Nigel Cassidy (NC): Making learning stick, why your training offerings may not boost performance and what you can do about it. I'm Nigel Cassidy and this is the CIPD podcast.
Now managers must surely know when there's something wrong with their learning programmes. They may be chock full of whizzy digital content but the hope for learning outcomes are somehow lost in the machine so people don't do their jobs any better. So how can you get your learning resources to cut through the noise of workplace distractions and drive performance like they're supposed to?
Well, Fergal Connolly is a corporate learning transfer specialist, one seemingly fired up by bitter experience. Delivering learning at Meta and Amazon, he says course participants had forgotten 90% of what they learnt within a week. Hello, Fergal.
Fergal Connolly (FC): Great to be here. Thank you so much, Nigel. Looking forward to this conversation.
NC: Can't wait to find out why you think that happens and what can be done about it.
Next, we have the HR Learning Development and Change Manager at Hertfordshire County Council, big on what she calls designing engaging experiences to spark reflection and resilience throughout the working day. It's Aglaia Economou. Hello.
Aglaia Economou (AE): There, Nigel. Lovely to meet you all.
NC: And back with us is the CIPD's Head of Learning, Steve George, having developed programs for some of the world's leading brands in his past life. He's now at the heart of charting L&D's shift from delivering individual training blocks to continuous and self-directed learning. Hi, Steve.
Steve George (SG): Hello, Nigel. Thank you for having me.
NC: Well, before we focus on changing L&D for the better, I can't resist asking each of you, what's the worst, or the most laughably ineffective, learning or development programme you've come across. I wonder how did you stop it or help whoever commissioned it to see the error of their ways?
FC: The one that comes to mind, in my early days as a training professional, I was running some onboarding training. And, you know, as we do in onboarding, try to get people talking, get some energy going in the room. And I opened up with, you know, some icebreakers as we do. And the question that I asked was, what's your hidden talent? And we had six or seven people in the room, and the first three or four were decent everyday answers. Some people could recite the alphabet backwards and that kind of thing. The next person I came to, he deadpanned serious expression, and he said, I can feign interest in mundane activities while appearing absolutely engaged, but really, in my mind, I'm on much more interesting things.
NC: Oh dear.
FC: It took a second for the penny to drop before I realised, he was talking directly to me. But it really kind of really kind of called out the nature of some icebreakers and how they can really be kind of cringy for a lot of people. But everyone laughed. It actually really broke the ice. So he did, he hit the nailed head.
AE: Well, it's something very similar, but it was seen as an icebreaking activity. But it was an event I attended as a delegate. The trainer wanted to role model a piece whereby he wanted to kind of bring an example to light, whereby he just kind of walked into the room and just said, right, we're starting off very abrupt, very task driven. None of the formalities, oh, hello, my name is, we're going to be doing the reason you're here, none of the learning outcomes. It was just like very stern, very sternly. And feedback we all gave on that first day was how rude he was. He came across rude, no empathy, no compassion, no, because it took quite a while. I think up until lunchtime, he turned around and says, right, how did the morning session go? And we were like, my gosh, do you really want feedback on that morning session? And it was all about, you know, yes, how we come across, you know, our styles and how to be aware of people's perception. So that kind of stood in my mind just as a delegate.
NC: Yeah, I'm cringing for him now.
SG: I love both of those examples. For me, again, it was quite early in my career, going back probably 20 years or so ago now. I was called in to consult on a project for a really large organisation for fire safety training. And we spoke to the subject matter expert and he went into enormous detail, a good hour, hour and a half, explaining all the different fire extinguishers and all the different colours for how you use different ones for different types of fire. And we've been called into this because they wanted an hour of training on fire safety. So it's far enough ago that people would define the length of time they wanted before they defined the content. And we were having this conversation with them and all these different colour fire extinguishers. And we got down to there's 20,000 people in the organisation. It's all office based. It's not catering or something where you might have different types of fires. That's a lot of time for people to be learning about different colour fire extinguishers. So how much do they actually need to know and what do you want them to do if there's a fire? Do you want them to try and put it out? And he looked horrified and he said, the last thing you want people to do is to use a fire extinguisher to try and put a fire out. We want them to hit the alarm, find the fire ward and then evacuate the building.
So they'd come in with this idea that everyone needed to know everything about fire safety, when the reality was all they needed people to know was how to set the fire alarm off, how to find the fire escapes and where the nearest master point was after the fire. So we reduced it to some job support tools and posters and a five-minute video, which is a lot more popular with the learners this one.
