How to Combat Scrap Learning - Chronus · 2020-04-21 · Scrap learning occurs when a company implements employee training that fails to be applied after the training is over. In

ARE YOU GETTING THE MOST OUT OF YOUR TRAINING DOLLARS? Learning that fails to deliver lasting impact is a common problem in business today. In fact, research finds companies waste almost half of their training budget on learning that’s never applied on the job.1 This is actively negating what the Gartner 2019 Future of HR Survey identified as the number one initiative for 2019: building critical skills and competencies for the organization.2

In short, organizations are wasting time and money on training only to be left without the intended upskilling of their employees, bolstering of their leadership bench or progress on company goals.

Why? It isn’t the training. It’s the scrap learning.

CHRONUS WHITEPAPER

How to Combat Scrap Learning: Replacing Ineffective Training with Impactful ROI

HOW TO COMBAT SCRAP LEARNING: REPLACING INEFFECTIVE TRAINING WITH IMPACTFUL ROI

CHRONUS WHITEPAPER www.chronus.com 2

NO RETURN ON WHAT YOU LEARN: THE PROBLEM OF SCRAP LEARNINGScrap learning occurs when a company implements employee training that fails to be applied after the training is over. In other words, it’s an investment with zero return.

How does scrap learning affect a company? Metrics that Matter found that scrap learning accounts for 45% of the average company’s training, which translates to nearly half of L&D investments — and the time employees spend in formal learning programs — produces no value for the company.3 In addition, research found 40% of trainees fail to transfer learning immediately after training.4

Training magazine’s 2018 report revealed companies collectively spent an estimated $87.6 billion on training expenditures.5 It’s no wonder, with a lack of career and skill development being the number one reason why employees leave, companies are prioritizing training in order to remain an employer of choice.6 But with $39.4 billion of these expenditures benchmarked to be useless, it’s clear that today’s training and development strategy needs to change.

The losses don’t stop at time and money. Training that fails to produce impact can result in dissatisfied and unprepared employees, hindered strategy execution and stale technological development. This can severely derail HR’s top priority of building critical skills and competencies for the organization, and setback innovative companies looking to stay competitive in the immediate future.

How do you know if your organization falls into this common trap?

Scrap learning accounts for

45% of the average

company’s training



SIGNS YOU’RE SUFFERING FROM SCRAP LEARNINGHere are a few ways to identify it’s time to update your current learning strategy to deliver a solution that achieves operational excellence and lasting results.

No measurable return. You continue executing training strategies, yet only minimal shifts occur in employee competency or skill level. Despite the number of participants

enrolled or hours spent in training, efforts to upskill, improve culture practices or increase productivity fall flat. Learning programs aren’t producing measurable results you can attribute to impact on business objectives. Your workplace merely returns to “business as usual” post-training, failing to optimize costs and operations related to organizational goals.

High external hiring, low internal promotions. Even after participating in training, many internal candidates still lack the

skills required for advancement, and are deemed unprepared for internal promotion. Resources are spent recruiting external candidates while internal candidates miss out on pivotal growth and promotion opportunities. This can be damaging to a company as Wharton Knowledge Report finds “external hires get significantly lower performance evaluations for their first two years on the job than do internal workers who are promoted into similar jobs.”7

Employee dissatisfaction. Post-training, classic signs of employee dissatisfaction remain. Participation is low, absenteeism is high and turnover rates are less than ideal.

This is often perpetuated by a disconnect often exists between how senior leaders and employees view the training. The CSG 2018 Learning Trends survey reported that 62% of L&D leaders thought their programs were either good or excellent.8 In contrast, the survey of 3,600 workers indicated over 60% of Millennials didn’t receive or benefit from company training, while less than 40% of Baby Boomers felt their management team was invested in their training and development. If left unresolved, this disconnect can cause problems with retention and advancement of valuable employees. Ignoring these signs can create real trouble for your company.

How do you identify what’s triggering scrap learning?



