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Applying the 80-20 rule
or
Do most training problems require a “training” solution?
Jane Hart, 12 February 2007
In a recent blog posting I quoted the
80-20 rule, that is that research shows that 80% of learning in an
organisation is informal, and only 20% of learning is formal. Jay
Cross has pointed out that the inverse is usually found, i.e. that
organisations spend 80% of their budget on formal learning. Other
commentators say he is wrong; in fact, it is more like 100% of
training budgets are spent on formal learning solutions (i.e.
courses) and little if nothing is spent on informal learning
solutions.
So, let us assume you are a Learning & Development manager and you
have a £100,000 budget to spend this year, does that mean if you
apply the 80-20 rule, you really only have as little as £20,000
to spend on formal learning? So what on earth do you do with the
other £80,000?
Here are a few ideas for looking differently at common
training problems.
The first thing to do is to ask whether a training problem requires
a formal training solution? In other words is a course - whether it
be online or in a classroom - the only way to answer to a particular training
challenge?
When it comes down to it, many of the training problems that you
have are people not being able to do their jobs properly or
effectively or quickly enough - and these usually don’t require the users to
take a course to solve them.
Bear in mind too, as Jay Cross and Tony Driscoll pointed out in an
article in March 2005, that "the half-life of newly learned
material is three days; if learners don't use it immediately, they
lose it". In other words a course can just be a waste of money,
for if learners don’t use all their knowledge immediately – they
simply forget it.
What would be much more effective is for them to have access to
“learning” when they need it and just in time to do a task. So if
they are working on a new system or task or process, and they can’t
remember how to do it, they might watch a small screencast (i.e,
online demo), or listen to a short narrated presentation or simply
refer to a one-page Word document with the task list on it that they
had already printed out and stuck up on the wall in front of their
desk, or they might even just contact the Help Desk using instant
messaging to get some online at-the-shoulder help on completing the
task.
All the above are informal learning
solutions. And what is more they are much quicker to put in place than online
courses, the content-based solutions are much more easily updatable
and all can be achieved in-house with low-cost if not free or
on-your-desktop tools. All of which means you can make your
£80,000 go a much longer way than spending it on formal learning
solutions.
Whilst many of your training problems are likely to be performance support or
improvement problems like the one above, others might just be due to a lack of
relevant, useful information.
Let us look at another classic training problem, that of training
sales staff in a new product that has been launched. The normal
sequence of events is that once the product is developed, a training
course is produced to up-skill the sales force in the details of the
new product - and this can sometimes result in the product being
launched well before the sales team are ready to talk about it to
their customers
Once again this training problem could be solved by an informational
solution that cuts through all these issues. In this case by using a blog.
The Product Development team could make regular postings about the
process of new development and the way a new product is shaping up
in an internal blog. The sales force could read these postings and
respond by asking questions about the new product or by providing
vital input directly to the team about what they feel might be
essential to its success in the marketplace. In this way the sales
force would not only have been informally trained on the product by
the time the product goes to market – but will also feel they have
been part of the development process as well..
So, here then are just two suggestions how informal learning can be
used to address traditional training problems that would otherwise
have resulted in the production of formal learning to solve them
If you would like us to help you identify practical and creative
ways that you could use to address some of your training issues
by using informal learning, and by doing so use your budget
more profitably and cost-effectively, then please do
contact us.
If you would like to tell us your thoughts on this article, please
go (back) to our blog to leave your comments.
Next article/posting: When do you
provide a formal learning solution and when an informal learning
solution? OR What is the most appropriate learning solution?
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