Life After Training
There’s more to training than sending people on courses.
Training and development is now accepted as an ongoing process in most businesses. The need is usually identified through the organisation’s performance review and appraisal system, an appropriate course is found and the employee despatched to ‘learn’ something.
Alternatively, courses are designed and held in-house to meet the needs of a selected group of individuals.The desired goal of any training and development initiative is to ‘stimulate, challenge, encourage and motivate the individual(s) or team towards change or a newly-desired goal’. But what happens next? The need may have been identified, and whilst they are undergoing the courses or development programmes people are usually motivated and enthusiastic about what they are gaining from the experience and are eager to get back to work and translate their new skills and knowledge into their everyday situation. But how exactly do you, as a manager, ensure that the motivation people enjoyed during the training and development process continues once they have returned to work?
Once back at work it is so easy for the state of motivation and enthusiasm to be dulled by a variety of factors, both human and environmental. For example, a supervisor returning to work having undergone supervisory skills training may find that their manager is unwilling to support and encourage the changes they wish to initiate. Or, consider a situation where, following time management training where a delegate has gained fresh insight in terms of planning, prioritising and delegating, he returns to work eager to discuss workloads with his manager and team members. But he meets resistance because people want to continue as before. Sometimes the pressure to keep on getting the work out prevents ideas for improvements going ahead. Just take a minute to think about what it takes to motivate you and which factors have a demotivating effect.
There is no doubt that the ability to motivate people is a key leadership skill. An effective manager is one who has the ability to create the conditions that enable people to reach their personal goals through achieving the goals of the organisation.
Identifying skills and behaviour gaps and securing appropriate training and development for team members is only the first part of the solution. Unfortunately, that is where it often stops and staff fail to receive the support they need within the workplace to implement the changes and improvements they have learnt. But it doesn’t have to be that way.
I was recently working with a team of approximately 25 people who were split into smaller teams, each with responsibilities for specific areas of work. They were suffering from a lack of teamwork ethic, both within and across the smaller teams. Morale was generally low and as a result there were concerns about the standard of customer service.
While the managers were confident in the capabilities of the staff, they could sense a real danger of apathy and a further drop in the level of motivation. So what did they do? Together we designed a staged training intervention, which included skills to provide customer focused teamwork. The training challenged both individuals and teams to examine their work motivators and demotivators and to raise awareness of their attitudes and resulting behaviours.
At the end of the training programme, action plans were created and taken back to the workplace. In many organisations that is where the story would have ended – but not for this team. Their managers were committed to seeing follow-through on the plans and encouraged everyone to be involved. They provided support, they showed interest and they are now reaping the results. The team’s service standards have improved, morale has risen, communication has increased and motivation levels are far higher than before.
The managers are aware of their ongoing role in assessing these levels, understanding performance issues and addressing these through further training and development, recognising achievement and promoting growth in other areas. Open and honest communication between manager and staff member is essential if the manager and organisation is committed to motivating staff members. Post-training, this is even more crucial.
The following guidelines are helpful when motivating staff:
- Identify and understand the needs and personal goals of your staff. Beware of assumptions.
- Remember, money is a short-term motivator. Other rewards can be more effective.
- Set realistic staff targets but also stretch ability within agreed limits.
- Always recognise achievement and give praise and reward.
- Wherever possible, do not alter targets without consulting staff concerned – any changes should be jointly agreed.
- Gather group/team strength – involving your staff in making decisions will strengthen commitment.
- Keep your staff informed about what is going on.
‘You cannot starve people too long of a heartbeat in work.’ Bernard Leach.
