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Features

Published July 2008

The Manager’s Responsibility for Employee Learning

  

  Jeffrey Berk

To have a lasting effect on employees, learning programs must receive buy-in and support from an organization’s managers. It’s up to the learning function to make sure management professionals understand their critical role in employee development.

Some time ago, I listened intently to General Frank Anderson of Defense Acquisition University (DAU) explain how a lot of new knowledge and skill is obtained from DAU but may not be optimally applied on the job because managers don’t assume the responsibility they should when their direct reports are sent off to training. He coined the term “scrap learning” to describe the phenomena.

I thought about Anderson’s remarks again when I heard Dr. Robert Brinkerhoff — known for his Success Case Method of learning evaluation — give a presentation earlier this year. Brinkerhoff gave an Oscar-worthy performance when he illustrated the three types of learners to the audience:

Learner 1: Attends training because he or she is told to do so. Preparation involves knowing where to go and at what time.

Learner 2: Attends learning because he or she loves the experience. He or she will take any new training that’s available.

Learner 3: Attends training when needed. He or she is prepped by the manager about expectations when returning to the job and therefore comes with a realistic and specific focus for what needs to be learned and how it should be applied.

When Brinkerhoff asked the audience of 100-plus how many had Learner 3 in their training programs, less than 20 percent raised their hands. It is a sad state when high-quality and highly effective training programs have a lot of Learners 1 and 2.

Brinkerhoff’s remarks prompted me to study some benchmark data. I mined the KnowledgeAdvisors database of learning evaluations and benchmarks to gain a better understanding of Anderson’s scrap learning and Brinkerhoff’s Learner 3.

Here is what I found:

• Sixty percent of learned knowledge and skill stops being applied on the job 90 days after learning ends (or sooner). This means there is 60 percent “scrap.” It also means there are many of Learners 1 and 2 participating in training.
• Fifty-two percent of respondents not applying training on the job said they didn’t use it because they had “no opportunity” to do so. Sixteen percent cited other priorities as their reason for not using training on the job.
• There was a 1.04 point difference between learners who said the materials provided by learning were adequate as opposed to their feedback on how managers helped them determine use of the training back on the job. This means there is a significant drop-off in what the learning function provides as support versus what employees’ environments provide as support.

Best Practices for Manager Responsibility
As a result of this data, I reached a simple conclusion (admittedly, one many people have known for years): For any learning program to be successful, no matter how good or bad the program, there must be manager responsibility and involvement to maximize the impact on the job. Below are my top 10 practices for manager responsibility. Unlike the David Letterman list, it is not in any particular order, nor is it especially humorous. But I hope you will find it useful in engaging managers’ sense of responsibility for learning.

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