Saving training costs and ensuring outcomes

or, Reinforcing training through post course follow-up

Most organisations recognise two elements to the cost of training; the visible expense of buying the training itself, and the lost opportunity cost of taking a group of staff away from their desks for the duration of the course. We would argue however that there is a third element - the cost associated with a failure to create the long-term changes in behaviours that the training was intended to achieve - and that this is potentially the most expensive.

This further cost is comparable to the 'second factory' analogy of Quality Management. Quality Managers in manufacturing look at the quantity of unacceptable product being produced and draw the analogy of there being two factories - one producing 'good' product, the other producing 'bad' product. Of course, there aren't two factories as such, and certainly not one aimed at producing unacceptable products, just as there are no training providers whose ambition is to deliver bad training. But the comparison holds - in the same way that defective product costs more, either as scrap, by requiring rework or by the effects on the customer base of selling defective product, so poor training costs more, either by needing to be repeated or just by being written off as a bad exercise.

To gain the most benefit from training it needs to be timely, relevant and well-delivered and there need to be well-defined and quantified definitions of the outcomes required. To be fair to training purchasers, most already spend time assessing the best choice of training provider, defining outcomes, and reviewing materials and teaching methods before the course is delivered. To determine whether outcomes have been achieved all courses have assessment forms, and many now include a test, at the end of sessions or at the end of the course, with the specific intention of checking that capabilities have been improved and that new skills or ideas have been grasped.

Assessment forms and tests are a valid part of checking, but the proof of new capabilities is only apparent when applied for real. What the training should achieve is a long-term change in the behaviour of the staff. Organisations want the ideas from the. They want the training content to be transferred into the workplace and to become accepted as the normal way of working. Sadly this does not always happen, even after a course which has been delivered well and has tackled all the right topics.

We would argue that this is because the end of the training is perceived to be positioned at the end of the course even though true success, achievement of outcomes, can only be judged later. Once staff get back to the reality of work various factors can erode the learning before it has become ingrained. It is this erosion that we suggest needs to be tackled and which can reduce the benefits, and thereby increase the real costs, of a training exercise. Some form of follow up needs to be pursued after the course. If not, we know what can happen.

Suddenly, when staff get back to their desks and attempt to put into practice their new-found skills, what seemed so obvious on the course appears much more difficult. Ideas that were accepted as perfectly sensible and that worked so well when practised on the course exercises now seem not to fit the real work. Staff start to worry that they are not applying the rules of the technique correctly because they cannot see how to apply them to their specific task. They start to doubt whether they have understood what they thought they had learnt, or that perhaps it does not apply to their particular job.

Why might this happen? Well one reason, and it will come as no surprise, is that training providers take great care with examples and exercises. They are constructed specifically to make points about techniques and approaches. They are carefully bounded so that the focus is on a particular new skill or idea and so are necessarily limited in their scope. Real cases are rarely so well presented or bounded. Real cases tend to have blurred edges and it is sometimes difficult immediately to apply a new approach.

Another reason is that, unfortunately, staff have a job to do, with priorities and deadlines to achieve. When new skills prove difficult to apply there is a tendency to fall back on the approaches that we used before the training just so that we get the work done. Staff fall into a downward spiral where they start to reject the skills they have learnt, either because they build barriers in their own minds or because they do not have the time to practice them properly. The benefits that should have been obtained from the training are eroded and ultimately lost.

This is why we argue that the training is not complete simply because the material has been delivered. Well-considered follow up builds on the initial exposure of the skills and embeds the ideas into the workplace practice. Continued involvement with the training provider adds the cement which ensures that outcomes are achieved.

In our experience two forms of follow up have proven to be of most benefit. The first is to assess the trainees by a test some weeks after the training.

The second is through clinic sessions. This second test is typically a repeat of that conducted at the conclusion of the training course. In its first guise it serves to check that the skills taught on the course have been learned to the standard defined when the course was constructed. At this point we have a first indication of whether the training has been successful. Notice that we think of this as just a first indication. The recency effect of the training can skew the results and we need always to recognise the artificiality of a test. The second application of the test may be conducted some weeks after the training and serves to check that the new approaches and techniques are remembered and have not been assigned to a mental waste bin when the trainee returned to their normal environment. At this point we have a far better indication of whether the ideas have been absorbed and may be becoming accepted as the norm.

Even so, this second stratum of testing is not the complete answer. People can pass tests just as they can pass school examinations, without really accepting the ideas or being able to put them into practice against real examples. This is where our second suggestion of clinic sessions have its place.

Clinics can be applied to any training content. We look on them as a part of the training package, an extension of the training course, and regard them as invaluable in achieving the required training outcomes.

Our approach to clinics is to run them rather like a GP's surgery. A day or half day is set aside as an opportunity for trainees to bring their problems to the 'doctor', usually the instructor who delivered their course. Individuals or groups book short, fifteen to thirty minute, slots during the allotted period, and can raise any issues they like. They can explore specific concerns, reviewing and resolving why they may have found difficulty applying the ideas.

In our experience the questions raised at clinics span a complete spectrum of possibilities, from reminders of basic concepts covered in a course to points about applying the ideas to real cases. The latter are often the most important aspects of the clinics. When running a series of clinics for an insurance company we found that many of the questions related to how stringently they should apply text book rules for a modelling technique. Staff had unwittingly started to adopt rules of their own creation, ones that the technique had never employed, so it was not surprising that they had found problems. By reminding them of the real rules we took away the element of doubt that was beginning to creep into their acceptance of the technique.

In a different clinic for a City finance house we gave staff the chance to ask about the training they had received on planning and budgeting projects. Here the questions ranged from detailed reinforcement of estimating techniques to how to apply the course's teaching to the creation of real budgets - for projects that might not be started for another twelve months!

In both the cases above the effect of positioning the end of training beyond the end of course delivery, and of providing a forum for staff to check and challenge their learning, contributed massively to outcomes being attained. In our estimation, but we would say this wouldn't we, the cost of the training delivery could have been wasted without the clinics.

Of course, to make this work the clinic has to be as safe an environment as the course was - it must be non-judgmental. If someone has a problem, it is a problem and not a failing on their part. The analogy with GPs is apposite. Some concerns may be resolved during the clinic, others may require subsequent action by the trainee, just as may apply to a patient seeing their GP.

In the past we have held clinics as face-to-face sessions, usually on client premises, but for certain topics it would be possible to conduct them interactively via a chat room. As far as we are concerned, provided the concerns can be addressed adequately, the medium is of little interest.

To be fair, we have to accept that there are reasonable objections that can be levelled against the idea. Most frequently cited are that clinics add to the overall cost and take staff away from their desks again. This is undoubtedly true but, as has been argued already, training, and particularly failed training, costs a lot. If the training outcomes are important then a little extra cost to ensure they are achieved must be worthwhile. We believe that clinics can help achieve this and we advocate that all client organisations consider applying something along these lines.

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