Why Your Learning and Development Dollars Aren’t Paying Off  

Does this sound familiar to you: you’ve hired or identified a few team members to focus on training; you’ve spent a significant amount of money on training vendors; you’ve sent “up and comers” to attend leadership training; you may have even invested in a Learning Management System? Despite all of these efforts, you keep hearing that employees are not trained well enough to meet the needs of your firm. 

In a profession like public accounting, where completion of CPE hours has long met the mark of training success, it’s easy to underestimate the impact a solid learning and development strategy can have.  In many cases, firms may not even know what great learning environments look like. Learn more about
5 Critical Steps to Build Your Learning & Development Strategy. Too often, firms invest money into their training efforts, yet fail to yield impressive results. Curious to know why?   

Here are the most common mistakes well intentioned firms make: 

Failure to create learning plans that align with the competencies you expect to be demonstrated. Every firm wants their employees to develop faster; however, few firms take the time to outline what team members need to learn, let alone when. Clearly defined learning plans that include technical and success skills training are the foundation of creating a learning culture. 

Poor marketing. Sadly, training opportunities are not often valued as critical investments of time. Firm leaders regularly describe training as “have to” experiences, instead of “get to” learning opportunities.  Additionally, it’s not uncommon to speak in terms of CPE hour completion instead of vital learning or upskilling. Firms who celebrate continuous education for the sake of learning reap the rewards of better employee retention. Don’t just take our word for it:  in a recent Gallop pole, 48% of American workers said they would switch to a new job if it offered them skills development. Another 42% of employees say their most valued form of career development is training provided by their employer. Celebrate the efforts you are making and keep talking about the investments you make in employee development!  

Lack of encouragement to complete training with focused attention. In today’s world of virtual learning, employees must be free to focus on their education without the expectation of multi-tasking during training sessions. Leaders not only need to model good learner behavior (closing email and IM aps, for example), but respect their team members’ time while they are scheduled for training. Work assignments and schedules should be adjusted to allow team members adequate time to complete training without having the lurking pressure of deadlines.  

You may not have the right people delivering/designing training.  This may come as a shock, but your best technicians probably don’t make the best trainers.  It is common to have firm technical experts deliver and design internal training programs without the help of instructional designers, and that is typically problematic. This can lead to the dreaded “death by PowerPoint,” and a substantial lack of retention of the learning material. Capitalizing on experienced training professionals to design internal learning programs will yield improved learning outcomes. Learning experts can advise on the right method of training, how to incorporate activities and simulations, and ensure learning objectives are met. 

Right topic, wrong audience. For learning to be impactful, it will demand effort. This requires careful selection of training experiences and ensuring the right participants are in the audience.  In the interest of efficiency, many firms will schedule all team members in a department to attend a training course. Often the hope is that more experienced staff will share insights to help less experienced team members apply their learnings. Unfortunately, we generally find that one group of attendees is checked out because the material is too basic, while another group is checked out because it’s too advanced.  Meanwhile, the intended audience members, seeing the other participants have disengaged, follow suit believing this is the norm when attending training.  

In our profession, where lifelong learning should be a cornerstone, investing the time into building a solid learning strategy will pay dividends. At Spiirall, we believe firms deserve to have the guidance and support needed to create the training & development strategy they aim to achieve. We understand what it’s like to be overwhelmed & frustrated as you determine your learning & development needs.  This is why we have provided guidance and education to hundreds of accounting firms to help them design better learning & development strategies. If you’d like to learn more about how Spiirall can help you capitalize on your training and development investment,
contact us at info@spiirall.com.