Introduction

Business training doesn’t work.

This may sound strange coming from two business trainers. But our argument is that too much business training fails to deliver. There are a whole host of reasons for this. For example, business training, in so many instances:

• is not linked to business results;
• is dressed up as bespoke but is typically generic and often insubstantial;
• gets delivered in a vacuum;
• bores the pants off many of the people attending;
• is trainer centric rather than participant focused;
• rarely gets evaluated over and above ‘happy’ sheets;
• does not get followed up, which means no positive change occurs.

Business training doesn’t just happen occasionally.

Recent research suggests that almost £40 billion is spent on business training in the UK alone (National Employer Skills Survey, released in 2008). That is slightly more than the 2012 UK budget for education. In the USA you can take that figure and add another $100 billion. Over two-thirds of the UK’s businesses spend a combined total of 218 million days training their workforces. The average money spent per employee on training increased by 11% from £1550 in 2005 to £1750 in 2007.

Conference centres, hotels and corporate training rooms are full up with people all over the UK and around the world hoping to learn something which will help them and their employers. Or they might have just been told to attend because it will do them good!

Some business leaders place a great deal of faith in business training and yet it is still one of the first things to be hit by hard times or recessionary pressures. And you can understand why. So much business training just does not deliver on its promises. For instance, only 15–20% of trainees who participate in a typical workplace learning event ever employ their new capabilities in a way that leads to worthwhile results for the organisation. Many businesses spend vast amounts of money on training with little or no serious attempt to protect their investment. Where else in the business would such an investment decision be sanctioned?

And yet and yet and yet...

We are just sitting here thinking of the impact we have made in our business training careers. And many of you, trainers like us, will also know that you have made a real positive difference to both people’s lives and business results.

We are reminded of a piece of feedback that was recently posted on the intranet of a luxury retail company:

First and foremost I wanted to thank you all for this inspiring workshop, and hopefully we will meet again. Since the workshop I have worked a lot on my beliefs and behavior. It’s changed my view of what is possible for myself and my team. Our sales results have improved dramatically ... .

And suddenly the mood has shifted.

We decided to get away from it all and write part of this book in a place that would inspire us, that would take us away for a while from the pressures of earning a living, of raising families, and so we are in South Africa. We are lucky enough to be in a wonderful, spacious house overlooking Plettenburg Bay. The view from the upstairs is splendid: seals congregating on the edge of the peninsula, crescent waves arching out of the azure sea, dense foliage protecting the line of houses overlooking the Indian Ocean. And birds – sandpipers, buzzards and brown-headed parrots sweeping through the valley below. A fully formed rainbow arch suddenly appears to the right of us.

A view that allows us to stand back, put ourselves in your shoes and think about what you want to learn from this book.

Whilst it is true that many adults have a predilection that training must somehow be painful and difficult, you will know that with the right internal support, environment, resources and skills, business training can make a positive contribution to people’s professional and personal lives as well as directly and positively affecting business results. Our experience tells us that business training, done well, can really make a difference.

So what does good look like? How can we ensure that more business training works?

That’s what motivated us to write this book. We want to look back on what has worked for us, identify what you can control, access the right research that will help underpin our own sense of what works, identify the material that will be most useful and then convey the information in an accessible, practical and helpful way for you.

Let’s start with a very basic question: what is business training?

Here is our definition:

An organised, formal, group learning activity in the service of improving the performance or results of a business.

• Organised = It is organised internally within a business (or as an open programme) by human resources (HR) or learning and development (L&D) or a business sponsor – the usual business buyers of business training.
• Formal = So we are not talking here about informal learning or on the job training.
• Group = More than one, so it’s not one-to-one coaching. A group is likely to be 4–100, although most business training happens in groups of 6–15.
• Learning activity = There is an expectation from all parties that some sort of learning will take place which is relevant to the business and the attendees and focused on results.

