November 2007

Organizational Development
How to optimize results in your business
with integrated training

Many companies have used seminar training for years to train their employees with mixed results. Generally cited statistics indicate that employees remember less than 10% of what they learned after 30 days. Faced with these numbers, training is often the first thing cut from budgets, once the economy slows.

During the mid-1990s eLearning burst onto the marketplace, offering to increase what employees retain to 15-20%. The main attraction of eLearning was the reduction in costs and expenses as employees didn’t need to be sent to a seminar. However, there still existed a noticeable lack of results.

After the recent recession, CEOs are demanding documentable returns on the money invested in training and they are seeking innovative training technologies and techniques to increase business results and make their organizations more competitive. The solution that is evolving from the marketplace is integrated training, that incorporates a number of available training technologies and programs.

Each year the American Society of Training and Development (ASTD), evaluates the training practices of companies and identifies the best practices in corporate training through its BEST Awards. In recent years, ASTD has identified a shift toward integrated training that incorporates the following elements:

• A face-to-face training venue such as classroom training or workshops
• Self-directed study materials for use outside of the training venue that reinforces the classroom training
• Training activities or assignments that transfer the training from the classroom to the workplace
• Testing for accountability
• Evaluation of results to determine the effectiveness of the training

All effective integrated training programs incorporate the training components identified by ASTD. Trainers should have the latitude and flexibility to customize a program that meets their exact needs. Some elements of an integrated training program can be delivered electronically through email, others can be printed and distributed to employees, still others can be obtained online. The challenge for trainers is to create the appropriate training program that meets their organization’s unique needs from the myriad of training choices available to them.

The caveat for trainers or managers to keep in mind when selecting components for an integrated training program is choosing elements that are consistent in the information they provide. A failure to do so will send a mixed message and confuse the employee receiving the training. This will only result in a counter-productive effort and wasted time and money.

 A good integrated training program can take four to six weeks for an employee to complete. Often they are designed as ongoing programs that lead employees down a learning track that develops their supervisory or managerial skills. However, as trainers and managers consider the sequence that the integrated training program will take, they need to identify the approach that will maximize the desired results and outcomes. While these approaches can vary, the following sequence is recommended:

The first step of an effective integrated training program is to have all employees complete some form of self-directed study. Often companies will use selected readings from applicable books or purchase self-directed lessons from a vendor.

Self-directed study provides employees with an understanding of the key concepts and applications that are delivered within the training course. Employees are given adequate time to read and study the materials before going into a classroom setting. This maximizes the impact that classroom training will have on them through increased retention.

Self-directed training should be completed within a specified time period, ranging from several weeks to a month or two, depending upon the complexity of the training.

Trainers can assign individual activities to be performed and brought into the classroom for both sharing and evaluation. These activities should be workplace related to increase and improve training transference to employees’ jobs. They will enable employees to apply what they are learning to their workplace. This is a key area that generates results from the training and should not be ignored.

The duration of training assignments or activities will vary by their level of responsibility. A lower-level employee may have an assignment that takes less than an hour to complete, while more senior-level employees may have assignments that take several days or more to complete. In order to maximize the process, training assignments should be specific, applicable and transferable to the workplace.

At or near the conclusion of the self-directed training, face-to-face training should take place in the form of classroom training, workshops or situational case studies. Face-to-face training’s effectiveness is increased when employees bring assigned and completed training activities into the classroom setting. Completed exercises and activities cross-link the training while reinforcing transference directly to the workplace.

Effective integrated training tends to stimulate employees’ thinking and a desire to share their ideas with others. Discussion groups fulfill this desire and can carry the process further by expanding upon creative thoughts, as well as stimulating fresh workable ideas, concepts and practices. Discussion groups can be peer driven and held weekly, bi-weekly or monthly.

The use of discussion groups is recommended during the scheduled self-directed study time frame, with a final discussion group planned for 60 to 90 days after all integrated training elements and components are completed. This practice reinforces and enables employees to dissect and transfer ideas, practices and processes. Discussion groups give managers and trainers the license to address sensitive issues uncovered by the training, that are normally difficult to discuss without placing employees in a defensive posture.

All training should incorporate and allow for the testing of both retention and comprehension after all elements of the integrated training program are completed, not at the end of the classroom training or workshop session. Since the timeline of an effective integrated training program is over a 30 to 60 day period, testing should be administered after that time. This will give companies a more accurate measurement of the level of learning that has taken place.

More ideally, if companies can benchmark individual employee performance both before and after training, more realistic metrics will be obtained. This is especially true if employee performance is measured over sustained periods of time.

Companies have long paid “lip-service” to the concept of training and then wondered why they weren’t getting a documented return on their investments. Surveys that cross multiple industries have clearly demonstrated that the leading competitors take training seriously and their results prove it.

Integrated training essentially embeds training into the workplace, rather than removing the employee for a singular event, with little or no impact. A well-designed integrated training program should be results driven and when properly delivered and implemented, it should move the company forward to achieve the goals established. Without this, training will be directionless, without any connection to the workplace.