You can send staff to training, but you can't make them learn

Have you ever started a new position in a company and had the inhouse expert try to teach you everything you need to know about the job? How well did that go?

Have you been the person tasked with teaching a new person and what you taught them just didn’t ‘click’ for them? Both situations are familiar to me and are very common. I’ve been on both sides of this scenario more than once, throughout my career.

What you might not know is, there is a difference between procedural and declarative knowledge. Most of what we do on a day-to-day basis is done procedurally, and we follow these processes so many times, over so many years, that it becomes second nature... yet, when asked to explain, give clear working examples and teach another person what they need to do in order to achieve the same results, it doesn’t always translate in a way the person can confidently process and put into action.

Don’t get me wrong, there are some people that can do this, and they do it extremely well. The point I am making is that there are many people in positions of authority that assume their staff can simply ‘train a new person’, but then wonder why it wasn’t a successful outcome. The fault is with neither person, it sits with how the training and trainee have been matched.

Thankfully, with the right trainer you can get great results. Training is not just to give you information. As trainers, we want to transform you as learners.

There are three key factors that influence how much and how well people learn new information:

• Our ability

• Prior knowledge

• Motivation.

We are all blessed with a certain level of learning potential. This affects how we learn new skills and knowledge. This explains why there were some people that simply watched a YouTube video over lockdown and made the most incredible sourdough bread for the Lockdown Sourdough Challenge, while mine failed at least three times before something edible was created. My ability to just watch a video and recreate it is not as strong compared to my ability to create while being shown and critiqued in person.

Someone who holds a lot of prior knowledge on a subject will simply get bored or annoyed when they are expected to sit through a training session to learn a skill they already know. Having prior knowledge helps that person acquire new knowledge and skills faster which is why it’s important that all prior knowledge is recognised. This allows the training to be tailored to their needs so the focus is on advancing their knowledge.

For me, I’ve been baking bread since I can remember, but never sourdough. If there was a video tailored to include my prior knowledge on bread making techniques and covered the differences when making sourdough I may have had greater success the first time around.

When sending staff to a training session, do the staff concerned know why they are being asked to do this? Is it to advance their career? Is it to help the company achieve something? Or is it just to tick a box? The more a person values what is to be learned, the higher their motivation will be, resulting in more information being retained. Value and motivation go hand-in-hand with learning. This scenario reflects in my poor sourdough making skills – there really was no other reason than to distract myself from being housebound for weeks on end! There was no value, therefore no motivation to succeed. Maybe if I had a large family of small hungry humans, the motivation would have been far greater!

Learning with the goal to upskill is important and all training requires an investment to be made whether this is time, monetary or both. Being able to do a job confidentially rather than second guessing a process or procedure will save a lot of headaches in the future. Always ensure the training is the correct fit for the person, not just training for the sake of training.

And lastly, for the people sent to training sessions and who haven’t been interested in the session, it’s important to talk about the why. Personal motivation will lift when staff know what the value of this training is to their position and the company.

Angela Sutton

Training Team Leader, Palace