One area companies have a problem figuring out is understanding the relationship between their training strategy and their company’s overall strategy. The two must be connected, because only when they’re linked will members of an organization set aside the requisite time and effort in training sessions. In this article, I’d like to outline how companies can start building a relationship between the two strategies. We’ll learn about why it’s important, how to begin, as well as how to execute the process.
What Is Training Strategy & Company Strategy?
What’s A Training Strategy?
A training strategy is pretty much what it sounds like. It’s a strategy to train people in an organization. What you actually train depends, but it often helps employees learn, upskill, and understand the long-term business plan.
Besides this, the best types of training strategies also connect the training itself to the overall vision of the company. This is when it’s at its most effective.
What’s A Company Strategy?
A company strategy has more to do with the company’s vision, as well as how the company provides value to its customers.
As such, company strategy has more to do with everything that employees are trained for during training sessions.
RELATED: Read about our Professional Skills Development Services
What’s The Relationship Between The Two?
Reading so far, you might’ve noticed the connection between training strategy and company strategy. If you haven’t, no problem. Let me lay it out for you.
→ For training sessions to be most effective, they must connect to the company’s overall strategy. This is because if a training is connected to a company’s core mission/goal, it’s much more able to provide value to the clients and customers that company serves.
→ Furthermore, with proper connection between the two, both individuals in a company and the company at large can look at a training and understand why it’s important. As long as there’s a connection, they will both take the time and put in the effort to training.
What Happens When There’s No Connection Between Training Strategy & Company Strategy?
Unfortunately, despite how vital it is for training and company strategy to be aligned, from my years of experience as a trainer, I’ve found it rarely is. Before getting into what happens, let’s first take a look at why this is in the first place.
Why Aren’t Training & Company Strategies Connected?
- Training Is A Necessary Evil
The first reason why training never connects to company strategy is because most companies consider training a necessary evil. These organizations would rather have their employees working on day-to-day operations rather than spending time in training programs. Some simply train because various regulations tell them they have to, but beyond that, not much thought goes into it.
- Training Is For The Holidays
Another common scenario is when companies start training programs at the end of the year, just because they have some budget remaining to spend. What happens is they’ll usually call in a few trainers with zero idea on what needs training, just that they may as well have some.
This is a much too spontaneous way to be thinking, and as a result, these training sessions won’t have much positive effect on the company and its employees.
→ While you might find it silly that companies actually treat training in this manner, you’d be surprised to know it’s more common than not. According to Lorman, in 2021, nearly 59% of employees claimed they had no workplace training and that most of their skills were self-taught!
So, What Happens?
So, what exactly happens when training strategies aren’t connected to company strategies? To put it bluntly, resources are wasted.
This shouldn’t come as much a surprise. After all, when training is set up without much thought, it’s difficult for it to ever have much real value.
Besides this, training also then gets put in a bad light, which reduces the chances that it will ever be taken seriously in the future. For an organization wanting to hire and retain employees, this can have a similar effect to that of digging one’s own grave.
How Do You Implement An Aligned Training & Company Strategy?
There are numerous benefits of a training and company strategy that are aligned. From employee retention, satisfaction, to general workplace productivity, there’s so much good that comes out from having these strategies aligned. So let’s say you successfully aligned the strategies. How do you start implementing them?
Timing
Timing is key. Training strategies need to be implemented in a timely manner that ensures the training is relevant to both the company and individual’s needs.
This goes back to the previous section where we discussed when training and company strategies weren’t connected. Training in those cases are seen as a necessary evil or a last-minute holiday add-on. This type of training is executed at the wrong time.
When training happens at the right time, people are learning skills that take into account the direction the company is headed. This allows them to put what they learned into practice as soon as possible, thereby helping them retain that information!
Build Training Like A House
The next idea focuses on the importance of building supportive training. To do this, it’s vital to build training like you would a house. When you build a house, you don’t start with the roof and go down from there. First comes the scaffolding, and you work your way up from that baseline. Training is the same.
Let’s say you’re training communication skills for a sales team. What comes first? Well, you’d start with a more general overview of the skills you’d need to communicate. From there, you’d focus on specific areas that are broken down into bite-sized chunks which make them easy to digest.
What’s important to note is that you must allow enough time to learn a skill, as well as take into account an individual’s learning pace. In this way you can teach the individual components of a broader skill without ever forcing too much.
Understand How Learning Works
Finally, it’s crucial to understand how learning works.
- 10% comes from official training (classrooms and the like)
- 20% comes from peers and mentors
- 70% comes from the work itself (day-to-day tasks)
When putting this into the context of an effective training and company strategy, what you get is:
- Official training makes up the 10%
- Providing the trainer/manager with a structural model for training makes up the 20%
- Daily execution of what was trained make up the 70%
Interested in other strategies? Read this post on all you need to know about Train The Trainer
My Experience With Pizza 4P’s
Speaking of my own experiences helping companies align their training and company strategy, I’d like to tell you about my time working with Pizza 4P’s.
Joining as an interim training manager which is something of a consultant who helps build strategy and begins to implement it, I first looked at the overall model of the company, as I wanted to get an idea of how they operated across their 40+ stores.
Doing so gave me the idea to have training take place in every regional store, as opposed to through online or e-learning sessions. While these take more time and effort, the impact is greater. Needless to say, Pizza 4P’s was happy to try it out, so I began formulating a strategic plan for them.
The plan involved an idea for rotating trainers around, as well as figuring out what was needed for actual training sessions. Talking to different partners in the business became imperative as it provided a better picture of what skills each thought should be training in the first place. Based on these conversations, a training program began to take shape.
Long story short, Pizza 4P’s now have a fully functioning, autonomic training team. Not only do they support the entire business, they also have a structure for evaluating the training itself and the happiness it brings their guests!
How Can I Help?
With 20 years experience, including impactful roles at Google and Apple, I, Thijs van Loon, am here to help. My suite of services has been meticulously designed to propel your team to new heights.
One area of expertise is in Professional Skills Development, which can cover anything from sales training, team management, and train the trainer.
By leveraging training certifications from Google and Apple, in addition to my certifications in NLP and Psych-K, I offer tailored, practical solutions that deliver immediate results to your business. By working together, I can help you empower the individuals in your company and your business at large, whether in Vietnam or other locations in Southeast Asia.