GETTING TO THE ROOT CAUSES OF SCRAP LEARNING Scrap learning occurs when a company doesn’t implement the right methods to reinforce and sustain knowledge transfer post-training. Many programs lack reinforcement options, and even when options are provided, application and proper follow-through prove challenging. Here’s where companies often miss the mark:

No accountability. Post-training surveys reveal a common response time and time again: Employees are “too busy” to apply what they’ve learned. This stems from employees not understanding what they’re accountable for learning, both

during and after training. Likewise, leaders fail to reach an agreement on their crucial role in reinforcing learning among their teams. Without an accountability plan, expectations remain unclear across the board, resulting in no ROI.

No experiential action plan. While it’s true that a training program’s learning techniques play a role in its success, even more critical is assuring learners understand how to

apply the material after training. We know from the 70-20-10 model of learning that 10% of learning comes from courses, 20% comes from other people and 70% is communicated through on-the-job training and challenges.9 Whether it’s just-in-time learning or micro learning, these trending programs cannot be successful without proper empirical activities to help transfer the knowledge to employees’ roles and responsibilities.

If not, they remain stuck in theoretical concepts that fail to translate into on-the-job results — forcing them to fall back on old habits while their skills and progress suffer.

No support network for continuous learning. One-time training is not enough if you want learning to stick. The Ebbinghaus ‘forgetting curve’ theory estimates that people forget 90% of what they’ve learned within a week of learning it.10 Adult learners require consistent,

ongoing reinforcement to retain new knowledge. They want to learn what will help them perform tasks or deal with problems they confront in everyday situations and in application to real-life.11

Learning must be embedded into the employee journey at every stage — from onboarding, inclusion and career development to upskilling, leadership development and succession



planning. Integrating continuous learning into the entire employee experience humanizes the process, making it a supportive, holistic part of an employee’s engagement with the company.

Without a formal plan for knowledge transfer and reinforcement, organizations are missing crucial opportunities to produce ROI. The top quartile of organizations measuring and combating scrap learning manage to reduce it to 18% and achieve annual performance gains from learning that are more than triple that of the typical organization.12 Shrinking scrap learning leads to an upskilled, developed workforce ready to fill the future leadership bench and take on innovation curves to move the company toward success.

But only if you have an effective solution to tackle the problem at scale.

TRANSFORM SCRAP LEARNING INTO IMPACTFUL LEARNING WITH FORMAL MENTORINGThe success or failure of your company’s learning initiatives depends on whether you have a formal plan in place to combat scrap learning. To aid this, many organizations are turning to mentoring. Mentoring is a continuous method of learning from others that provides a direct plan for reinforcement and on-the-job application.

According to the ATD report Mentoring Matters, companies with employees enrolled in formal mentoring programs saw the top benefits to be higher employee engagement and retention, as well as growth support for high-potential employees.13 The report also found nearly 6 in 10 participants indicated that their formal mentoring programs were effective at helping employees meet learning goals to a high extent.

Instead of throwing out your existing training strategy, mentoring supplements learning programs to better support employees in retaining the knowledge and skills needed to meet objectives, leading to greater impact for the company.14

How does mentoring reduce scrap learning?



Mentoring humanizes the employee learning experience, unleashing the potential of a company’s most valuable asset — its people. It welcomes individual employees, connects them with others in their networks, and develops them through the next stages of their professional growth.

Clear Plan for Accountability

Mentoring connects people, allowing them to learn from each other. This connection produces accountability for mentees by providing them with an opportunity to enact a plan with their mentor for implementing the training material into their work routine. The nature of this relationship both reinforces the training and nullifies the “I’m too busy” excuse.

MENTORING SOLUTION FOR ACCOUNTABILITY:Career Mentoring – Career mentoring is a great way to reinforce learning and create accountability. With traditional career mentoring, mentor and mentee can be paired together for three, six or 12 months in order to progress through a new skill, making it a valuable part of the mentee’s routine and a readily available support for the progress of their career.

Reverse Mentoring – Junior employees mentor seasoned senior employees

MENTORING COMBATS SCRAP LEARNING IN THREE DISTINCT WAYS:

Establishing Accountability12

3Providing Experiential Reinforcement

Building Support and Continuous Development



in a one-to-one or group setting. This mentoring format builds accountability by assigning both the mentee and mentor with the task of sharing skills and knowledge with each other and provides an opportunity to reinforce learning objectives organization-wide, creating more alignment across departments and levels.

