10 BEST PRACTICES FOR LEADING A GREAT TRAINING ORGANIZATION

BY ALYSSA KASZYCKI, TARYN OESCH AND DR. AMY DUVERNET

Leading a training department is hard. It involves careful planning, anticipating a variety of business and employee needs, and addressing those needs with the right solution. It also demands a variety of skills, from leadership and strategic thinking to resource management and performance analysis.

Over the last decade, Training Industry, Inc., has collected data from thousands of training professionals across industries to determine what makes the most successful training organizations great. Based on this research, we have identified ten best practices that can take your training department to the next level, making it an essential part of the business.

This research forms the basis of Training Industry’s continuing professional development programs for training managers, including our flagship Certified Professional in Training Management (CPTM™) program. Throughout this article, we share insights from certified training managers regarding the 10 best practices of great training organizations.

LISTEN TO UNCOVER REAL BUSINESS PROBLEMS AND NEEDS

Often, the first step in creating and delivering training is identifying a business problem and determining whether training is the right way to address it. This process is known as diagnostics, and listening to uncover needs is a key practice. Over 70% of respondents to our survey indicated that this practice is “very important” for great training performance, making it the most important best practice. Unfortunately, only 23% of learning professionals indicated that their organization had optimized this practice. This gap represents a need for improvement. When you listen to uncover needs, you serve as a performance consultant and strategic partner, identifying impediments to achieving business goals and leveraging your expertise to remove barriers.

2USE INSTRUCTORS WITH GREAT

FACILITATION AND

PRESENTATION SKILLS

Training delivery is often the most obvious element of training to learners and stakeholders. As a result, this process deserves, and typically receives, a good amount of time and attention. Just over 60% of learning professionals rate this practice as “very important,” making it the second best practice for great training. One way to ensure high-quality training delivery is to use high-quality instructors — teachers who have great facilitation and presentation skills in addition to content knowledge. In a business environment where virtual training is increasingly popular, particularly amid the COVID-19 pandemic, most organizations are realizing the importance of having instructors with strong virtual facilitation skills, from the ability to use virtual training platforms to the ability to engage online learners.

We’re cultivating our subject matter experts on how to facilitate learning rather than present the material.

– Chris Cassell, CPTM Manager of Sales Training Operations at Align Technology

3

CUSTOMIZE TRAINING TO MEET THE ORGANIZATION’S NEEDS

Our research indicates that the most important process capability of great

It is important to have confidentiality or anonymity, in many cases, so that you are getting a diverse and broad spectrum of feedback.

– Julie Kirsch, CPTM Director of Training and Development at Calibre CPA, PLLC

training organizations is strategic alignment — the ability to align training programs with business goals. By customizing training programs to meet business needs rather than simply purchasing some generic off-the-shelf content, learning leaders can ensure training is relevant to learners’ jobs and goals.

All of these best practices are linked, integral components that make up a high-performing training organization. When you’ve listened to uncover business needs, it’s easier to customize training to meet those needs, because you understand what’s caused those business problems, how training can help and what that training should look like.

4MAKE TRAINING ENGAGING AND INTERACTIVE

In order for training to be effective, it must engage learners. Afterall, people don’t learn when they aren’t interested and participating in learning. Our research found that the most important content development practice is making learning engaging and interactive. Create programs that capture learners’ attention; keep them engaged; and encourage interaction between learners, between instructors and learners, and between learners and the content. This is the first step toward improving outcomes.

5

USE KNOWLEDGEABLE INSTRUCTORS

In addition to having great facilitation skills, your instructors must understand the content they’re teaching. Highperforming training organizations strike a balance: They train their trainers in adult learning principles, and they look for subject matter experts (SMEs) with a disposition toward training to facilitate courses. Just shy of 60% of learning professionals rating this practice “very important,” it is the most important content development practice.

6ESTABLISH AGREEDUPON BUSINESS

OBJECTIVES

Again, strategic alignment is key to training success. Unfortunately, with only about 20% of learning professionals reporting this practice as optimized, it is the second-lowest strategic alignment practice in terms of performance. When learning programs do not align with business goals, they do not drive sustainable impact. Work with business leaders to identify and agree on business goals; if those discussions are outside of your control, be sure to meet with stakeholders to understand the goals of the business and align your programs accordingly.