The ultimate purpose of any business training must be linked to an improvement in the personal performance of an employee and aligned to the strategic direction of a business. The end goal is, fundamentally, to improve results in the business and this is only going to happen if the learning is transferred to the workplace environment. Business training may be about knowledge or information transfer, the development of capabilities, a change of mind-set or the introduction of a new process or service. Great business training will often include all of these elements.

Sometimes training is seen as the primary engine for change. However we would argue that business training, done well, is best utilised as part of a systemic intervention.

What’s in and what’s out of our definition of business training?

The reality of many people’s professional lives is that they learn mostly on the job. Research by Bersin and Associates (HR, learning and talent specialists) in 2008 shows us that as much as 70% of employee learning occurs on-the-job in many different ways. Some of the business buzzwords reflect this: ‘continuous professional development’ and ‘lifelong learning’. These are tags to the things that we know are true – we learn from experience, from those around us, from advice, from self-reflection and of course from success and failure. This book is not primarily focused on this element of informal learning or indeed on the ‘learning organisation’, a phrase first coined by Peter Senge.

There are a host of interventions to develop people. This requires a decision maker, perhaps you, to be very certain that training is the right intervention. We will explore in this book under what conditions business training will work.

Here is what we are including and excluding, in relation to L&D support typically offered in organisations:

A sound and successful business training programme may well include elements that are in the right-hand side of the table as part of a blended and integrated approach to performance improvement. For example you may decide to bring in an internal expert to act as a mentor/key presenter, use facilitation skills when training, use coaching as a way of following up the formal element of a course. So, of course, there is crossover and we will refer to these in the book. However, to be clear, this is not a guide about all things connected to learning, nor is it an attempt to identify how an organisation must embrace the new learning culture in order to achieve a competitive advantage.

Reasons for doing business training

There are many reasons why business training may be the right approach to take. As a corollary to this, there are many ways in which we believe training is used inappropriately. These include as a:

• panacea for more intransigent problems that are occurring in the organisation;
• shopping list or a series of destinations you might encounter on a travel website;
• way of ‘fixing’ a group who are not performing;
• chance to tick boxes to prove that training is in touch with real business issues;
• means to keep employees loyal to the organisation.

Our view is quite straightforward: all business training should revolve around current, specific business challenges, and the way in which an organisation needs to change to remain competitive. One of the issues that business trainers face when they are working within an organisation is how to have the right sort of discussions so that training is positioned correctly as part of a business initiative. Otherwise it is easy to fall into a trap of the ‘sheep dip’ approach, where everyone in a business unit has to attend training, regardless of skills and experience.

There are a whole host of factors that contribute to the success or failure of a training intervention – some you can control and some you cannot. We will focus in this book on what can be controlled.

Who is this book for?

There are many people involved in training in the UK, either directly employed in businesses or in the private sector. According to the Training Manager’s Handbook 2012, there were more than 32,000 people employed in some sort of training capacity. In addition, there were 12,300 private companies above the VAT threshold offering training in 2009 (according to Inquiry into the Future for Lifelong Learning (IFLL)). So you might be:

• an internal trainer, working inside a business;
• a L&D specialist or manager;
• an HR specialist whose remit crosses over into training;
• an external trainer in the private sector who makes a living working with large corporates and SMEs;
• a business manager who has to train your people.

You could be working in:

• a ‘business to business’ or ‘business to consumer environment’;
• a training/L&D department in a large corporate;
• business services in a professional services firm;
• an SME where training is just one of your responsibilities;
• a training or performance improvement consultancy.

Your role may involve delivering management skills, induction or technical training. You could just be starting out, contemplating a change of career or indeed be highly experienced. You may have already reached a highly competent stage in which you know you hit the mark time and again, or you may feel you have much to learn.

What are you going to get from reading this book?

So you are still with us, and you may have certain questions as you read this introduction:

• Is this really going to help me in my day-to-day role?
• Are they expecting me to know all the theory already?
• Who are these authors? Do they have the credibility to write a book on business training? What do they know?
• Am I going to have to labour through a heap of boring sections to get to the gold?
• I’m pretty experienced – is there anything else to really learn that is going to make a significant difference to my performance?

