We’re all aware of our obligations to deliver training in our organisations.
Sometimes the focus is so much on what we need to do with less emphasis on how we do it.
It’s reckoned that only around 25% of training programs measurably improve business performance and that people forget 40% of what they have learned after 20 minutes and over 60% after 9 hours!
If you really want to maximise knowledge take-up and retention, we recommend shifting the focus from delivering training to enabling learning.
Defining ‘training’ vs ‘learning’
Delivering training:
Training – The action of teaching a person a particular skill or type of behaviour.
- The trainer is in control
- Focuses on the training not the individual
- Usually classroom based
- Often a half day to several days in the classroom
- Delivered to a room that may contain a variety of roles and responsibilities
- PowerPoint slides with lots of bullet points and text
- Often a one size fits all approach
- It is difficult to gauge the success of the training
Enabling learning:
Learning – The acquisition of knowledge or skills through study, experience, or being taught.
Enabling learning:
- Focuses on the individual – the learner
- Presents a variety of ways in which to learn
- Uses engaging and interactive media
- The learner is in control
- Delivered at a time, place and pace that suits the learner
- Offers appropriate material for the learner and their role
- Provides a variety of learning tools to support learning including job aids, videos, workshops and eLearning materials
- On the job or in the field learning provides great learning opportunities
- Bite sized refreshers help overcome the retention roll off – we call them Learning Snapshots
How can you make the switch to ‘enabling learning’?
In this article, we wanted to challenge the more ‘traditional’ way of developing people in an organisation and briefly look at how making changes in delivery can enable effective learning across your organisation.
Here are some thoughts on beginning the transition from delivering training to enabling learning
- Put the learner first
- Identify the learning outcomes required
- Look for ways in which these outcomes can be best met
- Develop learning for the time, place and pace that best suits the learner
- Examine your current training materials and re-purpose them to enable learning
- Introduce a blended learning approach
- Remember, don’t be frightened to change what you have been doing
- Introduce knowledge checks along the learning journey
- Introduce bite sized pieces as well as more in-depth solutions
- Consider the flipped classroom approach
- Measure and analyse the changes you have made and be prepared to adapt
- Enjoy enabling new ways for your teams to learn