NC: Well, I have a feeling we may return to the topic of inappropriate courses in a moment, but well, it seems we're all still looking for better ways of achieving something workplace scholars, I think, first noted two centuries ago, it's learning transfer. It sounds like a new and polite term for office gossip, doesn't it? But it's actually the ability of people to apply learned information or skills to fresh situations. And, well, just hearing those stories there from my own personal experience, I'd say the trouble can start before you go on the training. You know, you basically don't want to be there in the first place. It can be during it, you know, because you don't have the right confidence or the pre-knowledge to benefit from it. And then, of course, you then soon forget about it afterwards because there's no time or scope to employ your new skills.
So, Steve George, I mean people may typically come off a good course, they're on a mission to use what they learned, but then it all goes to pot. So why does that happen?
SG: I think it can be for a variety of different reasons, so I'm really looking forward to exploring them as part of this. But I think quite often people won't fail to perform because they didn't learn enough, because the learning was ineffective, because the person delivering it wasn't good, whatever the different reasons might be. I think quite often people will fail in that transfer because the conditions don't allow that learning to survive contact with reality. So whether that's time pressure, if it's unclear priorities, if it's incentives in the organisation, if it's the way that the managers help them embed and use that learning, all those different things can all impact whether or not the learning survives that contact with reality and that transfer into the real world.
So one of the ways I try and think about it is learning is almost this huge potential energy. So it's like pulling back on this rubber band, but whether or not it actually launches and it impacts in the organisation is dictated as much by what's happening within the organisation, within the teams and where that learning is going to be applied as it is by the learning itself.
NC: So it sounds like it's as much about the organisation that the learning is taking place in as the learning itself.
Fergal, you quoted that scary figure or you quote that scary figure that 90% of new skills learnt can be lost within a week. I mean, so what I mean, if there's one silver bullet that we're overlooking in terms of supporting learning, what would that be?
FC: I wish there was just one, honestly, Nigel. It's kind of like Steve mentioned, you know, it's, we can pull back the rubber round as much as we want, but it's really the culture that surrounds people that really influences how they change.
There's many, many different influences within our workplace. There's our peers, our managers, there's the working styles, there's the cliques, and there's all the different things that go into determining whether someone will change their behaviour. But I suppose the closest thing we have to a silver bullet would be manager support. And that's where the research really says that having a supportive manager is a true game changer when it comes to people changing their behaviours.
I'd like to give an example of Nigel, that you're Steve's manager. And Steve's gone to a training. And Nigel, before the training, you say to Steve, Steve, I wish I didn't have to send you to this one, but we just need someone to kind of go in, sit there, but I need you back at your desk as soon as you can and let's go back to work. Steve, in that situation, are you going to learn very much in that training, no matter what it is?
SG: No, definitely not
FC: Nigel has just kind of told you that this is not important to me.
NC: You've given him permission to just slack off really and just go through the motions.
FC: Exactly. A very simple twist would be before Steve goes, Nigel, you say, Steve, I'm excited to hear about this training. When you come back, let's sit down, have a little chat about it, and we'll see how you can apply it. So two sentences, Steve now knows that Nigel, you care about this. You want to see how he's going to show up when he comes back. Steve, you now know that your manager is watching and you're going to be paying much more attention in that situation. You're going to be taking notes, you're going to be doing all sorts of things, you're going to be ready to come back and speak to Nigel about it.
So it's just a simple twist, but a lot of times managers don't know how influential they are when it comes to this. It's a massive opportunity for learning and development, I think, because we've been focusing so much on the learner. And we've really been kind of leaving a support system that surrounds the learner at the chance.
NC: And Aglaia, this immediately raises quite a big question, doesn't it? Because what we're talking about here is not just the learning on its own, it's about the support around that. And that also implies a role for the trainers or the people who devise the learning to work with the managers. Does that mean then that maybe a lot of people still haven't twigged how learning and development has changed? So either they think it's not in their job description to follow up or a senior manager who commissioned the learning might not even ask them to get involved in seeing how it sticks.
AE: Yeah, I think so, Nigel. I think a lot of it is around that. We don't have those conversations and find out what is that, what is the changed behaviour required. We're very reactive. Something happens. And then we put on training because something's happened, go on to training. We don't look at why that happened or have the conversations prior with leaders as such. And just coming back to Fergal, you know, having that development conversation again is even crucial in that one-to-one with that staff member as to whether they see themselves or, you know, what's holding them back, what are their barriers to completing something and, you know, why go on to certain training. and then have that follow up. I think that is so key is allowing and allowing them the time to embed and apply what they learn into the workplace.