And you might have more questions. If you fit into one of the categories identified above, then we believe this book is for you. Whether you are new to your role or have enjoyed a long career in training/L&D, we are confident that our material can make a difference to the way you work and the results you get.

As you think about your own particular situation – what in particular would help you become an even better business trainer? Here are our outcomes for the book.

If you read the complete book or focus on the areas that are most relevant to you and your role, you will:

• Have a whole host of practical tips, techniques and ideas that you can start using. Immediately.
• Clarify what needs to be in place for business training to be really effective.
• Have access to some latest thinking and best practice and build your knowledge base.
• Be challenged.
• Have a ‘complete system’ view of training – from initial needs analysis through to delivery and integration.
• Be able to conduct internal business conversations so that you can become more influential and align strategic imperatives with the right tactical response.
• Be more confident in delivering business training programmes that work.

In addition, our wish list includes the following:

• You enjoy the process, have fun and complete some of the exercises if you fancy it.
• You will take responsibility for making changes to the way you run programmes.
• This book will contribute to training being taken more seriously in business.
• The book will increase your ability to be seen as a performance consultant/expert, a key person of influence.
• That you will question more things, whether you are working inside or outside organisations.

How to use the book

You don’t have to read the Financial Times Guide to Business Training from cover to cover. You may or may not have the time. You can dip into it if there are specific areas which spark your curiosity. Each chapter:

• has been written so it can stand alone and give the right level of useful information;
• includes relevant theory and research that underpin the pragmatic approach;
• has a summary of the key points at the end;
• has exercises, case studies, quotes, stories and metaphors to help bring the subject alive and make it real for you;
• is focused on how you can practically make a difference in your present and future role in business.

The book is a guide: it is not intended as the last word on each key topic. It would become an unmanageable epic if we attempted to give you all the background and history for each section. You will be presented with our point of view – and you may well disagree with some of our ideas. Just like on a business training programme. It is a guide for you to help shape your current thinking, challenge preconceptions, offer you new insights and inspire you to be the best you can be. You will find additional practical information that will help you on our website: www.ftguidetobusinesstraining.com.

Who are we to write a book like this?

We are not academics, but we are practitioners. We do the stuff we are writing about every week. Essentially we do four things:

• Train groups in business, typically between 6–20.
• Coach people in business one-to-one.
• Deliver conference presentations to large groups.
• Write business books (Brilliant Selling is now in a second edition and is the best-selling sales book in Europe, having sold well over 35,000 copies).

We work with large corporates, professional services firms and SMEs. We run our own corporate training business (RTP – www.rtpc.co.uk) and are partners in The Møller PSFG Cambridge Ltd (www.mollerpsfgcambridge.com), affiliated to the University of Cambridge, which is the biggest UK provider of training, coaching and consultancy to professional service firms. Jeremy has worked internally in businesses as head of training at L’Oréal UK and also head of sales training at Walker’s Snack foods. Tom has a background in starting and growing high-tech businesses before getting involved in training.

We have been independent trainers and consultants since 1999. We have worked with over 100 large businesses as well as SMEs and delivered training in all areas of influencing – selling, negotiating, presenting, teamwork and customer service for example. At a conservative estimate we have trained over 35,000 people in the UK, Europe, the USA and Asia. So we have been round the houses a few times.

In order to get this book into the best shape possible we have tapped into a fair amount of expertise and conducted primary research. In summary we:

• Convened a panel of experts that has met on several occasions and offered insight, experience and advice when reviewing the content, to ensure the book is rigorous and addresses the very real challenges to the professional trainer in a business environment.
• Conducted research with the people involved with deciding what training happens and the recipients of training – namely HR directors, business decision makers and training participants.
• Modelled (modelling is the effective description, replication and transfer of human capabilities from one person to another) best practice by observing over 50 top business trainers across many disciplines.

So, let’s get started!