No two workplaces are the same.
Each organization has unique features, challenges, and structural considerations, and this is often why check-the-box training fails to deliver results.
Off-the-shelf training is designed to work if your objective is to check a compliance box that says, “Employee #3207 attended the required training session.”
Team members see canned presentations and content as irrelevant because the information is too broad and the takeaways miss the mark. Can you blame them?
While pre-fab training options are easy to criticize, it’s not a given that 100% custom training is the answer. The costs, timing, and effort involved are considerable, and for most organizations fully custom training is not an option.
This dynamic leaves many organizations in a Catch-22. They want their training to be relevant but can’t justify a fully custom program. Instead of choosing these binary options, there is a third approach for how to improve your employee training – the training framework.
Leveraging a Training Framework
What you want is a training framework that can be tailored to your specific values, goals, and challenges. The content has to be rooted in your mission and values, contextualized for your industry, and designed to fit your organizational structure, culture, geography, calendar, and more.
With a training framework, the provider can systemize core components of the training system while at the same time allowing critical pieces to be customized.
The result is a personalized program that is faster and more cost-effective to roll out while still being relevant to your team members.
So what is a training framework? By tailoring specific components of your content, a successful framework should include:
1. Speak to Your Specific Issues
The content covered in the training must focus on the topics and issues that your organization is facing. A one-size-fits-all approach to content will not work because the challenges your team deals with are unique.
With a training framework, the facilitator can wrap overarching concepts around specific topics and show how the legal and business effects of behavior relate to specific workplace problems.
2. Fit with Your Culture and Business Objectives
Successful training programs must allow for cultural fit. The mission, values, and people are what make your workplace unique. Training that does not take these factors into account will struggle to succeed.
Even small adjustments can help participants understand how the material covered in the training relates to their company and their department. It can be as simple as the way phrases are worded or how the material is slanted.
A training framework should allow for central ideas to stay fixed while specific cultural and business objectives are woven in.
3. Allow for Flexible Implementation Options
Organizations come in all shapes in sizes. The training needs of a 20-member team at a single location are radically different from a 1,000+ company with eight regional locations.
A training framework that takes delivery into account is critical to obtain maximum effectiveness. Providers who offer rigid choices related to delivery have structured the choice around what is good for them, not your team.
Online, instructor-led training and virtual instructor-led training are all options that can be used to deliver training to employees. Finding the right blend for your audience is critical to make sure the message is received and placed into action.
The Big Picture
There’s no such thing as a one-size-fits-all solution. But there is a purpose-built program for your organization based on a proven process. It’s our Civil Treatment Workplace initiative. And it’s how you know what works at work. Contact us or request a demo to see how our training experts at ELI can help you create a more civil workplace for your company!