NC: And Steve, you were telling me beforehand that a good test is whether L&D people have had any hand in defining the nature of the learning or the course content. I'm just thinking back to your firefighting course there. I mean, if a sensible conversation had taken place beforehand, the shape of the training would have been very different a lot shorter. So just tell us why people don't get involved and how you change that.
SG: So I think at one of our conferences last year, we asked the audience how many people feel they have influence over the training courses they're asked to design. And a really surprisingly large number of them were still being told what to do and aren’t able to influence. I think one of the ways that we can think about having more influence over that course structure and what's designed is really understanding what that outcome that's needed is. So as Aglaia said, there is a performance outcome that's required from the learning that the managers have perhaps identified. So understanding what good looks like to reach that outcome, if the problem the manager has identified is actually going to lead to that in the first place, or if they've misdiagnosed what the cause is.
Again, other examples I've seen in my career is a manager saying the team needs active listening training, but it's actually the manager that needs communication training. So it's the thing that you've been asked to design, actually going to reach that outcome. And as learning professionals, it's something that's really useful for us in articulating the value we're bringing to those organisations. If we can understand what good looks like, if we can understand where that performance gap is, we can make sure that the learning we're designing closes that gap. And because we know what good looks like, we can identify where we're improving the workflow for people in their day-to-day roles. And we can demonstrate that our learning is having an impact.
NC: So Fergal, how does that happen in practice? Say you are aware of a business need to do something. How do you push back if you're asked to organise a particular thing which you feel won't actually do the trick?
FC: Yeah, it's something that L&D often struggles to deal with because at times we are a bit of an order taker. And that perception can be hard to change, but it is doable. And it really just comes down to having some conversations. So like Steve said, start caring about the things that the business cares about. And we need to think about learning as like a systemic process.
So when you get a request and it comes in and don't say, no, I'm not going to give you training, maybe just not yet. Let's have a little discussion about what might be the root cause behind this training request. Because a lot of times when people ask for training, it's they're prescribing a solution for truly undiagnosed symptoms. So like Steve said, but the active listening. So don't say no, say not just yet, and kind of explain that there's many, many reasons for training, but training is not a solution to a lot of problems. So I tried to explain it in terms for that request or so talk about every hour in the classroom is an hour of people being away from their desks, away from their jobs and not hitting targets. So let's make sure that this investment actually solves your problem.
And then there's some really key questions that I like to ask if they allow you to have this conversation. So just ask like, what are people doing or not doing that tells you there's a problem? If you were to, who's like a top performer on your team? What behaviours are they showing that the others aren't and why are they missing that kind of thing? And then there's a really good one. It's if we were to pay everyone £1000 bonus to do this correctly right now, could they do it? And if the answer to that is yes, then it's not really a skill issue at all. It's really more of a motivation issue.
So you're really trying to peel the onion and really get down to the root cause of why is this issue happening and what is the issue? And when we find out what the issue is, we'll be able to find if training is a solution to that problem at all. Or is it tool, or is it a process, or is it, like Steve said, like a communication issue? But it's really about asking those harder questions.
AE: Again, like Fergal was saying, I challenge a lot. I get lots of requests come in for bespoke training. I always then go back to whoever's requested it and ask for more information. Where did this come from? What had happened? Why do you think this would help as such? So it is, it's not being afraid to challenge them, going back and saying, why? How is this then going to solve the problem if we provide them, for instance, yes, the communication, if it wasn't, if they come up with a communication.
So we explore, I explore it more with them, I explore it with the managers and, yeah, just kind of challenge it back. And if they give enough information in terms of, they know what good looks like, they know exactly what it is they would want that person or the group of people to walk out the door with, the outcomes are clear, then we help and design a training.
NC: And I know you put a lot of emphasis on kind of personal curiosity on people sort of self-directing. Is there anything you can say about how you get people to do that in a very busy local authority where I guess there just isn't the time to think too much about the thing beyond the job in hand.
AE: Yeah, well, we have to kind of think outside the box with all our budgetary constraints, et cetera. So we try do almost like, you know, we call them just in time learning. So little light bites that the staff can log on to on our iLearn platform. Podcasts they can listen to, a variety of iLearn modules. We also offer what we call peer learning spaces. So almost like an action learning set where peers can come together for a period of time, usually about an hour and a half, and just kind of have that platform to discuss issues and challenges and have peers to support each other.
