Despite the recession, companies are spending millions on ‘pointless and ineffective’ training systems and elearning courses. Charles Jennings says it’s about time learning managers pulled their heads out of the sand.

There’s one simple lesson that training and development managers and their business stakeholders could learn that would save their organisations large amounts of money - and saving money is an important consideration for almost all of us in the current climate.  The lesson is this:  stop wasting money on ILT training for system, process and product rollouts and upgrades, and cut down on eLearning courses, too

So what impact will this have? Well, the amount of time, effort and money spent on formal ILT training prior to rollout or upgrade of enterprise platforms (particularly ERM and CRM), processes, and other new software systems and products is huge. Of the US$134 billion (yes, 134 billion!) the ASTD reported as being spent on employee learning and development in the US in 2007 (the latest figure available) a conservative estimate is that at least 5% is spent on this type of system, process and product training.  That’s more than $6 billion every year that could be used much more effectively or saved.

However, some managers and L&D people just don’t seem to get it.  When they are presented with the data that shows front-loaded training in these situations is almost invariably ineffective, they generally just put their heads down and continue on regardless. It reminds me of the remarkable insight of the author Aldous Huxley when he wrote the words “I see the best, but it’s the worse that I pursue.” Maybe most managers and L&D people are secretly drinking Huxley’s soma – the hallucinogen in his novel Brave New World – “Half a gramme for a half-holiday, a gramme for a week-end, two grammes for a trip to the gorgeous East, three for a dark eternity on the moon”

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http://www.trainingzone.co.uk/topic/learning-technologies/how-not-train