TRAINING AS THE CORPORATE

CURE-ALLMYTHS & FACTS

MYTHS & FACTS

TABLE OF CONTENTS1. Performance Problem2. Training Isn't Big Picture3. Learners Get It4. More of the Same

5. Don't Mess Up6. Field of Dreams7. No One Can Understand Us

Click the “tweet” button above to tweet the information on each slide

MYTH 1:

PERFORMANCE PROBLEM

If there’s a performance problem, training must be the solution. PERFORMANCE

PROBLEM CURE

5. Don't Mess Up6. Field of Dreams7. No One Can Understand Us

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FACT 1:

Performance can be a�ected

by many things, and you don’t

know if training is the solution

until you analyze the problem.PERFORMANCE PROBLEM CURE

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Think about companies you’ve worked in. Could every

performance problem be traced back to lack of information or

poor training? Or were there other issues not being addressed?

It’s too easy to assume bad or insu�cient training is the root

of our performance problems. However, poor management,

employee conflicts or an ine�cient process can have just as

big an impact on performance. Take the time to research the

problem before designing the solution.

Maybe training will be the answer to your problem. Maybe it

won’t. But you won’t know until you research and analyze the

true origin of the performance issues.

LEARN MORE:

Not sure if training is the answer? Check out Cathy Moore’s

flowchart to help you make that decision.

MYTH 2:

TRAINING ISN’TBIG PICTURE

Training only a�ects employees. EMPLOYEESONLY

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FACT 2:

Good training impacts your entire

organization, from employees to

stakeholders to customers.

When only employees complete a training course, it’s easy to see why some people believe only employees are a�ected by training. The most immediate impact is on the learners. However, they’re not the only people impacted.

EMPLOYEESONLY

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You can’t control your customers, but your employees

influence them greatly. Educating, empowering and engaging

employees is the foundation to a good customer experience,

no matter what industry you’re in. According to a Harvard

Business Review report, companies who make engagement

a priority rate employee engagement as having “considerable

impact” on customer satisfaction. With a strong training

program, you can help employees understand how each

person makes a di�erence for the company. When they

understand their roles, your employees are better equipped

to do their jobs and create a great experience for customers.

In short, when people perform better and enjoy their jobs

more, they create a positive impact on the entire organization.

Don’t assume training impacts only the learner. Instead, the

impact is felt throughout an organization, and by everyone

who interacts with your company.

LEARN MORE:

TalentSpace Blog put together a great rundown of the

financial impact of having engaged employees. See how

much not investing in training could be costing your company.

MYTH 3:

LEARNERSGET IT

Learners intuitively know how to make the most of training.

WORRY FREEONE-TIME USE

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FACT 3:

Learners understand content di�erently

based on past experience, prior knowledge,

motivation, critical thinking skills and

preparedness.WORRY FREEONE-TIME USE

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People’s ability to grasp new ideas or concepts varies, and

many factors can a�ect how well your learners are going to

be able to implement training. Past experience, existing skill

sets, motivation or critical thinking abilities can all influence

how your audience understands and integrates your training.

It does not mean your training was ine�ective if learners need

extra performance support, such as scenarios, mentoring or

explicit goals to make connections between training and

on-the-job skills.

To get the best result, identify your learners’ problems and develop

strategies to help them make the most of your training. For example,

you may need to explain exactly how the courses build skills. For a

less experienced employee, coaching or scenarios may help

connect training and real-life applications. Be prepared to help

your learners succeed—your organization will enjoy the benefits.

LEARN MORE:

The Indiana University Bloomington’s instructional design site underlines the importance of helping learners understand key information. “When something is meaningfully understood, it is

retained much longer, can be built upon to acquire further

understanding, is usually very versatile in the situations and ways

it can be used, and facilitates creativity.”

You can’t control your customers, but your employees

influence them greatly. Educating, empowering and engaging

employees is the foundation to a good customer experience,

no matter what industry you’re in. According to a Harvard

Business Review report, companies who make engagement

a priority rate employee engagement as having “considerable

impact” on customer satisfaction. With a strong training

program, you can help employees understand how each

person makes a di�erence for the company. When they

understand their roles, your employees are better equipped

to do their jobs and create a great experience for customers.

MYTH 4:

MORE OF THESAME

We shouldn’t give learners control of their training

ORIGINAL

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ORIGINAL

FACT 4:

You don’t need to fight engaging design

for the sake of tradition.

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Why not make training engaging and familiar for your learners?

For a long time, instructional designers forced old-school training

methods into new technology. They insisted that training

couldn’t scroll or that learners shouldn’t control their journey

through the information. But now your learners understand

the web, and training has caught up to technology. Why limit

yourself and your learners when you don’t have the same tech

restraints on videos, simulations, scrolling and usercontrolled

environments?

And by holding onto old ways of instructional design, you restrict your

creativity. For example, to design in HTML5, you must allow learners to

interact with the page by clicking and scrolling. If you choose to limit

learners’ interactivity, you miss out on opportunities for responsive

design that HTML5 o�ers. Or if you don’t think learners should scroll,

you could be fragmenting information that is better grouped together.

It’s time to stop fighting the technology people know and make it work

for you. Embrace engaging design principles to improve your training design

by making it more intuitive for learners. By working with what your

learners are used to, you remove learning barriers and strengthen retention.

LEARN MORE:

AllenComm Chief Learning O�cer Michael Noble outlines his thoughts

on how to make web-based training more engaging.

To get the best result, identify your learners’ problems and develop

strategies to help them make the most of your training. For example,

you may need to explain exactly how the courses build skills. For a

less experienced employee, coaching or scenarios may help

connect training and real-life applications. Be prepared to help

your learners succeed—your organization will enjoy the benefits.

