ROI, or Return on Investment, has been a popular buzz word for a long time. It’s been used and overused as a tool to decide the merits of committing capital for everything from R&D to training. Will the benefits show up in the bottom line?

Few would disagree that as a concept, ROI has merit. But the reality is that it is often hard to point to tangible results for many of the things we spend money on in business--things that can have a significant impact on productivity, sales, and customer service.

Regardless of how we measure it, there are three sure-fire ways to increase the benefits of training:

1. Make sure there is follow-up for employees when they return from training.
2. Ensure that front-line managers are informed and familiar with employee training programs.
3. Create a mechanism for feedback from both front-line managers and employees with regard to training programs.

Follow-Up

One nearly failsafe way to waste your training dollars is to return employees to a workplace that fails to provide follow-up support for the training they received. Does the environment in which they work encourage practicing new behaviors they learned in training? Do managers and supervisors model the skills that were encouraged in training? If not, then training is sure to have been wasted.

Informed Managers

Do managers know what the goals of training were? Have they been through the training themselves? If so, how recently? What are the managers’ attitudes toward training? Do they embrace and, more importantly, model the kinds of behaviors being taught? Having managers and supervisors that are knowledgeable doesn’t guarantee success. They have to demonstrate adeptness in the area of social competencies as well as in technical ones.

Feedback

No system can be successful without closing the loop. For training to be effective and the results maximized, there has to exist a method for providing timely feedback to those who design and deliver training, to ensure that it is relevant and remains so for as long as it is being delivered. Is there an internal process for front-line managers to communicate results to trainers? Does training meet the expectations of those same managers? Without a functional feedback system, training is a “shot in the dark.”

Bottom Line:

Regardless of how the decision was made to initiate training, once in place the best way to guarantee the maximum return for whatever investment it represents is to ensure that the training provides measurable results. This is accomplished by constructing follow-up that will provide a safe environment for the returning employee to practice newly acquired skills.

In order to achieve this, front-line managers and supervisors must be more than vaguely familiar with the training program. They must have a clear vision of what the goals of training are. And finally, those same managers must actively participate in the process by observing returning trainees for measurable results and communicating the good, bad, and ugly truths back to the Training.

For tips to effectively train your people and streamline your organization, and for other solutions to your staffing challenges, visit www.traininginabox.com [1]. Sign up for our free newsletter at www.quicktrainingsolutions.com [1] to make your HR training and development life easier. Ron Nielsen designs and delivers innovative and effective training solutions for businesses through NTG, his business development and training company.

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