How Organizations Can Sustain Training’s Impact

Between 2020 and 2021, the cost of training reached $92.3 billion in the United States. That’s not exactly a small investment, so making sure that training has a lasting impact should be a priority for people managers. However, a lot of training ends up falling flat for a number of reasons, be it lack of capacity, interest, or incorporating practices for sustainability. 

So how can organizations sustain training’s impact and how can leadership coaching help?

Why training in the workplace fails and how to make it more effective

Organization’s invest in training for a variety of reasons; to increase performance, upskill employees, improve manager-employee relationships, and even build leadership skills. However, organizations don’t always see, or maintain, these benefits. Here’s why:

  • Limited time and competing priorities
    Most managers and employees in the workplace have many responsibilities. Therefore, more time is spent on tasks that bring profits faster instead of training.

    Possible remedy: Managers should ensure that they look into more flexible training methods. Recording the training sessions can help them quickly access them when their schedule is free.

  • Lack of interest
    Many training programs struggle with a lack of interest from the employees. Most fail to recognize the benefit of the courses being offered.                     

    Possible remedy: HR should ensure the training is strategically marketed to employees and get the support of all managers and explain the benefits of the training.

  • Limited budget and training resources
    Some businesses increase their focus on providing employees with training, yet their budget remains the same. This can be brought about by lack of enough funds due to the high cost of training.

    Possible remedy: Managers may engage the trainers on how to maintain or maximize learning while minimizing cost. For instance, they may consider using instructional video content rather than one-on-one sessions.

  • Information overload
    To maximize resources available and minimize expenses, some companies offer extended intensive training programs. It leads to information overload, which isn’t easy to absorb and apply.

    Possible remedy: The trainers can provide short, memorable training videos that are easy to understand even for future referencing.

  • Neglecting what happens after training
    When employees fail to execute what they learned in training, they are likely to forget easily. New skills have to be practiced and applied immediately.

    Possible remedy: The manager and HR should design follow-up activities and testing to reinforce the new skills acquired immediately after completion of the training.

  • Over-reliance on technology
    Some people believe that technology will solve all their problems in the workplace. However, this can be a massive mistake if the technology used isn’t accompanied by human input.

    Possible remedy: An assessment on how best to use the technology needed in the company should be done.

Tips for attaining successful training outcomes

An effective training program is built by following a systematic process, which includes follow-up. Here are some tips on how to sustain effective training outcomes;

  • Assess training needs
    The first step in the process of developing a training program is to identify and assess the needs of the employees. Sometimes these needs are outlined in development plans. A meeting of managers and HR with all employees will help develop specific challenges that are hindering the company from achieving its targets and increasing the profits gained.

  • Set organizational training objectives
    The training’s needs assessment will identify challenges that need to be addressed by training. These challenges should be carefully analyzed and prioritized according to their urgency. The key goal is to help employees increase their performance and hence increase the profits for the company, as well as personal growth and development.

  • Create a training action plan
    This involves creating a clear action plan that includes the learning theories, content, and materials needed. It should clearly outline the resources and training methods. The trainers should also consider the level of training and the participants involved in the training.

  • Establish training initiatives
    This is the phase where the training is carried out. Trainers need to consider a suitable venue, employee engagement as well as thoroughly schedule the activities like facilities and equipment to be used. During the training, managers should monitor the participants’ progress to ensure it is effective.

  • Evaluate and revise training
    Eventually, managers should evaluate the training program to check whether it is effective and whether it meets all the objectives set. All the stakeholders should submit honest feedback to determine the effectiveness of the program. Questionnaires should be administered and analyzed for performance review.

Sustaining training's impact with leadership coaching

Leadership coaching is a powerful management tool that helps leaders at all levels and industries bring out the leadership skills to maximize their impact. Leaders have an opportunity to sharpen their leadership skills and motivate the employees to deliver the company’s targets and goals. 

Leadership coaching can go a long way to ensure the training for all the company’s employees is sustained. Coaching is an action-oriented approach that generates insights that can lead to positive and lasting mindset and behavioral outcomes. Coaches can align growth objectives with the business’ goals, support in building new habits needed to ensure training sticks, and create accountability. 

Training is a huge, and often necessary expense for the development of your people and business. Training develops the right skills, proficiency, and the ability to complete jobs effectively, therefore building in practices, like offering leadership coaching, will be critical to ensure your investment is fruitful.

Subscribe to Our
Newsletter

Stay up to date with new releases, features, how-tos, leadership tips, and more. (Don’t worry, we won’t flood your inbox or share your address.)
REQUEST A DEMO

We Develop The World's Most Impactful Leaders

Sounding Board offers virtual and scalable enterprise learning solutions that are flexible enough to adapt to rapidly changing work environments. Powered by behavioral science and core leadership capabilities, our proven coaching methodology drives measurable business impact.

Niall MacGearailt

SVP of Finance
Niall MacGearailt leads Sounding Board’s finance division as the SVP of Finance and Operations. Niall earned a solid track record of improving P&L and operational expense management for leading companies such as Whirlpool, Logitech, Avaya and most recently Soraa, where he prepared the business for acquisition by leading hi-tech lighting company, Ecosense. In his role, he is responsible for building and leading the finance & relevant operations functions for the company.

Ron Buell

VP of Engineering
Ron Buell is the VP of Engineering at Sounding Board and an accomplished software professional with extensive experience in leadership, software engineering, project management, and product management. Ron has led the development of highly scalable systems and applications across a variety of technologies for companies including OpenFeint (acquired by GREE), Rdio (acquired by Pandora), Lyris Technologies, and Lotus/IBM Software Group. In his role at Sounding Board, Buell is responsible for all engineering efforts in developing, deploying, and maintaining the enterprise software platform and team for the company.

