The training apogee: Are trainers entertainers?

Human resource development is the most neglected area of organisations operating in Pakistan.

The organisations which invest money on human development can be counted on one’s fingertips.  It is the corporate sector only that invests few pennies on the training and development of their employees. They invest money on this only when there is a boom in the industry but as soon as that changes, they reduce the training budget. Although training can improve productivity and overall performance of employees yet Pakistani organisations by and large see this as a burden. They do not have a mature training culture. Training has never been the organisations’ first priority. Let’s discuss the reasons.

Training is nothing but a recreational activity

Training is confused with recreational activities. Instead of having outdoor activities, HR arranges trainings for employees and asks the trainers to develop such activities which could entertain the participants. These activities keep the energy level of the training high but do not groom employees; the focus of the training remains fun-oriented instead of learning-oriented.

Training-need-analysis missing

Organisations and trainers, both are least interested in having Training Need Analysis (TNAs) before conducting training sessions. It is largely observed that the HR departments ask external trainers to provide topics on which employees should be trained instead of telling them the areas of improvement of their employees and suggesting topics for the trainings. As a result, the trainers design a generic training and conduct it without paying any heed to the differences between organisations, their cultures and challenges. A quite natural question arises; how a training programme with the same contents can be equally beneficial for every organisation?

Content against jds (job descriptions)

Organisations try to accommodate maximum number of employees in one training programme even if that does not relate to their job descriptions. I have come across so many trainings which were not beneficial for trainees because the content had no relation with their day-to-day job.

Training or entertaining?

Learning through fun can be one way of training people in a very effective manner but this is not the only way of training them. There are more ways of training like using case studies, brainstorming sessions, success stories, tests, live examples and others which can be related to the employees’ day-to-day business however, in order to keep the training interesting and alive, trainers have to miss the productive but relatively unpopular methods; thus a session, at the end of the day, proves to be an utterly unproductive session. Such trainings do not pay back as they do not improve their employees’ overall performance. Trainers should focus on the overall productivity by using activities as a means of communication instead of playing a role of an entertainer.

Trainees’ expectations

Coincidently, before going to the training room, most of the trainees do not know what they are going to learn and if the trainer has the experience and knowledge of what he is going to train on. Trainees want to enjoy a day off from the work and apply for the training without going through the objectives, prerequisites, target audience and even trainer’s profile. They do not have questions before going to the training room and rely on whatever comes to their mind during the session.

Trainers are unprepared

For a trainer, it is a SIN to enter a training room without having the knowledge of what he is going to deliver, who is he going to deliver to, and how will the participants implement it in their workplace. If any of these prerequisites remains unmet, the training goes to waste. Trainers must know different ways of communication. They should be widely read, details-oriented, skillful, friendly and positive. The market lacks professional trainers and trainees, it is trainers’ responsibility to improve the situation. Therefore they should always be well prepared and should complete their homework before entering into the training room.

The ‘happy sheet’ is a guideline for trainers

The feedback sheet is known as “Happy Sheet”. Ironically, this is so because most of the trainers get 100 per cent scores at the end of the day. As a trainer, getting 100 per cent scores on “Happy Sheet” is not the right way to get you evaluated. By this, you can only check how acceptable you have been. Your acceptability as a trainer does not essentially mean that the day was really productive. A trainer must give a method of evaluating the training so that organisations could get a better understanding of how much their employees improved.

Post-training evaluation systems

While hiring trainers for the organizations, the HR should insist trainers to provide “Post Training Evaluation Method” to evaluate the results of their trainings. They should give feedback to the trainers before hiring them again. Closing the loop is the most important part of any training. It starts from Training Need Analysis (TNA), goes with Delivering Training and ends at Post Training Evaluation. Trainers must understand that the training is the only way to improve performance; if it is being neglected by the organizations then it is their fault. They need to provide a complete package where none of these points is missing.

Organisations are concerned with the performance of their employees. Therefore, the training should be designed by keeping the improvement of the intended trainees’ performance in view. Entertainment is a part of a training session; it must not be deemed as the heart of the session. An entertainment-oriented session may intrigue the true feedback which eventually may introduce anomalies into the post training evaluation system. Since there is no doubt in the fact that without the post training evaluation system, trainings stand nowhere, the post-training evaluation system must be error- and anomaly-free.

the writer works as a training specialist in mobilink pakistan

Published in The Express Tribune, May 16^th, 2011.