Once upon a time, training was neatly divided: you went to a classroom and were taught by an expert of some kind; alternatively, you sat by a skilled operator, watched and tried things for yourself until you learned how; you went to a University or other educational institution and were drilled in theory, with some practical work for scientific degrees, and wrote a lot of essays.
Models of education were fairly rigid, for good reasons: student’s time was cheap. Even for working people, their wage levels, relatively speaking, were low and the necessary educational resources (classrooms, laboratories, skilled educators) relatively scarce. A one size fits all educational production line is a reasonable response in those circumstances. A bit like a model T Ford: available in any colour as long as it’s black.
A great deal of practical training took place in apprenticeships; while these were often very thorough in developing a particular set of skills, they were often long, and apprentices were unpaid - or even had to pay the master craftsman during the period of their apprenticeship.
I ran my first training class - technical training in telecoms - in 1984. It was a photocopied manual, some practical exercises and a lot of talk.
In some respects not much has changed for the buyer of training, the participant, or the vendors.
For the buyer, the all-important cost seems to be remarkably stable: with some exceptions, professional training in a range of subjects from software design to project management seems to hover at about the same level as the fully loaded cost of the average employee per working day.
This probably reflects a stark reality: unlike manufacturing widgets, where there are economies of scale if you produce or buy more, human resources can’t easily be increased by turning up the speed of the production. A well structured programme of professional training can only go as quickly as the human mind can absorb new learning.
The training market remains enormously varied and fragmented. This is not a market that has fallen into the hands of a few big players. A search for management training in the UK on Google lists 31 million results! In addition to Universities, Colleges and other public bodies there are over 12000 private training providers operating in the UK, according to VAT records, plus the uncountable numbers of sole traders operating at a low level. Most of these firms have fewer than 5 employees. The private training market accounts for less than £3bn annually; the majority of training costs incurred by employers remains internal. The total spent on off-the job training in 2007 was £18.4bn. Few employers account for the class time of employees as well as that of training professionals, nor the loss of productivity incurred during on the job training, so the total cost is probably much larger.
One exception to this fragmentation is IT training. Here 15 providers such as Learning Tree and QA collectively account for over 50% of the market.
For participants, many will still sit in a training centre, work at a desk and be led through their learning experience by a trainer. Flipcharts are still there, and though there is more technology in presentation, this hasn’t always led to improvement. Trainers scribbling illegibly on blackboard, who moved on to overhead projector film have turned into trainers showing incomprehensible and impossibly wordy PowerPoint’s, with irrelevant and irritating animations.
In other areas, a great deal has changed. During the years of near to full employment, employers bore the major responsibility for training. Government - at least in the UK - supported training by levies, which could be clawed back by employers who provided the necessary training. Apprenticeships flourished, regulated by industry wide agreements.
The last three decades have seen a shift in emphasis: employees are now largely held responsible for their own development, and many large training departments have been downsized; what does remain acts in many cases as a pathfinder for individuals and department heads to find the appropriate training to fit a particular development need.
One of my clients in the 90s had two dozen trainers devoted solely to management training classes. Today one remains, and his role is part-time. Since the training has to be bought in when it’s needed, the stress on providing a proper cost-benefit analysis is greater, though at the top end, companies still fund very costly MBAs for their star managers, knowing that most of them will be gone as soon as their contractual ties expire. At the same time, once a training course becomes accepted and popular, critical evaluation often ceases. At Kepner-Tregoe we have a constant battle in persuading clients to measure outcomes carefully, not just record the participants’ evaluations.
Some of these shifts in emphasis mirror the passing of the paternalistic organisation; other hallmarks such as jobs for life, large sports fields and heavily subsidised staff restaurants have gone too.
Expectations
Expectations about the way training is conducted have become more diverse; in the recent past many organisations ran training like a production line. Each new employee would be treated pretty much like a widget that had to be put through a number of processes until they’re “ready”. As more learner centred approaches have been adopted and organisations expect employees to take responsibility for their own development, training has become more like a menu for the participant. Some elements - as with University degrees - are compulsory (C+ Programmers must understand C+), but others will vary as people’s role change.
Can’t you make it shorter?
Microwaves reduce cooking times, but are not going to produce fine cuisine; some things just don’t lend themselves to being done at speed.
Recently I saw a class given by a real expert in project management. One day, with everything you needed to know, accompanied by a 1000 page comprehensive book. This wasn’t an overview, but an in-depth lecture, delivered at high speed using 500 PowerPoint’s. Understandably, participants complained.
One thing remains true: that organisational expectation for the results of learning continue to be unrealistic. We know that to build or change any kind of habitual behaviour pattern takes many repetitions and much practice. Professional golfers will typically hit thousands of balls a week in order to “groove” their gold swing, and make the right one automatic. Training - whatever medium is used for delivery - expects participants to memorise, understand and apply often complex concepts after the barest exposure and a few relatively simple case studies. The message is as clear as it has always been:
Get the content right; less is more; build in enough practice and high quality feedback if you want real performance on the job.
