Workforce Development
From Workforce
to superheroes
BY MAHA KHATIB
All organizations want the Superhero employees; however, it is not that simple.
Training your workforce to be at their best and achieve both their personal growth goals and the organizational goals requires diligent, deliberate and intentional efforts.
And, although many L&D functions follow the ADDIE model (Analyze, design, develop, implement and evaluate), or they think they do; most training and development efforts do not translate to tangible behavior change and results improvement. There seems to be a disconnect.
Creating and implementing a superior workforce development system will create superior performance and to achieve that we need to focus on two critical elements:
1) Quality is more important than quantity, always.
2) It is not only what we do, but rather how we do it that makes the difference.
How much learning transfer takes place at the workplace in your organization after attending a learning or development program?
Statistically we know it is 16% as per the research conducted by Wick, Pollock & Jefferson from the Fort Hill Company in 2010. So what happens to the 84%?
To build exceptional performance, use the below suggested exceptional training and development identification elements:
1. Link the training and development needs with the organizations future needs. For example does your organization require more techno savvy caliber in 5 years or more mangers who are global thinkers?
2. Link the training and development needs with current performance levels of the employees and be specific.
3. Do not fall in the trap of business buzzwords; if you do know what you want from it, then it is unlikely that you will get the superior performance results.
4. Get the business to identify clear and tangible expected outcomes for the training and development interventions they ask for.
If the business cannot identify the tangible expected outcomes then there is no point in doing it.
5. Superior performance is the responsibility of the business NOT L&D. So managers and employees have to take a more active role in making superior performance happen.
6. Start the identification of training and development needs with a list of questions, not a list of training topics.
7. Ask the managers what their objectives are for each training, the content and expected outcomes. Do not ask this question to the L&D team, they will put what they want, not what the business needs to create superior performance..
8. Less is more; this is true all the time.
Maha Khatib is a Founding Partner at Learnactive. She is a Learning and Development specialist with more than 15 years of experience in the Middle East. She effectively assists individuals and organizations in building effective and memorable learning experiences linked to performance.
http://learnactive.com/about-us/our-people
28 | TRAINING MAGAZINE MIDDLE EAST NOV 2014