Why Traditional Training Solutions don’t Work Anymore – Part 1

Posted by Shalini Merugu, Director Learning Advocacy

Tue, Jan 17, 2012 @ 03:56 PM

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Companies are spending millions to deploy training solutions through an enterprise-wide LMS. Once that is done, all trainings are migrated to it and new trainings added. One would imagine that having this huge library of trainings is enough to take care of any employee’s training needs in order to improve their performance on the job. But wait. Despite the best of intentions, the results are almost invariably a bit disappointing.

Here are a few possible reasons why this could be so:

1. Lack of an awareness-building initiative

How many organizations invest in marketing and promoting their training portal and trainings across their organization? The general attitude is ‘we built it, now let them come to it’. Deploying or making training solutions is no guarantee that learners will come there and take training and participate in learning. Unless, there is a sound promotional campaign that builds awareness among learners on the benefits of using the training portal and accessing trainings.

2. Disorganized trainings

It is important to ensure that trainings are easy to locate. Some users like to go through the site systematically to see what all it offers. Yet others come in there only to search for a specific training, locate it in a few seconds and be done with it. In either case, a clear cut any of organizing trainings is required, so that learners don’t waste time trying to locate trainings of their choice.

3. Absence of mentoring support

It is one thing to make all kinds of trainings available. It is another thing to step in as a mentor and provide ongoing support, encouragement, and suggestions to learners to keep their engagement high. Because of the impersonal nature of the medium (online, with no face-to-face interactions), it is all the more important to stay in touch with learners and be available to them. It is not enough to just provide resources – to drive completion and exploration of various things on offer, some kind of ongoing mentoring and support is required.

4. Lack of ongoing moderation

Social learning, group learning, collaborative learning. You must be familiar with these buzzwords. Just providing avenues for this kind of learning is not enough. What you do need is to drive the adoption of these kinds of channels of learning. This involves much more than merely providing trainings and expecting learners to initiate discussions and get started with the collaborative aspects of learning. Some form of moderation and direction will help.

5. Lack of just-in-time training

With mounting time pressures, your employees need information and training at their fingertips NOW. They should have access to training on-demand. This aspect cannot be overemphasized.

I will explore more reasons in the next blog on this topic. In the meanwhile, I’d love to hear from you on what you think are the biggest challenges organizations face in providing comprehensive, feasible and relevant training solutions.

Tags: eLearning, learning management systems, Technological solutions to Learning, Traditional Training