7ADAPT TRAINING TO THE ORGANIZATION’S

UNIQUE BUSINESS

OR CULTURE

In addition to customizing training for your business’ needs and your learners’ jobs, the culture of your organization is also a critical consideration. For example, if your company tends to be slow to adopt new technologies, and learners are reluctant to use new software programs, introducing a training program in virtual reality (VR) may not be a good idea for your business — regardless of how effective such a program might be in another company or industry.

8ASSESS OR MEASURE LEARNING OUTCOMES

As budgets tighten, it’s more important than ever for each business unit to prove its value — and the training function is, perhaps, under more pressure than most. Often seen as a cost center, training can be the first department to receive cuts during difficult times. With almost 60% of learning professionals

saying this practice is “very important,” it is the only reporting and analysis practice to make it to the top 10 most important practices. Measuring learning outcomes, particularly as they impact business results, is the primary way you can avoid this scenario from happening to you and your team.

most problems. Assessing training is also important for process improvement. By identifying where training has succeeded and where it has failed, you can make changes to your programs and improve future results.

USE RELEVANT EXAMPLES

Just as it’s important to customize training to your organization’s culture, you’ll want to make sure the examples and case studies you use in training reflect the industry you work in, the unique business your company does and the individual jobs your learners perform. While not rated as the most important content development practice, it does have the strongest performance ratings, with almost 30% of learning professionals indicating that their organization has optimized the practice. Even if the principles of the content are universal, your content will be more impactful if it’s relevant to your learners.

10 INVOLVE SUBJECT MATTER EXPERTS

You’re an expert in adult learning. You’re an expert in management. You’re an expert in instructional design and an expert in everything, which is why it’s important to involve SMEs in content development. They know the content best, so relying on their expertise to understand the material and distill it into easily digestible formats will help you make your training programs accurate and effective.

As we wrote in our recent report, “What Makes a Training Organization Great”: Great training organizations are processoriented. They seek to deeply understand their problems and then use a clear, structured approach to solving them. They do not have the solution to every imaginable problem — but they do have systems in place that help them thoroughly understand and solve

program development. But you can’t be

These 10 best practices will help you make your training organization a process-oriented, problem-solving, goalachieving organization — positioning you for success and aligning you as a strategic partner to the business.

Alyssa Kaszycki is the learning product manager at Training Industry, Inc., and a doctoral candidate in the industrialorganizational psychology program at North Carolina State University. Taryn Oesch is the managing editor of digital content at Training Industry, Inc. and co-host of The Business of Learning. Amy DuVernet, Ph.D., is the director of training manager development at Training Industry, Inc. Email the authors.

Collaborate with those who are external to your business, because they give you a new insight, a new look.

– Dr. Theresa R. Horne, CPTM, CSM, SHRM-SCP Senior Program Manager National Labor Relations Board

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

training organizations.

Certified Professional in Training Management (CPTM™) Program The Certified Professional in Training Management (CPTM™) program is the only credential focused specifically on the role of the training manager.

“Anatomy of the Modern Learning System” training professionals more effectively manage the

This research report explores how training processes should align in a complex modern learning organization faced with pressures to improve performance and control costs.

Training Industry Magazine: Learning Analytics The July/August 2019 issue of Training Industry Training Industry Magazine: Strategic Alignment The September/October 2017 issue of Training Industry Magazine focused on strategic alignment, the most important practice of great

The Business of Learning: The Training Industry Podcast The learning leader podcast from Training Industry features interviews with experts on topics that help Magazine focused on learning analytics.

business of learning.

TRAINING IN THE TIME OF COVID

HOW LEARNING AND DEVELOPMENT IS RESPONDING

The L&D plans created at the beginning of 2020 have been quickly adjusted to face new realities and restrictions. This report explores, and seeks to quantify, that strategic change. This insight is valuable for both L&D leaders and suppliers in the corporate training market today — and offers critical insight on developing L&D plans for 2021.

Discover how your peers are identifying and seizing the unexpected opportunity to explore innovative new approaches to working and training.