1 Discussion Question,1 Summary and 1 Case study

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threatening to others, and downright heresy to a few. It is critical to get the organization aligned and supportive of the change initiative.

At this early stage, one way to build support is to create the vision of the transformed training organization collectively. It is important to identify the many benefits of moving to a full-service HPI organization. These benefits should include expanded opportunities for professional growth, increased credibility within the organization, greater variety in project tasks, increased skills, and many others. It is also important to capture those aspects of the transformation that are likely to prompt the most concern. Examples of such issues might include loss of specialization, lack of clarity in individuals’ future roles, and lack of experience with nontraining interventions. Addressing these concerns in an open manner will encourage the support of internal practitioners. Maintaining an open dialogue can dissuade “negative speak” that can escalate to internal sabotage. Negative “hallway talk” with potential internal clients could stall—or even defeat—transformation efforts.

Too much enthusiasm for the transformation can hurt your efforts. Why? A shift in the functionality of the organizational unit takes time—time for your organizational unit to make the shift and time for your clients to understand and accept the change. Being overzealous by trying to do too much too fast damages your overall transformation effort. Building too much enthusiasm in your client base before you are staffed to respond, or trying to initiate HPI projects in organizations where you have not earned credibility with management, could also prove destructive to your mission.

Therefore, it is important to establish a timeline for the transformation and establish consensus among those in the department for sticking to it. The remaining nine steps are suggested milestones for the timeline.

Step 2: Transition to a Valued, Results-Based Training OrganizationStep 2: Transition to a Valued, Results-Based Training Organization

Establishing the training organization as one that is focused on performance will help management recognize the function’s role in helping the organization achieve its goals. This will help to establish credibility for transforming the training function into an HPI function.

Many training organizations today offer many internally and externally designed training programs. Managers and employees are accustomed to picking up the training catalogue and searching for the program that will provide the skills and knowledge they need to succeed in the workplace. That is one of the more optimistic scenarios. In many cases, the company course catalogue is an easy solution to the mandatory employee development effort of the company. Employees flip through the listing of courses, looking for interesting topics that may or may not have much relevance to their current knowledge or skill gaps or, more importantly, anything to do with their current job tasks.

The role of traditional training departments has been to identify the training needs within the organization and to provide training opportunities that will help meet those needs. They often schedule the programs, manage registration and logistics, and, in some cases, even deliver the content. There are many outstanding training departments in corporations today that not only provide standard off-the-shelf training programs but also design and develop customized training for their organizations.

In order to increase our value to the organizations that we serve, we must first offer training that is strategic, i.e., that aligns with the organization’s key business strategies. This means that we need to be very clear on what those strategies are. We need to be able to step into the role of analyst and determine those skills and knowledge that the workforce needs in order to achieve their goals. Then we need to design effective training that will bridge those gaps. Finally, we need to be able to quantify our impact on business results.

To win the support of management to transform a training function into a performance improvement

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function, the training organization must first measure and publicize the effectiveness of their most recognizable human performance intervention—training. It is not good enough to just report the number of classroom hours delivered. The training department must measure and report the ability of the learning events to produce behavior change back on the job and the impact of behavior change in meeting the organization’s goals. This information is vital to communicating the training organization’s commitment to producing measurable business results rather than just filling classrooms.

In general, the training profession has made significant improvements to demonstrate their training’s effectiveness in terms that business leaders can understand (see Figure 7-2). The Kirkpatrick model for evaluation, discussed in Chapter 5, has been historically used for demonstrating training effectiveness. Jack Phillips, of the ROI Institute, has written extensively on a fifth level—return on investment. The ASTD 2005 State of the Industry Report (Sugrue and Rivera, 2005) indicates that 91 percent of courses offered by leading-edge firms are evaluated at Level 1. Fifty-four percent of courses at these firms are evaluated at Level 2. Twenty-three percent of courses offered by leading-edge firms are evaluated at Level 3, and only 8 percent at Level 4 (see Figure 7-3). In general, organizations