Who's Accountable for Learning?

Who's accountable for the transfer of learning: the learner, the trainer, the manager or the learning environment?

Companies around the world collectively spend millions of dollars each year on staff training yet many of those companies do nothing to check that learning occurs and then do nothing to ensure learning is maintained long after the training. In fact, many of the companies do little to determine that training matches the desired performance outcomes. In house or external training appears to be selected by title with little analysis of content or the intended or proven measurable outcomes.

It is rare for companies to invest the time to develop and conduct diagnostic assessments prior to training to clearly define specific learning needs. As a result staff get sent off to training that is not properly aligned with individual or organisaitonal needs. Only some managers sit down with employees to determine specific performance gaps and then source training with appropriate learning outcomes.

During training many trainers completely overlook the need for formative assessments. They may include activities and knowledge checks but these are often shallow and of little real learning value. Post course assessments to measure learning is frowned upon and seen as a punitive meausre by many and longitudinal assessments of demonstrated learning are rare.

No wonder return on investment of training is so hard to determine. The metrics for performance are often not in place prior to training, the training is not linked to clearly defined quantifiable learning outcomes and after training the learner is somewhat abandonded as no one seems to care if learning did occur.

Exploration of these issues and ways to address them will unfold in future posts.