FC: What you mentioned there about having those peer learning support circles, I think what I've found is really useful and you're doing the right thing. You've got access to the learning content. You're giving people access to podcasts and they can go and pick whatever they want. What we found is really helpful is just having, say, a podcast, but everyone on the team listens to the podcast and then just a simple discussion in your next team meeting. Did you like it? Did you not like it? What could we do differently? And then that kind of sets that accountability, adds an extra layer of accountability and engagement. More people will start listening. But you have to keep it social. Like you said, you have to balance it. It's not a, you have to listen to this. It's.
NC: I'm all in favour of everybody being forced to listen to this podcast.
SG: I loved your example, Fergal, if you paid people 1000 pounds, would they do it straight away? And using that as a mechanism to identify the skill versus will kind of tension. Again, that comes back to that finding that cause and it allows you to drill down. If people would do it, is it their managers aren’t amplifying the correct behaviours so therefore the work isn't being done? Are we incentivising things wrong so people aren't doing it because they don't have time? So what are those different constraints that all come in?
I'm just curious, when you've identified that people would do something but they're not, how do you influence the organisation and the people who have asked you originally for a specific intervention? How do you influence them towards what will actually have impact?
FC: Yeah, so it's kind of about using the language that we use every day. We don't talk about events and training, we try to talk about it in terms that the business really cares about. So like we said, yes, we could bring you to training and do this thing, but it's going to cost the company this much money, like the training costs money, it's going to cost an hourly, people are giving up time away from the roles to do this. So we need to try and explain that. We could do this training, but it's really going to leave it in the same situation and it's going to cost you a lot of money to get back to the same starting point. And six months later, you're going to come back to me and say, can we do this training again? But we're just going to be in the same state. But based on the performance diagnostics that we've done, this situation, it seems to have, the issue is it's a process issue. There's a bottleneck on your team. There's A workflow issue somewhere or there's a communication issue, which training will not be able to fix. What we recommend, and again, this is where your performance consulting hat comes on is what we recommend is you create a new workflow or you, I’m speaking hypothetically because I don't know what the issue is, but give them different options to solve the actual problem based on your diagnostics and not just, let's do a training.
AE: Just thinking back on how we try and support, because that is a key thing for us as well, is supporting once those learners have come back into the workplace. Because you know what, they come back to inboxes, they come back to urgency, operational urgencies. And we have put in place almost like a reminder for managers to check in. So prior to somebody coming onto the training, the manager will get an e-mail to kind of say, right, Aglaia is coming onto a training course next week on communication. Please check in with her after that. And then following from that, another e-mail goes out to kind of say she's completed the training. So that gives a little bit of a prompt for that manager to actually check in and have that conversation to see whether, well what did you learn? What have you taken away and what are you going to apply? Because I think that's the key thing is the application. It's all nice if a lovely networking session, met nice people, had a good time, but it's what are you then going to apply? And as Fergal was saying about bringing it back, and we also kind of ask if it's somebody who's gone on to a training, to bring the learning back into a team meeting and share it with the rest of the team if they haven't all had the opportunity to go.
NC: I was going to ask you, Steve, you're involved with judging People Management Awards. You do see a lot of practice, a lot of good practice.
SG: Absolutely
NC: I'm sure it's very interesting sometimes. Is there anything you can share about how organisations have achieved this kind of sharper, more effective learning, particularly as we were hearing from Aglaia, when you don't necessarily have vast sums of money to spend on sort of custom built, whizzy digital platforms and all that.
SG: Just to confirm, really, it's always really interesting. It's a real privilege to get to see so many case studies and so much fantastic work. Yeah, it's one of my favourite parts of my job actually. But yeah, there are some really good examples. And sometimes what we see is where the budgets are more constrained. invites a level of creativity and a level of thinking about how to approach problems that perhaps doesn't happen where budgets are higher.
So I've not got any examples off the top of my head, but I think, again, it comes down to what both Aglaia and Fergal have said, around identifying what the problem is and then what's the quickest, most effective way to solve that. So something that we see fairly often is that recognition that learning can be most effective not by adding to the workload, not by adding to what people do, but by looking at what we can take away. So what's the lightest touch intervention we can have for the greatest impact?
NC: And is this phrase social learning that comes up? What is that exactly?
SG: Social learning. So again, it's how we encourage that sharing of learning within our organisation. So whether that's explicitly through perhaps communities and peer support and peer mentoring, but also implicitly. So how we create the environment for people to have those conversations, to share knowledge and share learning.
So one of the things that I'd like to try and introduce into team meetings, for example, is space for reflection. So we're not just going through an agenda and smashing through all different agenda points. We create time for people to talk about challenges that they've got, how they've solved them, where they may need other people to support, even if it's outside the core of their role. So how are we creating those structures within the work that we're doing to encourage that socialised learning as much as we possibly can.