Tommy Perkins

SVP OF SALES, PARTNERSHIP & CUSTOMER SUCCESS

Tommy is at his best helping clients think through complex challenges in order to create a positive impact on their organizations. He thrives when interacting with others whether helping his team succeed or working with clients to build long-term partnerships. He has extensive experience consulting with organizations on driving their employee experience, guiding organizations through change, and working to ensure organizations are moving the needle when it comes to their results.

Most recently, Tommy was a Client Services Leader overseeing some of GP’s most prized accounts on a global level. His responsibilities included overall client growth strategy, retention, and satisfaction. He represented all of GP Strategies’ major business lines including leadership, coaching, and engagement, digital transformation, outsourced services, and technology implementation solutions.

Before GP Strategies, Tommy spent several years with TTEC Digital (formerly rogenSI) where he led the sales team,  eventually becoming the regional Learning & Performance practice leader for North America. While managing the P&L and sales team he also led the largest global relationship for the firm (Deloitte Globally). During his time at TTEC, he focused on delivering blended learning solutions that incorporate technology and hands-on training. Before TTEC Digital, he spent several years dedicated to strength-based leadership disrupting the business landscape regarding performance management and employee engagement with thought leader Marcus Buckingham at The Marcus Buckingham Company / TMBC (now ADP).

Tommy has had the privilege of working with some of the most well-known global brands in professional services, retail, technology, and healthcare including Deloitte, Facebook, Microsoft, Bank of America, Novartis, Gap Inc., lululemon, and Intel. Several projects he led for Deloitte were Global GNPS, New Partner Pivot, NextGen Partner Program Deloitte China, Present to Win, the RPM project on performance management, and Unconscious Bias.

Tommy holds a BS in Health Sciences from Texas A&M University, and an MBA from Universidad del CEMA.

Drive hiring, retention, engagement, and DEI initiatives with Sounding Board’s leadership coaching solution

Sounding Board is the first leadership development platform that combines technology to scale with world-class coaches – empowering companies to solve urgent people-problems and gain a long-term talent advantage.

Join our coaching team

Our expert coaches combine top notch coaching, business acumen and organizational savvy to truly become your leadership “Sounding Board”. Sounding Board coaches are all industry certified and strongly vetted going through a 3 step qualification process and receiving ongoing supervision and development.

Lori Mazan

Co-Founder & CCO Sounding Board, Inc.
Lori Mazan is the Co-Founder and Chief Coaching Officer of Sounding Board, the preeminent global leadership development enterprise platform changing the face of leadership development through innovative technology for leaders at all levels of an organization. Lori is a seasoned executive coach who has guided hundreds of corporate executives through 1:1 coaching focused on business outcomes and developing critical leadership skills. Client companies advanced by Lori’s expertise include Fortune titans such as Chevron and Sprint as well as high growth and public companies like Intellikine, and Tapjoy, plus 10XGenomics, which became a public company in 2019 while top executives worked with Lori and the Sounding Board team.
Lori has spent the last 25 years coaching C-Suite executives to leadership excellence. Many of those public and private company CEO’s expressed that they would have liked this caliber of coaching earlier in their careers. Inspired by these experiences, Lori joined with Christine to launch Sounding Board as a feedback-driven, cloud-based leadership coaching platform that could maintain best-in-class leadership coaching while lowering costs to make it affordable and scalable for leaders at every level of their careers.
Before founding Sounding Board, Lori received her Masters’ in Adult Educational Psychology/Counseling from the University of San Francisco and a Bachelors’ in Psychology from the University of Virginia. Lori is an educator and has spent over 10 years as a professor of social psychology and group dynamics while acting as the interim Dean of Students at Holy Names University, She is certified by the industry’s gold standard, the Coaches Training Institute, and is a founding member of the Genentech Preferred Network of Coaches. Sounding Board is one of <3% of sole female founded startups receiving venture funding. In 2019 Sounding Board was selected as 1 of 7 startups (out of 100+ applicants) as part of SAP’s HR tech cohort, a group that represents the rising stars of the next-gen HR ecosystem.

Christine Tao

Co-Founder & CEO Sounding Board, Inc.
Christine Tao is the co-founder & CEO at Sounding Board, a Silicon Valley startup redefining how organizations are developing their leaders. Her extraordinarily rapid career growth to executive management in the media, mobile and tech sectors of Silicon Valley became her inspiration for founding Sounding Board. As she began to manage larger teams and be responsible for growing revenues, it became clear that she needed a “sounding board” to coach her on the development of her leadership skills. That’s where her Sounding Board co-founder, Lori Mazan came on the scene. A seasoned executive coach focused on leadership development, Lori coached Christine on real-world leadership skills that had a direct impact on business outcomes. Based on her positive and impactful experience with leadership development, Christine was driven to make leadership development coaching accessible to people at all levels of the organization.
Christine advises several startups, is a budding angel investor and is also a Tory Burch Foundation Fellow, a foundation dedicated to investing in the success and sustainability of women entrepreneurs.
Prior to co-founding Sounding Board, Christine was a Senior Vice President of Developer Relations at Tapjoy, a venture-backed, leading mobile advertising & publishing network. She led the growth of Tapjoy’s publisher advertising business from 0 to over $100 million in revenues in less than 3 years. Prior to that she led e-commerce partnerships and strategy at YouTube. Christine holds an MBA in Marketing & Operations from Wharton and a BA in Business Administration from UC Berkeley.