It’s an open secret. A vast majority of training programs fail. We are talking 90% failure rate in an annual US spend north of 150 Billion USD!

How do they do it?

As you can imagine, there is a lot of research on this topic. A big reason for failure, per Association for Talent Development, is that many employees don’t want to be trained. That’s simple (at least to understand).

What is difficult to understand is why organizations don’t present the training material in a way that is engaging and suited for the employees’ learning styles. This gap leads to failure in integrating the skills, techniques and attitudes into their everyday jobs.

However, of all the organizations with vast training budgets, a small fraction devote any time, effort or money in the design of their training programs. An instructional designer is trained in communications, change readiness, and adult learning to make complex information easier to understand. This makes all the difference in the effectiveness of a training program.

Without them in the picture it becomes hard for trainers to

(1) remember what the average employee-in-training does not know, and
2) understand how much information is too much.

Instructional designers help in the design, by using their distance from the training material to act as a proxy for the audience. They ask simple questions that the Expert trainer might otherwise assume the audience already knows the answers to. Hence, they help in keeping the content easy to understand and engage with.

The question of how much is too much, is trickier. Inexperienced course developers pack their training programs with content, assuming that will maximize the Return On Investment. This is a rookie mistake. Training courses can only open doors. Real learning happens when employees apply what they heard in their jobs. If there is too much content, none of it is really mastered. Also, a simple fact is that employees forget what is not immediately useful to them.

So, when it comes to training, it is easy to waste money by focusing only on the information, not the delivery. Those who want to see the real impact of employee training programs will be well-advised to invest in the design of their training programs.

Adapted from Karen Feeley‘s blog Putting 1 Pound of Potatoes into a 1-Pound Sack.