NC: And all that, Fergal, seems to be coming outside the sort of formal sense of a learning and development course or a particular module. This is a much more continuous thing, isn't it? And I wonder whether that presents... problems for organisations in adjusting to actually delivering learning in a way that's going to be more effective.
FC: Well, we've known about that. We've had the 70-20-10 model for, I don't know when it's been around for since I've been in L&D. So we've known that the social groups that we're a part of are really influential when it comes to how we learn, how we support ourselves and how we do these things. So I don't think there's massive amounts of change that are required. I think it's just enabling the opportunities for this kind of thing to happen. And it sounds like Steve has some great ideas about how to put these kind of things together and just help people to share and to kind of support each other. And it's an additional layer of accountability and support that can really help pre- and post- training.
But come back to what Steve was saying actually about managers and the great managers awards. Like the manager is the most important support that there is for the learning transfer process to happen. But if you look at the behaviours that are required for a manager, what they need to do to support a learner, it's just good management skills. So it's the kind of thing that you get in your manager one-on-one, whatever it is. So it's given feedback, it's coaching, it's communication, it's building trust, it's checking in, it's setting expectations. So it's all these behaviours that managers already have. We just need to kind of unlock it a little bit and just say, use your strengths over here, that you're really good at, that you did this training on, and then just apply it to this learning support situation because it's going to help you, it's going to help your team and whatever goals you have.
NC: Okay, we're almost coming to the end of our time. I'm glad you mentioned coaching. Aglaia, you, I know, work as a coach and you do draw on that, don't you, in terms of making learning more effective. Do you just want to say something about that?
AE: Absolutely, absolutely. And just on that, I mean, you know, just something I wanted to bring across is sometimes we get these what we call accidental managers who are so good at the task that they don't really know how to manage people and don't have those basic skills. And we have to go back to basics in terms of that. Yes, I mean, coaching is such a crucial element. We're really encouraging our managers to have that coaching approach in those one-to-one discussions. And it's, just by asking, because it's all about unlocking the potential in everyone. We believe everybody has the answers to that. So it's really crucial that managers are able to have that conversation. And yeah, coaching is something we really, forefront, we really encourage managers to do a lot of in their one-to-ones.
SG: Just exactly as I said, that accidental manager thing. And I think that emphasises how it's incumbent on the organisation to support managers as well. So everyone owns learning and everyone owns that learning transfer. So learners need to feel empowered to enact what they've learned on the training course. Managers need to be supported to support the learners and the organisation needs to recognise the value of that learning and the performance outcomes and the impact it's going to have on organisational performance. Because ultimately that's why it's taking place in the first place. Yeah, really it's just that. It's that whole organisational piece in supporting that learning transfer. It doesn't sit with any one individual. Everyone owns that.
NC: And Fergal, you've worked in the corporate world where things can be quite tough and ideas can change, strategies can change very quickly. Any thoughts for wins that you can achieve with your learning?
FC: I suppose to build on what Steve was saying, it's a system. It's not just one person alone. It's not just one great training. Performance is an output of a system. We're not going to train people into being high performers. The high performers are going to come from the outputs of a system of support from, yes, great training, from motivated learners, from supportive teams, that's it, that organisation knowing the benefit that learning has on where an organisation can go. So it's all about that kind of the mindset, having a growth mindset, but supporting each other through the changes as they happen.
NC: And I think you wrote somewhere that motivation to learn in an organisation isn't enough. You need permission and accountability. So just remind us what those are.
FC: Yeah, so when we come back to thinking about, I know I keep saying about the great managers, but people need space to learn, but they also need space to apply. If we give the greatest training in the world, but like Aglaia said, if you go back to your workplace and you've been hit with pings and emails and you've got deadlines and that kind of thing, and we don't have an opportunity to actually try what we learned, it's never going to transfer.
So having that space to actually try something in the performance environment, is hugely influential when it comes to actually continuing on using that new behaviour. So having the permission to actually be able to do that, again, comes from the manager, comes from the system that surrounds a learner by allowing people to try things out, get things wrong, and learn.
NC: Okay, well there's a trainer friend of mine says when something goes wrong, well, we all learned something today, but we really did.
So big thank you to our trio of Fergal Connolly, Aglaia Economou and Steve George. Please don't forget to subscribe to this CIPD podcast series if you haven't already so you don't miss more people management ideas and inspiration. But until next month from me, Nigel Cassidy and the whole team, it's goodbye.
