If your staff seem a little unhappy to have to attend the training sessions you set up for them, maybe you should take a long hard look at your programs to determine why this is the case. People almost always welcome the opportunity to take a little time out from WORK work even if it’s to attend training sessions. If your people are viewing your sessions as a waste of time, then it’s time you did something about that.

Of course you could simply use a ’stick’ and threaten them if they fail to make good use of the programs, but that wouldn’t really get them to devote themselves to the program, would it? What you need is a ‘carrot’, a positive incentive – so why not start by tweaking your training programs to bring them more in-line with the wants and needs of your company and your staff?

You could, for instance, try any or all of the following:

1. Ramp up employee involvement in the preparatory phase of your training programs. Pass around survey sheets to determine what they would like to learn and what they think would help the most. Ask your supervisors and managers to collect the forms and discuss the results – see if the staff suggestions dovetail with their own observations and recommendations. Don’t simply dictate what you think would be best for them. If your training is to be conducted by a third party, allow the trainers to meet with your staff and make recommendations of their own.

2. Pay more attention to physical arrangements and their potential repercussions. If your program is to be held in a place that is at least five hours’ travel away over rough roads and where cell service is unreliable to boot, you might want to ask your people to find a closer, more easily accessed venue where these and other such issues might not be such an issue.

3. Ensure that the needs of all participants are catered to and that no problems might arise when the program is under way. Check for food allergies and/or preferences (are there vegans among your staff?), as well as conditions such as claustrophobia or travel sickness, and then design the program and supporting programs (food arrangements and the like) around them.

4. A mix of physical activities and mental activities is always good, so ask everyone to prepare accordingly. They should be permitted to “dress down” in order that they are able to participate in these activities more comfortably.

5. Lastly, consider incorporating these training activities into the day-to-day flow of work. Require follow-ups from your team – ask your staff to tell other people how they benefited from the program and give in their comments and suggestions so that future training programs can be improved along those lines. Also, make sure to keep track of what was learned during the event by nothing these things down and implementing improvements needed to fix the problems that were made evident – and, very importantly, make it evident to all the staff that this is being done. It would also be good to ask for their assistance in doing so, to increase cooperation and the feeling of trust within your team. (Such measures may seem like common sense and they truly are; however, in many cases only lip service is paid and significant improvements are not always carried out.)

Tags: business productivity, self improvement

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 2nd, 2008 at 3:58 am and is filed under Leadership, productivity. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.