation in the activity.

Real learning happens when the desired outcome of the training actually manifests itself in the performance of your activities or of the way you behave.

Unconscious Incompetence

To achieve real change requires that we go through four stages of learning. The first stage is making us aware of what we don’t already know. This is called the unconscious incompetence stage. We must first become aware of the things we need to learn and what we don’t already know in order to be open to the new material and to make the effort to put it into practice.

Conscious Incompetence

This leads us to the next level of learning, which is called conscious incompetence. Now we know what we didn’t know and are more open to learning, but we still cannot perform the new skill or behavior.

Conscious Competence

Once we start putting the skill or behavior into practice through guided instruction, we now go through the next stage of learning, which is conscious competence. This means that we can perform the skill or behavior, but we need to be thinking of what we’re doing and still be guided and corrected.

Unconscious Competence

The more we practiced the new skill or behavior. We gradually become better at it until it is fully learned and we reach the next stage, which is called unconscious competence. This is the goal of every training program were ultimately the new skill or behavior becomes a habit and second nature. We no longer need to think about how to perform each step we just do it naturally.

A good analogy is learning how to drive a car. The first step was to learn the theory behind driving in a classroom before we even went out on the road. The next step was to get behind the wheel with an instructor and to learn the different controls and operations.

Once we were comfortable with that, we started to practice driving perhaps in a parking lot and slowly went out on the road with the instructor who gave us feedback and made corrections.

As we practiced more and more we became confident based on the results and the feedback from the instructor until the point that we were doing things automatically.

When you drive to work next time, look at the faces of people driving the other cars. Most of the time people are thinking about something other than driving the car itself, but we all somehow show up to work safely. This is a good example of unconscious competence.

This process is more difficult for a behavioral change as compared to learning a mechanical skill, such as learning to operate a computer program or machine. A behavioral change is linked to beliefs and attitudes and thus requires greater awareness of your thoughts and reactions to people and situations in order to consciously put into practice the new behaviors.

Stephen Goldberg

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New Employee Orientation & On Boarding for Top Employee Performance

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new employee orientation
Everyone hires a new employee with the intention that they become productive within a reasonable period of time. In order for that to happen proper employee orientation and on boarding is extremely important.
There’s a wealth of information available to guide you in the process of orienting a new employee. Just do a search and you will come up with all kinds of articles and checklists, many of which contain great information. A lot of these approaches deal mainly with integrating the new employee in their job and introducing them to the culture of the company, as well as the policies and procedures.
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Performance and Productivity
In terms of performance and productivity here’s some additional information that I think will be helpful. One of the most important documents is the job description. This document should have already been introduced to the person during the hiring process, but it’s important to go back to it as part of the orientation.
A strategic meeting should be held with the new employee to review the role description and to discuss the goals of the department and company. This will help the employee understand how their job contributes to the bigger picture. During this meeting the manager should have a discussion with the new employee about setting specific learning and performance goals for the first 90 days of the job. The first 90 days is often considered a probationary period, it’s the time usually required for the person to get a good sense about the company and about performing the key tasks of the job.
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90 Day Goals and Objectives
One approach is to ask the employee to come up with their performance commitments for the first 90 days based on your discussion in that initial meeting. This will help you to see how well they’ve understood the job requirements and what’s expected of them. It will also show you how well they are able to articulate goals in writing. A second meeting would be held the next day or so to review what they are proposing as performance goals and to discuss and finalize. This will establish a good understanding through a mutual dialogue.
One thing that should be included in the agreement is support commitments from their manager. The employee needs to identify where they feel they will need help to learn what is required in order to meet their commitments.
follow-up
Once this is established, you can then determine a training plan to provide the resources and support required to meet their performance objectives. Depending on the complexity of the job a daily check-in with the new employee might be required, but I suggest a weekly review to make sure everyone is on track to meet their commitments.
You can refer to my previous video and article on writing a job description, where you can also find a link to download a job description template and sample completed job description.
Once the 90 day period has approached you should do more in depth evaluation of their performance and then set new performance goals for the next 90 days to six months. The idea is to have regular discussions and take a coaching approach to managing your employees. This creates a win-win scenario for everyone.
As always, please leave your comments and subscribe to our YouTube channel to get notified of new videos as they come out.
Thanks for watching and see you soon.

Stephen Goldberg

How to clarify performance expectations for improved employee engagement and productivity

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Clarifying performance expectations of employees can have a huge impact on employee engagement and productivity. I like to compare this to sports because all the players and coaches know and understand clearly the rules of the game and the factors that constitute to success or failure. The key indicators of performance are constantly being measured and fed back to the players and coaches.

But in organizations this is not always the case and often people do not know if they are succeeding and meeting their bosses expectations. Even if they are told when something is not right or needs improvement this does not mean that expectations of successful performance are clear.

Setting clear expectations does not have to be a long and arduous exercise. The important thing is to get started and communicate the expectations to those concerned.

Start with a good job description
You can begin  the process of clarifying expectations by write a good job description. Refer to my previous blog and video that covers this and also download a job description template and a sample job description..

Identify high payoff activities
From the job description put a star next to the most important tasks. These are often referred to as high payoff activities.  These can then be defined as performance standards or expectations.

Define the performance standard or expectation
In my example job description, I wrote a task for preparing PowerPoint presentations. An example performance standard for this task could be;
PowerPoint presentations are aesthetically pleasing and use a well balanced color scheme that reflects our company branding. The presentations communicate the message dynamically using 70-80% images or graphics and words are at least 24 pts or larger.  This gives a pretty clear picture of what is expected but can be further enhanced with the measurement method.

Choose a measurement method
A way of measuring each standard must be determined. When establishing a performance standard for the PowerPoint presentation example, it is recommended to use an example such as a previous PowerPoint presentation or choose an external reference source that meets the criteria.

Some performance standards are easier than others to define and measure. For example measuring the prospecting activity of a salesperson might be fairly simple to measure using a CRM software but the task of relationship building might be more difficult. However make measuring of performance as simple and easy as possible otherwise this could stand in the way of actually clarifying expectations.

Track and feedback
It is also important to provide regular feedback of performance against the standards or expectations. This could be statistical in the case of prospecting activities or through discussion and examination of the work output for the PowerPoint example. Either way, it is important to meet regularly with the employee to discuss their performance against the established standards. This way communication improves and the employee gets to clarify any questions or possible misunderstandings. These meetings also provide an opportunity to set performance improvement goals for below standard performance but also to raise the bar on well performed tasks. How can the employee bring their PowerPoint presentation designs to the next level? How can the salesperson get better results from their prospecting activities?

Thus these performance review or appraisal meetings should occur at least once a quarter or even once a month. I the case of new employees it might even be once  a week for the first three months. A simple form can be designed to keep track of each review meeting and add notes..

Be committed
Committing to this simple process will greatly benefit the employee, their boss and the organization. It will also help teamwork as each person will know what is expected of their teammates. In a future article and video I will cover how to provide proper feedback to  employees during these sessions.

Stephen Goldberg