KQ Article

The training has gone well so far. The topic is timely, the lessons clear. The trainer clears her throat and has the floor again. “Now, for the last hour,” she says, “I’d like us to examine how what we learned will impact our P&L.”

Faces drop, postures slouch. The building’s HVAC system is the only buzz left in the room.

Learners and trainers alike dread the prospect of connecting training to bottom-line performance. Corporate profitability is typically not among the objectives listed for financial services training. But it sure should be.

It is the trainer’s job to persuasively set overall expectations for what a learning session aims to achieve for each individual. In other words, the trainer is supposed to articulate how each participant will benefit — i.e., profit — from a valuable new skill.

But why stop there? Is it not a natural extension to cover how lessons hold  profit not only individually, but also at a corporate level? Many trainers stop at the individual benefit because they’re chiefly concerned with the immediate payoff of their lessons. They forget to think long term.

Here are three tips for working bottom-line impact into your training without losing the room:

1. Make it personal. Package profitability objectives in personal metaphors for training participants — their homes, their bank accounts, their leisure time — to make them stick. Example:  “By applying what you learn today at home, you’ll feel like you have a three-day weekend every week!” (See the faces perking up?)

2. Show numerical impact. By displaying figures such as “A 1% improvement in sales translates to $100,000 more profit for our branch” across your training materials, you can remind learners of how even subtle additions to an individual’s skill set can make a huge collective difference.

3. Amp-up the evaluations. Make sure your training team understands the connection between their teachings and profitability. For lessons with the most clear bottom-line relevance, have the team observe new behaviors (Kirkpatrick’s Level 3 Evaluation) or measure the business impact of improved employee performance (Kirkpatrick Level 4).

Yes, training largely focuses on the task at hand. But by tying each lesson to the bigger ideas — profitability, performance, productivity — you can give your training new meaning and help participants see more value in the time they’re spending with you.

_{© 2010 Mark McCarthy}

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