Monday, October 21, 2013

How Training programs increase Workforce Attrition


The Training Programs

Training programs are one of the most important Human empowerment endeavor of an organization that emphasizes and is focused on Employee Development and Delivering Quality.

Its no rocket science to realize that if you are not up to date, you are actually out of date and so rotten and useless. Strategic and Focused training programs keep us all up to date, fit and fresh to carry on with our jobs and delivery quality results.

Research says that typically companies spend around $1000 on Employee Training though it varies in accordance to the industry.In many organizations, it’s a part of the Employee’s KRA to complete mandatory training of certain fixed number of hours each year. The companies tie-up with universities so that the employees can avail education opportunities while being at work. The organization allows its employees to take up professional certifications and specialized courses and reimburses the expenses of the same.

But, Have you ever thought the training programs that your organization runs is actually one of the contributor for the Workforce Attrition?


How Training Programs trigger Attrition?

Lets understand why I say so through a story with fictional characters but real situation…

John is out hero. John attends a training on Project Management. The trainer is well verse with the Content and also has relevant experience in applying the theory of Project Management in practice.

The trainer starts with the recommendation of the PMI (Project Management Institute) and focuses on the drawings that show the various phases involved in efficient and successful project management. He picks out every phase mentioned in the drawing and proves how each phase is critical for successful delivery of a project. The trainer backs his claims by narrating the success stories of other organizations and projects that have been successful in completing the projects on-time by following Project Management principles.

John is pretty impressed and gets convinced that the PMI approach for Project Management is the way to manage projects.

John starts comparing the PMI approach to the approach followed in his organization. At this juncture, John’s mind is filled with a few intriguing thoughts. He spends sometime time deep in these thoughts and comes to a conclusion that the place where he works, actually sucks.

The intriguing thoughts  are

  1. My Boss thinks he is the PMI body himself. He has his own ways of Project Management which have resulted in failed projects. And he will not allow me to follow PMI guidelines though it is the need of the hour.
  2. We never follow the PMI guidelines and that’s why our projects fail. And instead of correcting our approach, we are blaming everybody in this world, the vendors, the business team, the environment etc.
  3. The organization thinks PMI is relevant and so trains us all but then it doesn’t follow the principles of PMI. The Organization is not walking what its talking.


These thoughts continue to bother his mind for some time and at last John takes a decision. John decides that it’s the time for him to switch the company. He doesn’t want to work for a company that doesn’t follow what is preaches. The revelation is like the one that happened to Newton on thinking about why the apple came down, its like what happened when Adam and Eve at the apple and realized they were not wearing clothes.

For John, it was like, what he was doing and happening around him was ignorance and he is seeing the real colors now. The training program has empowered with Knowledge to know and understand what is right and what is wrong. With this newly acquired knowledge and understanding what is right, he decides to dump what is wrong. If you were in Johns position, you would have also probably done the same.

Ultimately, John quits the organization…

The impact of Training program is a replication of the PDCA ( Plan Do Check Act) concept. The cycle that leads John to quit the organization is depicted in the following drawing. John wants to grow and so opts for the training. He acquires knowledge and ability to perform a reality check of what is right and what is wrong. On finding things that are wrong and that could hamper his career, he acts by quitting the job.  



So does this mean that the organizations should stop the Training Programs.

Nope, never.

For an organization, the people it employs are its power and for the people, knowledge is power.

Then what is the solution?

Its simple, the organization should what it talks.

Following are a few ideas on how to conduct training programs and also put a check on the attrition.  

  1. Training programs should be done with a spirit into it and not just as a typical HR activity to complete their KRA.
  2. The Training programs should be aligned with the Organization strategy.
  3. At the end of the training program, key questions are to be asked to participants instead of the ages old feedback form that’s generally used. I will be publishing a Questionnaire template in the next post of this series. So keep an eye on this space.
  4. To check the effectiveness of the training program, a follow up plan should be in place. The plan should ask the participants if what is taught in the training program is being followed in the organization or not.
  5. The employees should be empowered to showcase their skills that have been sharpened by the training program. They should be provided with test environments, projects to execute and implement the skills newly acquired.  
  6. They should be allowed to voice their feedback about the gaps they feel are there in the systems/processes of the organization.
  7. Somebody should continually monitor the feedback and work around it.
  8. To bridge the gaps identified, the employees who feel that a change is needed,should be made "the change agent" or the "catalyst" that . He/She should be empowered with support from Management team so that he is taken around seriously, especially, by the people who hate changes.

Attending the training programs raises the expectations of the employees, they get to know what to expect, how things should be and when this expectations are not met, disappointment sets in. One of the easiest option to cure this disappointment is to quit.

Following are a few good reads on this topic…

Do let me know your experience of attending training programs and how you felt about it using the comments section…

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