Why Should We Train

So you really don’t think training works. I know we’ve all heard the horror stories about training.  “Trainings are organized and created by a company.  Training involves a program that employees are required to attend and after the training, employees are responsible for using what they learned in training on the job. Any support they might receive is based on the whims of their manager.”(Noe) As you know, these trainings generally fail to improve performance and/or meet the needs of the company.  These type of trainings fail because they lack the purpose and the ability to change that is needed in a Learning Organization.

“A Learning organization is a company that has an enhanced capacity to learn adapt and change.  In a Learning organization, training processes are carefully scrutinized and aligned with company goals, where learning is seen as one part of a system designed to create human capital”(Noe).  By being highly organized and placing an emphasis on training, companies are able to design training that put their employees in the best possible situations where they can meet their personal goals as well as the goals set by the organization.  “Learning organizations emphasize that learning occurs not only at the individual employee level, but also at the group and organizational level.”(Noe).

I know, you really don’t like change.  You actually get anxious, just by people speaking of change, and you don’t think you can cope with it or even value current training practices.  In order for change or training to work; employees must understand and agree on the reasons for change, they must have the skills needed to implement change, they must see managers and other employees support the change and finally organizational structures must support the change”(Noe).  By meeting these conditions before implementing any change, you greatly strengthen the rate of success of any type of training that you are thinking of implementing.  

Noe, R. A. (2013). Employee training and development (6th ed.). New York, NY: McGraw Hill.


(The blogger website would not allow me to upload an MP3 or a Wav. file. So I placed my elevator speech file on the Walden website in the Blog links folder.)