What learning programs need.

Created on 2021-11-30 04:17

Published on 2021-11-30 04:26

Many training firms each year put together millions of learning programs across the continent. Training firms have two distinct objectives. One to make money to sustain the business and the employees, secondly to help learners close their skills gaps so as to perform better at the workplace. Any training program that is out there needs to meet at least these two requirements.

Financial reward

“The business of business is business” as Peter Drucker the management Guru put across to the management world. Any training program has to provide a financial reward to the business otherwise it negates the whole purpose of existence of the business. The business exists to create financial wealth to its owners. Financial reward is justified by the value provided to the receiver of services.

Value to learners.

Training firms have the obligation to provide value to learners. The question then becomes how do we define value. Fortunately, value for learning has over the years been well defined. The value is created by employing competent learning design professionals, instruction designers, instruction architects and Delivery experts. The ability to stand in front of learners and tell them what you know about a subject unfortunately does not help learners, it provides no value. Erica J. Keeps and Harold Stolovitch in their book telling ain`t training cover this extensively, this book is a must read for anyone in the business of learning.

Conclusion

Training, whether in-house or public open workshops need to be designed to address some needs, the subject matter experts involved with the program design should be knowledgeable (According to the body of Knowledge) on the subject.

When it comes to conferences and summits, deep learning is involved, design is still required for the sessions. There should be something the learner will be able to do after attending the session. The facilitators need to be experts or practitioners in the field they will be speaking on as a bare minimum.

 There is a need for a good mix between financial reward and value for learners as learning companies put out trainings to market for consumption, no regulatory body would allow half-baked products to be put out to market for public consumption. This would be harmful to consumer’s health. Substandard learning programs are harmful to the learners skills and harmful to the organisation’s the learners are from since they waste money and organisation’s time since no results will come out of the learning program.