Mary Gober International

Mary’s column is published in Customer Strategy magazine.  To read the rest of the magazine, please click here.

People ask me all the time how to maximise the value of a large scale training implementation to deliver a culture enhancement or change. Many organisations are looking to maximise employee engagement, how to optimise relationships across any business both internally and externally and how to ensure that the discretionary efforts of your people are focused to differentiate performance.  There are many excellent training approaches to help organisations develop their people to meet these needs.  The actions taken by the organisation to support and embed any training delivered truly do differentiate a highly-impactful and sustainable change from a short-lived “initiative” which is not integrated into the very DNA of the organisation.

So if you are considering embarking on a major training initiative then it is essential that you consider not only the training initiative itself, but also the effort and focus required post training to maximise the benefits.  All managers know that this is essential, however, sometimes struggle with how to do this. Let me give you some ideas.

Let us assume that you have chosen well. That the training programme delivered is well received and meets organisational expectations. Embedding and sustainment activities now take over – many you can deliver yourself – for some you may wish to work with your training provider. From the many great embedding and sustainment activities that can be undertaken, I have chosen my top 8 activities which will help you get the very best out of the training in the long term:

• Leaders and all managers must use the new skills consistently – they must be role models. Supporting managers either through coaching or more detailed training is a foundation to them being able to develop their own people through feedback and coaching.
• A simple dashboard measuring the impact of the training should be put in place. This should be publicised making links to successes achieved and the use of new skills.
• The new skills should be explicitly linked to the achievement of the company vision and values as well as performance metrics – this can be publicised in company newsletters, in briefings and on internal intranet pages.
• Motivational feedback must be consistently provided when people demonstrate the new skills and when they missed an opportunity to do so.
• Coaching by managers for their staff and peer-to-peer coaching is ideal and an effective and practical coaching programme will accelerate the learning and adoption of new skills.
• Locally within teams, managers must make the benefits of using the new skills or behaviours explicit – wherever they can, they should articulate the benefits of the changes in terms understood by their teams – so that there is a link between successes achieved and the change in culture or use of new skills.
• Regular individual and team reviews of the successful use of new skills should take place – especially in 1-2-1 meetings or team meetings – injecting fun and engaging everyone in how to take ownership for the success of the investment comes in here.
• Demonstration of the skills and behaviours should be recognised and rewarded – they should be clearly represented in competency frameworks, and in appropriate KPIs, so that they are part of standard performance management.

In my experience, if these 8 activities take place consistently, following any major training activity across an organisation, this will differentiate the impact and return from the training, maximising its effectiveness and giving you the enhanced business results you are looking for!