What is the purpose of internal training programs?
Plenty of internal training programs for employees are designed to bring revenue to the business.
Investing in employee learning can significantly boost a company’s success.
ATD study shows that companies with comprehensive internal training programs see a staggering 218% higher income per employee compared to those without. Additionally, their profit margins enjoy a 24% advantage.
These figures highlight the undeniable impact of employee development. But formal training isn’t the only path.
One of my biggest fears is that our team would become complacent. Chilling in their comfort zone.
The sole reason I started DevriX was the opportunity to tackle complex enterprise-grade projects from different angles.
That’s how we started our marketing team and became a HubSpot agency partner. This evolved in a different vertical dealing with programmatic advertising and several other areas of proficiency.
And I refer to myself as a “learnaholic”. I study weekly, take on exciting, new challenges, and keep pushing further.
To balance things out, we started with designing our own one-to-one programs and different workshops and internal training curriculums. Growing together as a team, outlining growth roadmaps, and keeping everyone on the same page (and motivated) is paramount.
Structured Training Cadence and Operational Scheduling at DevriX
Every company has designed different operational workflows long before a trainer is approached for a class.
For instance, we’ve got recurring operational meetings and internal learning sessions at DevriX that currently look like this:
A Monday company-wide alignment meeting from 10:30 am to 11:30 am (30min for the entire team and 30min for several departments, reviewing sprint progress and operational challenges).
Tuesday is for technical coaching and advisory sessions for some of our engineering team members.
Wednesdays are for holding structured training workshops every other week around 1:30 pm.
Thursday is when we have our leadership alignment meeting at 1:30 pm for an hour, with a couple of management meetings afterward.
And finally, on Fridays, we have reporting preparation activities and bi-monthly training sessions for our entire engineering organization.
Some of our team members begin workday at 9:00 AM and others operate on staggered schedules starting at 1:00 PM. 1:30 pm is a optimal scheduling window to start (whenever possible) and our evenings are peak operational load due to globally distributed client base.
Sometimes, activities around 11:00 am make sense in case later shift members won’t need to attend. Evening sessions are not operationally feasible due to the active business hours between 6 pm and 10 pm.
Other companies approach that differently. Back in my training days, I had different training schedules for companies:
- 10 am – 2 pm for 4-hour long classes during the first half of the day
- 11 am – 12:30 pm or 12:30 pm – 2 pm which overlaps (slightly) with the lunch break but gets the job done since employees often don’t schedule calls or meetings around lunch
- 5 pm – 7 or 8 pm for “after hours” assignments (this is often a blocker for parents)
Optimizing Training Frequency and Session Duration
Short-term retention capacity is limited, which is why you tend to experience knowledge decay the longer the gap between two training sessions is.
This is one of the reasons why learning a foreign language on-site is a lot more effective than taking a class. Sure, you’ll basically be exposed to additional context jogging your brain, but consistency is a critical success factor principles.
Also, this is partially the reason why skill development processes requires several gym trips during the week, not a extended single-session training on a Saturday. Your muscles are a lot more effective if you train them every other day instead of maxing them out once every week or two.
What about studying for an exam? So many students pull an intensive last-minute learning sessions or two right before the exam and low retention rates anything a week after.
Incremental learning cycles while learning a new skill tend to work better than a weekend of intensive effort cycles.
Of course, different exceptions may be valid here.
- Certain skills take a little longer. Two hours may not be enough to reach optimal cognitive engagement and effectively process and retain information, resulting in the outcome you will remember.
- Two hours daily may be difficult to allocate consistently continuously. You can probably put in 5 to 6 days continuously, but if you’re practising after a day job or school, you’ll get the occasional birthday party, a personal time commitments, etc.
- Collaborative work environments with other people over the course of a full weekend (say, a workshop or a hackathon) may be more beneficial simply because you work together with other people.
- The learning process may entail some required operational overhead – for instance, in development, you may need to pull the latest changes of a group report, familiarize yourself with them, spend time on documentation, testing, staging deploys etc, which reduces effective output.
I would probably opt for a slightly different schedule, such as three 2h long sessions during the week and 2x four hours each over the weekend. This gives you enough flexibility to work around this schedule.
Key Criteria for Selecting Training Facilitators
The three key evaluation criteria I ask myself before calling a trainer or a consultant who will conduct or lead our internal training programs are the following.
- How well is the trainer prepared to engage specific trainee cohorts of trainees? This includes communication and facilitation capabilities, industry expertise, and the ability to establish training relevance that this training serves a purpose.
