To better understand the types of training available and the tough training challenges that may be encountered, the American Management Association surveyed 215 HR professionals at the 2015 Atlanta Training Conference. The survey results are as follows:
First, soft skills training is more effective in classroom training
When asked about soft skills, such as communication, management, and leadership, what types of training are effective, more than 80% of respondents said that classroom training, that is, in-house training and open classes based on lecturer-led classes Training is more effective than virtual training. During the course of our conversation, the participants indicated that the demand for comprehensive training (mainly in classroom learning and supplemented by virtual classrooms) continued to grow.
Regardless of the type of teaching, soft skills play a vital role in career development. The Carnegie Mellon Foundation and the Stanford International Institute jointly launched an interview with the world's top 500 CEOs. The survey found that career success requires long-term success, 75% depends on people's soft skills, only 25 % depends on technical knowledge.
Second, the priority training methods for professional and technical training are diverse.
When asked about effective technical training techniques (such as project management, finance, sales, marketing, logic analysis, human resources, etc.), the respondents' opinions were basically the same: 57% of HR professionals believe that Classroom training is more effective than virtual training, with 43% of people holding the opposite opinion.
Third, opinion-oriented assessment criteria dominate the measurement of training effectiveness
Next, we ask training professionals to choose one or two ways they will measure the effectiveness of the training. Employee feedback (73% of users) is overwhelming, although we have thought that popularly available evaluation forms can be given higher usage rates.
We believe that performance-oriented assessments play an important role in training management. However, our survey shows that only 50% of training professionals use this type of assessment.
Why is opinion-based measurement better than performance-oriented approach? Why is training investment so difficult to judge? An article by Kevin Oaks of the Enterprise Productivity Institute points to this topic. He shared that most companies are only using the previous level in the Kirkpatrick/Phillips model and student satisfaction to assess training effectiveness. Due to the complexity and time requirements, most organizations do not have a thorough understanding of the impact of training.
4. 80% of employees recognize and receive training
When asked how they perceive employees' responses to training, nearly 80% of respondents said employees are recognized for training. Although 20% of the people said that employees resist training or are not interested in training.
5. Time and money constraints are major obstacles to training.
Respondents said that budget and time constraints are a major obstacle to attending training. Invoking an article in research-based learning, “Revitalization Training DOA ROI” shows that high-performance organizations place training at the forefront, while low-performing organizations tend to cut training budgets.
Six, training professionals have different needs for training content
Later, we asked the respondents an open-ended question to explore the important but unmet needs of them about the training topics. We use the competency model in the AMA Talent Transformation Development Tool (AT3) (also a complementary tool in leadership assessment) to group the collected answers.
Related to business acumen, common themes include (in order of priority): sales, IT, customer service, and project management. Relevant to leadership, the general theme includes (in order of priority): teaching and influence/convincing. And related to professional performance, the general theme includes (in order of priority): cooperation (link), emotional intelligence (link) and language expression communication.
in conclusion
According to the AMA survey results, we have made some discoveries from the perspective of sensibility and rationality.
The traditional view is that on-site training is better than virtual training. However, we are unable to verify the impact of training formats on real performance through surveys, but we can be sure that training professionals prefer to train soft skills in a classroom setting. However, professionals believe that for professional skills training, the effectiveness of virtual training is the same as the classroom effect (such as business acumen).
We are not surprised that our opinion-based assessments outperform performance-oriented assessments. Because it is very complicated to evaluate long-term effects, the return on investment in training is still difficult for most organizations.
Training professionals are still shocked by how much employees respond to training. Respondents felt that 80% of employees would accept training, but in fact this ratio exceeded the expectations of most people.
In addition to the expectations of training, there will also be obstacles to training. Compared with other issues, such as the support of senior leaders, the requirements of employees for training, the effectiveness of content, etc., time and money constraints are a big problem. After that, we were pleasantly surprised to see training professionals try their best to maintain a balance on the wish list, covering all aspects of business acumen, leadership and professional effectiveness. Some of the hot areas, such as project management, teaching, cooperation, and emotional intelligence, have long been favored by everyone because of their enormous impact on personal and organizational productivity and employee engagement.