"Most of the money and time companies spend on training is wasted." This sentence introduces an interesting article recently published on Blr.com. The author of the article titled Do You Make These 10 employee training mistakes? is John Tschohl - an internationally recognized customer service strategist, author of books on customer service, and also the man given the nickname "Guru of Customer Service" in USA Today, Time and Entrepreneur magazines.
John Tschohl describes his experience of more than thirty years of practice in training employees on six continents. He notes that employee training fails due to outdated ideas and boring training methods. The biggest mistakes, according to him, include:
1. Training groups are too large
It is impossible to hold a discussion in a group of about 100 participants. If the training is to be interactive, and the employees are learning something new, 15 participants are enough.
2. A small group of participants dominates the discussion
The more communicative participants often tend to lead discussions. Training should therefore be lead by experienced facilitators who will ensure that everyone will be involved in the debate.
3. The facilitator controls the debate
Facilitators should listen more than they talk. Their job is to guide the direction of the discussion and to ask only basic questions, not to make speeches.
4. Meaningless games
Do not force employees to play roles they are not familiar with. Games and exercises in training should always relate to the activities participants can use in their work.
5. Incomprehensible textbooks
Educational materials should be easily understandable, otherwise employees will immediately put them away. Test your materials in small groups of employees.
6. Training in the form of lectures
Boring lectures fail to get employees change their behavior or opinions. Do you remember how you fell asleep at school?
7. Unnecessary information
The information presented in training should always be closely related to the participants' work. If the information cannot be used in practice, they will forget it.
8. Bad environment
Training should be conducted in a friendly and comfortable environment. This means not only ensuring a pleasant room temperature, sufficient light, refreshments, and audiovisual equipment, but also a quiet place with no external distractions such as noise.
9. Repeating the same training
Every company should strive to offer its employees new trainers who will come up with new information and new teaching styles. You should also invest in new teaching materials.
10. Ignoring the learning style of young people
Today's young generation gets bored very quickly. Young people want training to be both rich in information and entertaining.
-kk-