User training is a key part of almost every new IT systems deployment or upgrade plan. Training is also seen as a critical component to support IT process changes. IT managers and technical program managers include a training line in their project budgets. CEOs and CTOs expect to see a training plan. Users have become conditioned to completing training programs prior to rollout or upgrade.
Organizations spend millions of dollars each year on IT systems and process training. Outside the US$72.5 billion spent in 2022 globally on training IT professionals, there is a huge spend on training the workforce to use IT.
However, for any organization trying to stay competitive, conventional training is no longer enough. Increasing complexity and the high velocity of change in today’s markets is simply outpacing training and the cracks are showing. CTOs and executives responsible for embedding new IT systems in their firms need to broaden their minds and adopt new approaches to address the flaws of traditional training.
So, what’s the problem, and why is there a need to change?
Actually, there are several problems and plenty that needs to change.
The Challenge of Transfer
For a start, we have known for years that training is rarely 100% effective. In fact, it is rarely even 10% effective. The academic literature is strewn with studies and meta-studies on the effectiveness of transfer of training (the extent to which learning in one situation influences the ability to perform in another situation). The picture is not a good one.
122 years ago, in 1901, the eminent US psychologists Edward Thorndike and Robert Woodworth published their Principle of Identical Elements which provides some explanation as to why training often fails. Thorndike and Woodworth identified the fact that the closer the training environment resembled the working environment, then the more likely it was that the learning would be transferred into the workplace.
With this knowledge we would expect the best preparation for using new IT systems and processes would be immersive training on simulations that replicate the deployed systems. These are likely to increase the transfer and prepare users better than classroom training or eLearning. However, the high costs of simulator development and deployment, the fact that simulators rarely replicate the new system due to changes right to the point of system go-live, and the significant productivity loss through removing users from their daily workflow for simulator training sessions are all barriers to the widespread use of simulation-based training.
The outcome of these barriers is that we tend to revert to approaches that were familiar to our grandparents. We design and deploy traditional ’schooling mindset’ training. Sometimes we use 21st century technologies for the delivery mechanism – including eLearning and mobile learning – but mostly we put people in classrooms and have instructors or SMEs (subject matter experts) teach them.
Information Overload
A fundamental flaw introduced by almost all training is information overload. When training professionals design training programs, whether based on information ‘push’ or interaction/simulation, they rarely consider the exact context the user will need at task level. The standard process is to build training based on job role definitions, competencies required to fulfil defined jobs, and the skills needed to underpin the required competencies. All of these are high level and, although they may take some idealized use cases into account, they rarely predict, nor are they developed for, the exact context in which every user will need to apply the training. The result is that the training contains far more than any one person needs or could remember.
Put another way, most training courses are content-heavy and context-light. Courses with PowerPoint decks of 200-300 slides for delivery over two days are not uncommon. Trainees won’t remember a fraction of the content and are unlikely to ever re-open the training manual.
Subsequently, a significant percentage of systems and process training is based on ‘spray and hope’. They provide as much information about the new system as possible; explain how it may differ from existing systems; and hope some of the information will be retained by trainees when they come to need it.
Invariably, this hope is in vain.
Context is Critical
A second problem with the training approach is its focus on short-term rather than long-term memory.
Unfortunately, most of the information ‘learned’ in a training class doesn’t make it past short-term memory. Hermann Ebbinghaus’ famous forgetting curve (developed in 1885) identified a particular problem with human memory. Ebbinghaus and later researchers have revealed the logarithmic forgetting curve poses a major barrier for the absorption, retention, and perfect recall of large amounts of information. Anyone of us who has been asked to recall detailed information about a conversation or some specific situation will be aware of the forgetting curve. Police forces around the world have known for years that multiple people reporting their observation of a vehicle accident, for example, might suggest they witnessed different accidents.
Ebbinghaus and many other researchers over the past 120 years have shown that the moment an employee walks out of the training room they begin to forget. If you haven’t already experienced this firsthand, with calls to the helpdesk escalating days after training has concluded, then the research by Harold Stolovitch and Erica Keeps explains this phenomenon. Their research and reports demonstrated that practice and reinforcement are the key requirements to build behavior change through retention of new patterns in long-term memory, which is what learning really is.
Practice is needed for people to productively do their jobs. Unfortunately, most of the system, process, and product training currently provided offers only cursory practice opportunities. There is usually not enough time for practice as there’s so much ‘knowledge transfer’ required,
Integrating Learning with Working
The best learning occurs during activity and as close to the point-of-need as possible.
The US Macroeconomist, Kenneth Arrow, studied learning throughout his career from the perspective of improving economic output. Arrow expressed it this way:
“…. one empirical generalization is so clear that all schools of thought must accept it: Learning is the product of experience. Learning can only take place through the attempt to solve a problem and therefore only takes place during activity.”
– Arrow. K. J. (1962).
The Economic Implications of Learning by Doing. The Review of Economic Studies, Vol. 29, No. 3 (June 1962), 155-173. Oxford University Press. Arrow won a Nobel Prize for his work, so he is someone worth taking note of. Arrow’s message for us is that the best learning is through experience and practice in the context where we need to use that knowledge, skill, information, or concept.
So, what are the alternatives to training?
Informal Coaching, Communities, and Performance Support
We know that the vast majority of learning does not happen in formal training environments but informally in the workplace. Learning comes about through rich and challenging experiences, by practice, and by interaction with others.
We learn by asking a manager, talking to colleagues, looking up or watching reference information, watching an expert perform a task, or collaboratively solving problems with others.
So, what is the answer to the training problem?
Well, the first step in adopting a more effective approach to success in ensuring users are ready for IT rollouts is a shift in thinking. Focus needs to be not on simply providing the most convenient training solution but on outcomes and performance and on efficiency, especially in these cost- constrained times.
There are alternatives to training that are cheaper, faster, and more effective.
Consider these three for a start:
- Use technology-enabled performance support using electronic checklists, corporate wikis and blogs, podcasts, and vodcasts to support IT rollouts and provide just-in-time learning.
- Use informal coaching in controlled work situations. It has been found to be effective at improving performance. When you roll out a new IT system or process make sure you encourage advanced users to make themselves available to support others.
- develop communities of practice and even brown-bag lunches with experts. This approach is being successfully used by forward-looking organisations.
Building learning into the day-to-day operation of business is more important than ever. This requires an understanding that learning is no longer something that employees do separately from their work. Learning needs to be part of the work. In fact, in the knowledge economy, learning is the work.
Business process guidance
Technology can play an important part of these new strategies. A powerful new concept that’s taken hold in some organisations is business process guidance (BPG). BPG is a unique combination of technology and service that provides real-time support for employees when and where they need it. The approach achieves performance improvement through an ongoing cycle of real-time learning by guiding and supporting workers at the moment they’re completing a process or task.
This is the antithesis of formal off-the-job training. Rather than trying to learn how to navigate a myriad of new systems, enterprise applications, polices, procedures and regulations with prior formal instruction, BPG provides the equivalent of a real-time GPS to help out when the worker needs guidance. This shifts the focus of training from what has traditionally been a just-in-case to a just-in- time approach where employees are helped to deal with the rate of change in their organisations and their markets.