LEARN MORE:

The Indiana University Bloomington’s instructional design site underlines the importance of helping learners understand key information. “When something is meaningfully understood, it is

retained much longer, can be built upon to acquire further

understanding, is usually very versatile in the situations and ways

it can be used, and facilitates creativity.”

MYTH 5:

DON’T MESS UPDon’t let learners make mistakes because it will demoralize them.

THE ART OF TRUTH TELLING

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FACT 5:

Mistakes can be valuable learning experiences.

THE ART OF TRUTH TELLING

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No one likes to fail all the time, but if your learners have

opportunities to succeed it’s okay to let them fail sometimes.

In fact, as Rita Gunther McGrath, Columbia Business School

professor, points out, there is no way to avoid failure, and

organizations who teach employees how to deal with and

learn from failure are stronger and more innovative. Allowing

people to make mistakes lets them find a better way, and

form stronger connections between information and actions.

There’s also a good business reason to show people it is okay to fail. If you

expect zero mistakes from people, you also get zero innovation. Innovation requires experimentation, which includes failure. By communicating in

your training materials that it’s more important to work toward the best

answer than to be safe on the first try, you encourage creativity and

innovation. Help your learners understand how to work through failure, and

you’ll build a stronger company.

LEARN MORE:

In his book Learn or Die: Using Science to Build a Leading-Edge Learning

Organization, Edward Hess helps companies overcome the fear of mistakes

so they can create a better learning culture. In an interview with the Columbia University Press blog, he says, “Mistakes and failures are a necessary part of innovation, experimentation and learning. Most learning

comes from mistakes—fixing things or trying things and learning by iteration.”

And by holding onto old ways of instructional design, you restrict your

creativity. For example, to design in HTML5, you must allow learners to

interact with the page by clicking and scrolling. If you choose to limit

learners’ interactivity, you miss out on opportunities for responsive

design that HTML5 o�ers. Or if you don’t think learners should scroll,

you could be fragmenting information that is better grouped together.

It’s time to stop fighting the technology people know and make it work

for you. Embrace engaging design principles to improve your training design

by making it more intuitive for learners. By working with what your

learners are used to, you remove learning barriers and strengthen retention.

LEARN MORE:

AllenComm Chief Learning O�cer Michael Noble outlines his thoughts

on how to make web-based training more engaging.

MYTH 6:

FIELD OFDREAMS...

If you build it, they will come.

ORIGINAL

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ORIGINAL

FACT 6:

You need to market your training programs to your learners.

No matter how good your training is, you need to let your learners know that it’s there. The right communication plan builds engagement with your training course and motivates people to participate. In many companies a simple email or intranet notification isn’t enough. You put a lot of time and e�ort into creating something awesome, so make a little noise!

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HP is a great example of how to market training. HP loved the

net promoter score game they were launching, but they knew

their large voluntary audience would need an incentive to

check it out. HP launched an intense internal marketing

campaign to foster competition within their teams. They sent

out emails to supervisors and managers each week with the

scores of each team, a list of the team members who had not

yet completed the training and incentives for full team

participation and teams with the best scores. With this strategy,

they reached more than 250,000 voluntary completions.

Even with a mandatory program, you should help people understand the value of training. The right communication plan lays the foundation for a more successful course. Communicating and marketing to learners about the importance of the training helps overcome the bias some learners have against training.

LEARN MORE:

Listen to the Building Better Training podcast to find out

how marketing and training are converging and why they should be working together even more.

There’s also a good business reason to show people it is okay to fail. If you

expect zero mistakes from people, you also get zero innovation. Innovation requires experimentation, which includes failure. By communicating in

your training materials that it’s more important to work toward the best

answer than to be safe on the first try, you encourage creativity and

innovation. Help your learners understand how to work through failure, and

you’ll build a stronger company.

LEARN MORE:

In his book Learn or Die: Using Science to Build a Leading-Edge Learning

Organization, Edward Hess helps companies overcome the fear of mistakes

so they can create a better learning culture. In an interview with the Columbia University Press blog, he says, “Mistakes and failures are a necessary part of innovation, experimentation and learning. Most learning

comes from mistakes—fixing things or trying things and learning by iteration.”

MYTH 7:

NO ONE CAN UNDERSTAND US

We could never have a vendor help with our training because our business is too hard to understand.

MAGIC ELIXIR

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FACT 7:

Good vendors have proven processes

to marry your expertise with adult

learning principles and best practices.

Nobody wants to invest time and money creating training that doesn’t meet its goals. But the truth is that a high-quality vendor will know how to get the information needed from your experts and package it into a training curriculum that creates results.

MAGIC ELIXIR

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By using the right processes, your vendor can transform

highly technical information into a format that makes sense

to your learners and targets your goals. By analyzing your

pain points and objectives, your vendor can identify

need-to-know information and extract it from your experts.

Then the vendor’s consultants conduct extensive questioning

to make sure they understand the content. Your subject

matter experts’ involvement doesn’t end there. E�ective

vendors will engage experts throughout the process to

ensure your content is accurate and on brand.

Training and development vendors have decades of instructional design knowledge and experience in building high-impact training. An experienced vendor will know how to engage subject matter experts to minimize time and maximize impact. So go ahead and look for a vendor to help you take that complex information and put it in the right format for your goals.

Good training can change your company and boost the bottom line.

Training isn’t a magic cure, but with the right planning and a good strategy you can boost employee engagement and transform your organization. Ready to start? Talk to AllenComm today about your business problem and see how we can create a program to meet your goals.

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