Use these 3 fundamentals to design and deliver training that can create unbreakable employee loyalty and unleash competition-crushing productivity.
A new Pew Research Center study may have unearthed a groundbreaking new approach to achieving maximum transfer of training.
In a survey conducted October 13 – November 15, 2015 of 2,752 adults living in the U.S., results revealed 3 primary reasons why people pursue learning.
The study differentiated between work-related and non-work related training, and the results paint a very clear picture of what motivates people to pursue training.
If you want to design and deliver training that people absolutely love, it should be based on 3 fundamentals:
- The training should enhance my life (personal learning)
- The training should enhance my skills for career advancement (professional learning)
- The training should enable me to grow my network of friends (personal learning) and professional contacts (professional learning)
To further understand this, take a look at the data.
Reasons People Pursue Non-Work Related Learning
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People pursue non-work related training for self-actualizing reasons. They want to live an interesting and fulfilling life. Often times personal interests and hobbies are the launch point of new careers and new businesses. According to the book Disrupt Yourself by Whitney Johnson, when people uncover their disruptive strengths (things they do well that others can’t), they exert cross-functional fluency. Here is where I think organizations have a huge opportunity to build massive loyalty. Just imagine the competitive advantage in human capital a company would establish if it provided training that not only enhanced career development but also tapped into an employee’s disruptive strengths to develop cross-functional fluency. Training transfer would skyrocket, time to skill mastery would accelerate, and innovation would become the norm.
Reasons People Pursue Work-Related Learning
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Building training programs that enable career advancement has long been a tradition of the training function in organizations. What’s new is the explicit desire to include networking as a planned and purposeful benefit of the training. Many managers would reject this out of fear that networking will lead to a loss of talent. The fact is, in our hyper-connected society, job hopping is the norm as job tenures continue to shrink due to the history of corporate downsizing and massive influx of millennials whose average job tenure is just under 4 years. The new normal for managers is to manage talent in a free-agent market. However, managers who offer training that enables networking and furthers development of a personal interest that can yield cross-functional fluency of significant value to the organization would significantly slow the talent exodus and potentially create a disruption on the scale of an iPhone revolution.
Training Can Unleash a Colossal Competitive Advantage
Technology is enabling just-in-time learning on a scale never seen before. By finding the sweet spot of topics and offering training on those topics that enhances lives, increases career advancement opportunities, AND fosters network growth, people will be more productive, more engaged, and intensely loyal. The torrent of increasing productivity and innovation that occurs naturally in such a learning culture will enable the employer to methodically disrupt its market and solidify its place as the dominant market player. All it takes is a little thinking outside the box and a plan of action.
CONCLUSION
Use this data as the basis for conducting an audit of your tactical and strategic training plans. Challenge your team by asking that famous Steve Jobs question – “What do people need that they don’t even know they need yet?” – and redesign your training based on the 3 fundamentals I shared.
The time is now. Seize this new opportunity by taking action because by delaying, your organization may risk becoming a future acquisition target of a competitor who took action while you and the powers that be debated the merits of this idea.
As innovators like to say – you’ve been warned.
Have you seen or witnessed other potential disruptions to the training industry? If so, please share them in the comments below.
Need help with reviewing and implementing the ideas presented here? Want more insights as to how you can use this to position your training program as a profit center?
Contact us today at info@ictscorp.com or call 540-520-5733.
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