The Big Picture View of Training
Training vs. education.
Productivity vs. performance.
How do these terms differ? How are they defined in the literature? And what connections exist between them?
Vast sums of money are spent on training every year. Yet, despite the immense investment, the return on investment (ROI) is difficult to measure and demonstrate.
Finally, a report examines the complex relationships between training, performance, and productivity in the workplace. “The Impact of Training on Participation, Performance, and Productivity,” by Brandon Hall Research senior analyst Dr. Gary Woodill, Ed.D., considers the following questions and more:
- How can the terms “training,” “education,” “productivity,” and “performance” be defined?
- How does training relate to education overall?
- Does training benefit performance and productivity?
- Why is training so hard to evaluate, especially training in the workplace?
- What deficiencies exist in the research literature on training results?
Before analyzing the various influences that determine the success (or failure) of training, we need to consider what these concepts mean and how experts try to define the terms. For example, training is often contrasted with education, which is seen as a broader concept. Experts in the training field also seem to have reached the consensus that training most often takes place in work environments, while education happens at institutions of learning.
In his report, Dr. Woodill uses training to refer to job-related instructional activities that take place with employees.
Many influences come into play when studying the connections between training, performance, and productivity, including societal influences, organizational influences, job characteristics, employee characteristics, and training characteristics. Many forces act on many different people and organizations at the same time, with a variety of feedback loops that make the final outcomes unpredictable and sometimes surprising. Many agents are involved, including managers, trainers, regulators, employers, academics, consultants, technologists, and trainees.
The research done for this report clearly shows that training is a complex adaptive system, as defined by Neil Johnson in his book, “Simply Complexity: A Clear Guide to Complexity Theory.” In fact, training and development can be viewed as an ecosystem, rather than as a simple linear relationship between providing training and improving performance and productivity.
For these reasons, we need to describe training in all of its complexity, and we need to experiment with many different variables to seek the desired productivity and performance results.
We should expect such experimentation to generate surprising new results in terms of performance and productivity.
It is time to stop doing the same old same old! It’s time to look at a big picture view of training. This new report on “The Impact of Training on Participation, Performance, and Productivity” helps you do just that.
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