There comes a point when the setting up of a business grinds to a halt and nobody realises it.
Nothing breaks. The platform works, the courses are delivered, people complete them and the reports come back as ‘green’. But if you compare this year’s training plan with the one from three years ago, they’re practically the same document with just the dates changed.
These are the signs we usually come across.
Your new training plan is the old one
The most common way to draw up the September plan is to open last year’s plan and remove what didn’t work.
It’s sensible and saves time. The problem is that, as a result, the plan can only end up looking more and more like itself. Nothing new ever gets included, because the starting point isn’t what the organisation needs right now, but what was done before.
A question that quickly highlights the issue: what’s in this year’s programme that wasn’t in last year’s, and why? If there’s no clear answer, the training programme is simply repeating itself.
The only metric is who has finished
The completion rate is a handy metric because it’s always available. And it tells you very little. You know how many people made it to the end of the course. You don’t know:
- If they learnt something they didn’t already know.
- If they have used it in their work.
- Whether the course was necessary.
- Whether they didn’t finish it because they didn’t have enough time or because it didn’t offer them anything.
A training course with a 95 per cent completion rate and zero dropout rate is an excellent indicator of a real problem. Measuring attendance is not the same as measuring learning.
Nobody asks for training; they just receive it
In an organisation where training is an ongoing process, people make requests: for a topic, a tool, or a training programme for the new team.
When that demand disappears completely and everything that is taught is dictated from above, it usually means one of two things. Either people do not know what is available, or they have learnt that asking is pointless.
Both are signs that training has become something that is received, rather than something that is sought.
The catalogue just keeps growing
Adding a course is easy. Removing it means deciding that it no longer adds value, and that’s uncomfortable: someone designed it, it cost money, and it still has enrolments.
So almost nothing is ever removed. The catalogue grows year on year until finding anything in it becomes a task in itself, and updated courses sit alongside others that refer to a tool the company stopped using in 2021.
A catalogue that simply grows is not a catalogue; it is an archive.
Stagnating is not the same as doing badly
Most training programmes that have become stagnant are run by competent teams who do their jobs well. They become stagnant precisely because they work: when something isn’t causing any problems, nobody reviews it. Training goes into maintenance mode and stays there.
There are also times when it is the right decision to hold things steady. If the company is in the midst of a reorganisation or has just switched systems, tweaking the plan is not the priority. The problem isn’t one year on autopilot. It’s four.
Where do you go from here?
There’s no need to start from scratch. What usually gets a training plan back on track is actually much simpler:
- Start with a question, not a catalogue. What will people need to be able to do in a year’s time that they cannot do today?
- Remove before adding. Make it a rule that for every new course, an old one is reviewed. It forces you to make a decision.
- Change a metric. Just one. Replace the completion percentage with something that reflects usage, even if it’s not perfect.
- Ask. A twenty-minute conversation with five people from different backgrounds usually provides more information than any annual survey.
- Take a look at the data you already have. Which courses nobody enrols in, where people drop out, what people are looking for but can’t find.
What we see on 3ipunt
In the projects we support, the pattern is the same: when an organisation feels that its training programme is not making progress, the first reaction is usually to turn to technology. Switching platforms, adding features, looking for a tool to fix the problem.
And that’s hardly ever the case. Technology is rarely what’s holding a training programme back. What gets it moving again is redefining what you want to achieve, and then tailoring the tools to that decision.
We wrote about this a while ago, discussing why a training platform ends up going unused, and the conclusion was the same.
What stage is your organisation’s training at?
If, whilst reading this, you’ve recognised two or three of these signs, it’s probably worth taking a closer look.
We have developed the Formómetro, a test designed to measure the level of maturity of training within an organisation. It takes just a few minutes to complete and helps to put a name to what you already suspect.