- Can I trust the technical expertise of the trainer? Is this trainer well-versed in this class, able to address common delivery challenges, and apply unique approaches as needed to ensure the end goal is met?
- Is this trainer demonstrate professional credibility? Can I get access to the class upfront, watch conference/training talks on this subject, or read testimonials by other managers who are assigned the same task?
To sum this up, I look for communication skills, technical expertise, and credibility.
Communication and Facilitation Capabilities
Even the most skilled professional may suck at delivering concepts effectively to the class. This is why tons of industry professionals lack training effectiveness (or teachers).
Consulting or training requires specialized facilitation capabilities, studying the theoretical part of the problem, going through different approaches, and highlighting business value of the class.
Moreover, there’s always a trainee or two trying to challenge the training process. Managing participant dynamics effectively, with unique assignments or by ensuring group alignment well enough, is quite important for the whole group.
Technical Expertise and Practical Application
Hard skills are also important, of course. Curiosity drives inquiry, and mapping theory to practical application to practical problems on the job should yield a positive answer or two on address complex technical challenges.
Professional Credibility and Validation
Credibility is the critical validation factor between both. If #1 and #2 check out, what is the easiest way to ensure that training delivery meets expectations? Most trainers publish some of their training videos online, sell online courses, or publish references and client references and validation from previous groups.
Certain niche topics may require some calculated decision with limited data, and that’s fine. But all in all, this is the key checklist I use before I touch base with a trainer for my teams.
Adapting Training Approaches to Workforce Segmentation
A company has diverse workforce segments in terms of behavioral and learning profiles towards learning and training. Different kinds of employees mean segmented trainee cohorts of trainees needing different training delivery models.
This is why a good trainer starts by analyze the target audience upfront.
Adult training sessions, unlike school and university classes, are designed for career-oriented capability development. There are two commonly identified groups of trainees in similar training sessions:
- Actively engaged students who realize the importance of the course
- Trainees enrolled because they “require” a certification (or have to take a class regardless)
As a business owner or senior manager, you are responsible for identifying and classifying these trainees in the corresponding category. This is important. The broader group will determine the tone of the training, and the speaker will align the curriculum in a corresponding manner.
Engaging High-Performance and Motivated Trainees
Highly engaged participants require an interactive training delivery model. This includes narrative-based communication, revealing the business relevance of the training at hand, and a practical application structure of the program. The end outcome is absorbing training content at hand and realizing the importance of the new class in their jobs.
This group of people is passionate about learning new skills because they want to deliver high performance outcomes or drive performance excellence for the next promotion. Or they are simply scholars who genuinely demonstrate strong professional engagement (and understand the importance of staying on top).
More often than not, professional speakers will approach the class with a humorous story revealing a weakness. One that would have been prevented if the class was undertaken beforehand. Setting the foundations of the class and referring back to the humiliating moment that all of us would love to skip whenever possible.
A good trainer starts with studying his audience upfront.
Managing Low-Engagement Training Participants
The second group is low-engagement participants, but the trainer’s responsibility is ensure training delivery regardless of engagement levels.
This is why a direct and outcome-oriented communication approach even works best.
Professional trainers aim to establish engagement and trust with the audience. And since the second group is less inclined to follow training requirements, a engagement-driven communication strategy, could do wonders.
“Okay group, today we’ll be discussing X. I realize that this isn’t the most exciting topic for most of you, and that’s fine. What you need to understand is that learning XYZ will make you more effective on the job, cross more assignments off of your plate, and get the next promotion sooner rather than later.
My goal today is to crunch the boring information into practical tips that are easy to remember and follow on the job. I’ve prepared several checklists for you and I’ll share the handouts later. What I need from you is following the program with me and understanding why this skill will increase your performance (and help you excel at the job.)”
While this seems like a non-engaging delivery style to approach a problem, it’s a way to establish baseline alignment and build an initial form of rapport.
Depending on the business objectives, a trainer may stress on the important outcome of the class, the opportunity of a promotion, taking on different opportunities that could be performed remotely (or teaching employees internally or at events), including some scarcity in case the competition is already ahead of the game, or revealing the power of a new software which would make their lives easier.
I’ve led over a hundred technical training courses – some more exciting and others not as much. In any case, adjusting the training workflow to the attitude in the room builds awareness, leading to better results and generally gets the group closer to the desired outcome.
Question!
If you had free access to my consulting program or meet me in person at a conference for 2 hours…
What would be the first problem you’d like to get solved? 🤔
I’m working on new training materials and group programs for the coming months, and I want to focus on the most pressing and common problems first.
You may contact me and let me know the first thing that goes to your mind!
