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Corporate Training: A Capital Idea
April 29, 2008
A successful corporate training program should have a balance of three elements: human capital, cultural capital, and social capital.
By Rana Sinha
Companies all over the world spend billions of dollars every year to train their staff. These programs encompass all kinds of training, from a four-hour "How to use PowerPoint more efficiently" in-house and hands-on session to a yearlong leadership initiative. Globalization, advances in communication technology, and resulting socio-political changes have transformed the nature of the modern workplace. Globalization is a broad sweep across economies, societies, and technology that is knitting the world closer together in an increasing number of complex interdependent networks and affecting capital markets, development, and utilization of technology; the exchange of information; and how we work. Managing these complexities has become difficult in rapidly changing times and requires changes in behavior, skills, and, most significantly, mind-sets.
A modern global organization requires three sets of skills grouped into capitals for an individual to succeed and prosper. If any training should be successful in the long run, it should have a balance of these three elements.
Human Capital: The skills and knowledge an individual brings to the workplace for the organization to be productive. Most training programs focus on this sphere alone.
Cultural Capital: The "moral and cognitive assets" of one's own culture (e.g., ability to use language and behave appropriately in a certain environment) and skills for managing other people from other cultures, whether they be customers, suppliers, or colleagues in other units. There are countless organizations where there is great need for this but no training or support.
Social Capital: The networks of contacts through which people can find work and get things done, rather than relying only on qualifications alone and evidence of past success. Networking skills are not usually taught in schools and universities where people get their professional education; people learn these skills on their own along the way.
During the years I have been involved in training, I have noticed there are seven mutually inclusive reasons why training succeeds in the modern workplace.
1. Determining carefully if training is the best method to achieve the desired changes.
Training may not always be the best method for achieving learning at the workplace. Employees might perceive this as a top-down way of knowledge management and not exhibit much initiative. It is worthwhile investigating if quality circles, regular work-group discussions, mentor programs, or any method other than management-organized training might be other ways of ensuring the same desired results.
2. Learning objectives and outcomes of training are identified and specified clearly.
Companies that communicate clearly what they want from a development program before choosing a specific training course have higher success rates. What makes training really effective is identifying clear learning outcomes or objectives that are linked to the organizational goals from the beginning. If the organization goals change, then the learning outcomes need to be periodically checked for alignment.
3. Team or trainees are actively involved in the development of the learning program.
If management decides there is a specific problem in a department and a trainer from outside comes in and puts the solution on a PowerPoint slide and shows it to a bunch of people for a few minutes and adds his own words of wisdom to it, does it facilitate real learning? If employees are not involved in the design of learning and training, there is a risk of not tapping into employee motivation. This motivation, after all, is the wellspring of learning. If there is no motivation, there is not much learning. There is the old saying, "You can take a horse to water but you can’t make him drink." Companies where trainees are involved in the development, though not the actual design of the training, generally have higher success rates in their training programs.
4. Senior management is visibly committed to the WHY and continued support of learning.
One of the crucial success factors of training being aligned to corporate strategic objectives depends on the active support of top management. Corporate strategic objectives change from time to time and only top management is aware of these. In most companies, if employees detect visible support and direct involvement from top management, they take such training programs seriously.
5. The design of the content and delivery is not too complicated and does not require overall behavior changes too rapidly.
Almost all training aims at behavior modification. It is too naïve to assume human behavior changes after hearing a couple of words during a PowerPoint presentation. Employees also get tired of fancy management theories, which are in vogue for some time only to be replaced by yet another model. Just as you have come to grips with Porter's five forces, you have to start with Six Sigma or the seven forces. This often results in top management and corporate HR becoming isolated in ivory towers, while on the shop floor business goes on in spite of these "interventions." Training programs that pace behavior change requirements in a sensible manner usually succeed better.
6. Considers culturally conditioned learning styles and makes allowances.
People have individual learning styles, which are culturally conditioned. Finns and Japanese sit quietly at lectures and take notes, while Brits or Italians like to debate. When a corporation decides on a global HR policy and adopts uniform training practices, it should consider the ways of learning people are used to. Undergoing training in a familiar learning style may be more effective.
7. Step-by-step follow-up strategies are in place to support the continuity of changes required.
As people who have been married for long or who have children know all too well, learning takes much time and patience with constant reinforcement in the form of praise and prizes. If a training program is carried out as a single intervention and management rests content from the feedback of the so-called "smile sheet" or instant feedback on first impressions people fill in directly after the training, management is in for many surprises. Almost all training interventions require behavior changes to take place on the job at the point of execution of job functions. So there must be measurement and continued support for the change in behavior at the same locations in the same work context. This evaluation of learning on a longer term at the job interface is difficult and expensive to make, so most companies avoid it. There are also other difficulties associated with such evaluation, but ensuring means of support for learning to take place in the context of the workplace by means of self-analysis and reflection is not very expensive and increases the effectiveness of learning many fold.
Rana Sinha is a cross-cultural consultant and author. Of Indian-Finnish parentage, he studied and lived in many places and traveled in more than 80 countries, acquiring cross-cultural knowledge and building an extensive network of professionals. He has spent many years developing and delivering cross-cultural training, professional communication skills, personal development, and management solutions to all types of organizations and businesses in many countries. He now lives in Helsinki, Finland, and runs http://www.dot-connect.com, which specializes in human resource development, as well as communication and management skills training with cross-cultural emphasis.
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