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Features

Published December 2008

Training in the 21st Century: Everything Old Is New Again

  

  Ed Cohen

As companies tighten their belts in response to tough economic times, CLOs are getting squeezed. Being forced to do more with less, today’s learning leaders are finding new ways make learning and training more effective and efficient by designing programs that maximize value while minimizing cost.

When the economy stalled in the late ’80s and early ’90s, the mandate for CLOs everywhere was to ensure their people were trained as efficiently and inexpensively as possible.

Most learning organizations rose to the challenge by taking advantage of then-new technologies such as video discs and computer-based training to decrease classroom time and cram as much nonessential content into pre- and post-work as they could, saving only the most valuable content for the classroom. Best-practice organizations also focused on more clearly defining performance objectives tied to training. Then, they cut out everything that wasn’t explicitly focused on helping learners achieve those objectives.

In the years that followed, the trend toward optimization continued as new technologies emerged. We cut travel from our budgets by using real-time webinars instead of face-to-face training. We moved entire learning programs into self-paced e-learning modules to minimize the need for classroom time. And we began employing rapid-authoring tools to streamline our course-development processes.

Back to the Future
Here we go again. Times are tough, and CLOs are facing renewed pressure to reduce costs and optimize learning. The problem this time around, however, is that there are few cuts left to make in training departments. Most of the fluff already has been shaved, and as an industry, we have learned — some of us the hard way — that you can’t always reduce the amount of training and expect to save money in the long run. Whether you are teaching someone accounting or how to use a medical device, there is a threshold investment of time and resources necessary to teach someone to do something. Condense beyond that, and learning and retention are imperiled.

Thankfully, there aren’t many CLOs who are caving in to current budgetary constraints by slashing training time or cutting programs from their curricula. Instead, some are implementing better and more efficient ways to manage the processes that feed into and support employee learning and performance development.

Learning on a ‘Need to Know’ Basis
It is in this arena — process automation and optimization — next-generation learning, performance and talent management systems are of distinct advantage to CLOs.

One of the ways that such systems help companies reduce costs is by automating the process of determining what employees know and what they still need to learn. Within learning programs themselves, for example, an integrated talent management system can eradicate the need for the time-consuming hard coding that used to be required to attach instructional objectives and assessment questions to courses and educational documents. The system can automatically attach both components to courseware of all kinds. Then, based on a learners’ performance on a given assessment, it can automatically determine which skills individual learners have mastered and which ones they need to brush up on.