What explains the continuing popularity of the classroom, when so many new media channels are available?
As far as technique is concerned, it’s not surprising that little has changed from a school-like model: human brains haven’t evolved in function or capacity in the last century. Meeting rooms are not easily available in most large companies, but they are there. Giving people a physical place to go to learn is often easier than getting the same group to turn up in a virtual classroom. If we’re not exploiting the extra functions that technology affords, e-learning will frequently offer a learning experience that feels less satisfying than reading a book. This may account for the fact that a typical UK learner spent only 14% of training hours consumed in e-learning.
Evolution is a good word; as we learn more, so the quality and range of choice has increased. For many professional topics learners have the choice of a long and in-depth period of study leading to a degree or other professional qualification, or shorter more targeted courses covering something of immediate use. No longer restricted to the classroom, training can be taken in virtual worlds - a good deal of excellent material is accessible at a reasonable cost online, with well designed modules. My personal favourite is the UK’s Open University, which has a very clear linkage between the learning materials and the goals.
Regrettably, new technology also leads to some shocking examples of misuse: some companies appear to think that putting a PowerPoint presentation online with a simple multiple choice test at the end constitutes effective e-learning.
Constructing e-learning for relatively narrow and well defined subjects such as root cause analysis depends on having a well-tested process or model, which you can then translate into e-learning modules. Some subjects, such as leadership and communication, have multiple models and approaches, which are much more difficult to distil into something simple enough to put into a single e-learning module.
The biggest challenge is in absorbing and using what we understand about learning patterns into practical changes to training. To some extent tools such as Google, SharePoint and other Knowledge Base systems in major companies provide a useful model for the future. Just as we can rate each FAQ on a website as useful or not so useful, and leave written feedback, so training class participants could be giving their reactions in real time, and both e-learning authors and classroom trainers could be incorporating this feedback into a continuous cycle of improvements. AT Kepner-Tregoe we routinely video classes and archive those sections that participants have found most helpful as resources for trainers to learn from. It’s not hard to imagine that this feedback will soon be available within an hour or two of the event.
Blended learning offers an opportunity to become much more learner-centred, as it combines self-study by e-learning with trainer-led approaches, some of which may be in the classroom. At Kepner-Tregoe we’ve found that using e-learning to provide information and teach concepts, combines well with using physical or virtual classrooms to allow students to practice using role plays and case studies to reinforce their understanding and build job-relevant skills. In the longer term, blended offers the possibility that each student will be able to learn a given subject using a mix of media that appeals to his or her learning style, time availability and budget.
This will inevitably add to the complexity for trainers. Twenty years ago I would have spent the day in a classroom. Today I will have an online session with a class of 12 from 9-10, moderate some e-learning assignments for two hours, then spend 4 hours in a real classroom in the afternoon. And tomorrow will be completely different. I no longer have to worry much about end of class evaluations. Instead I have to assess the added value of each hour of interaction with a client group.
Tools such as Moodle are increasingly in use to manage the complex movement of a group of learners through their class, and to track the development of individuals over time. So trainers have had to move from being subject matter experts and educators, to being adept project managers, consultants and software designers.
More change
Expect more rapid change: as neuroscientists explore more of the functions of cognitive processing and memory, we get more useful clues about how people are motivated to learn in the first place, how they take in and store information, and how different types of training can be organised better to improve results. Two examples of how we can use the lessons of neuroscience follow:
Use it or lose it
The evidence is that the brain is plastic: everything we do and learn changes our brain. This “experience dependent plasticity” means that we must continue to develop our skills or see them atrophy. For training policy this means that keeping project managers, for example, working effectively will require further training that keeps building skills. It’s not enough to rely on the initial PRINCE2 training to continue delivering results.
The application of Rewards
We are finely tuned to prefer tasks which deliver small dopamine hits - feelings of success. Games designers use this to advantage by structuring games so that people have lots of little success experiences, and that keeps them playing. As we deliver more e-learning and blended experiences, I’m reminded of the wise words of a javelin coach: “If you can’t get a kid to throw the spear 15 yards in the first half hour, you’ve lost him.”
As we understand more about how the brain works, we’ll have the chance to fine tune each learning experience to deliver skill development faster, and with as much fun as possible for the people involved-including the trainer.
Evolution conjures up images of progressive change, sometimes fast, other times slow, a progression to something better, the survival of the fittest.
Training has always been - will always be - driven by a human need to develop skills and capability, and by organisational drives toward improved results. The twin challenges remain the same as they have always been: to ensure content is appropriate, relevant, up to date and above all proven and valid for the purpose; that the means of delivery works for the participants in delivering effective and efficient development of capability.