Experiential Method of Reinforcement Mentoring pairs recently-trained employees with those who can show them how to make use of new skills within a week or a month, creating immediacy of use for learning and giving employees a better chance of retaining new skills — all while absorbing best practices for exercising the material for success.

MENTORING SOLUTION FOR EXPERIENTIAL REINFORCEMENT: Flash Mentoring – With so many things competing for employee time and attention in the modern workplace, flash mentoring provides a focused opportunity for busy employees to contribute to learning objectives. It allows organizations to support employees in learning a variety of skills and building accountability by pairing them with a person who can give them expert insight or experiential training in a one-time meeting.

Employee Support & Group Learning One-off trainings, seminars and workshops build initial skill development, but if you want employees to continue growing long after training is complete, you need to create a network for continuous support and development. Ongoing group learning across departments and functions builds comradery and support.

MENTORING SOLUTION FOR ONGOING SUPPORT: Mentoring Circles – This peer-to-peer group mentoring format enables employees to develop together by joining with colleagues in their organization who share learning objectives. Circle members choose a relevant topic for group discussion over three to six months and assist in supporting each other while also holding each other accountable, simultaneously tearing down organizational silos through cross-department interaction.



HOW DOES MENTORING HUMANIZE THE EMPLOYEE LEANRING EXPERIENCE?A mentoring strategy infuses accountability, experience and support in the employee journey, adding that missing human touch to a company’s learning and development strategy. This addition can bridge the knowledge gaps that currently exist in organizations.

Mentoring’s very nature brings people together in order to learn from each other and support the advancement of individuals in an organization. This is why over 71% of Fortune 500 companies offer a corporate mentoring programs.15 Mentoring creates holistic engagement that can increase profits, retention, customer satisfaction and recruitment.

We’ve seen how industry-leading organizations have utilized mentoring to efficiently and cost-effectively improve their learning, training and engagement throughout the employee journey:

Through mentoring, companies can build a training and development strategy that meets the evolving needs of the employee experience. Mentoring humanizes the learning culture, allowing companies to unlock higher levels of productivity and engagement.



By incorporating a mentoring strategy into your learning and development initiative, you can combat scrap learning with a humanized approach — putting your company on the fast track to improve employee engagement, become the employer of choice among the top talent in your industry and build a pipeline of qualified leaders for future success.

HOW CAN CHRONUS HELP?With Chronus mentoring software, humanize your learning experience with formal mentoring programs that combat scrap learning and provide impactful results.

ENTERPRISE STRENGTH. Simplify the complexity of running a mentoring program by customizing the Chronus platform to easily launch, scale and fit your unique program. As your mentoring program scales, the platform evolves to serve your needs with a range of formats, such as 1:1, reverse, flash or circles. Avoid the headache of manually-run programs. Allow our platform to do the heavy lifting and seamlessly integrate with your existing systems while you focus on your mentoring strategy and organizational goals.

EXPERT SUPPORT. With 10+ years of experience running mentoring programs, Chronus’ award-winning software allows you to avoid common pitfalls as you start up quickly with our mentoring experts. Utilize pre-built templates and best practices to create a streamlined experience for program owners and end users. Our dashboards, reports and surveys help minimize administrative work, allowing you to focus on the ROI that matters—retention, engagement, promotion rates, inclusion and more.

ChronusPhone: 800.515.1206

Phone: 425.629.6327

Email: [email protected]

Chronus mentoring software humanizes the employee experience, unleashing the potential of a company’s most valuable asset—its people. With unique MatchIQ® technology, a guided experience for participants, and the most configurable platform in the industry, we work with some of the top organizations, including EY, PNC, Autodesk, Uber, Society of Petroleum Engineers and more.

Simplify the complexity of running a mentoring program by customizing the Chronus platform to easily launch, scale and fit your unique need. Partner with Chronus to leverage the newest innovations, mentoring formats and best practices to ensure long-term mentoring success for your employee experience and your organization as a whole.

Learn more at www.chronus.com.

Copyright © 2019 Chronus. All other brand and product names mentioned herein may be the trademarks and registered trademarks of their respective owners.


ENGAGING USER EXPERIENCE. Our easy-to-use platform optimizes the user experience, encouraging greater adoption with innovative technology for the modern workforce. Advanced calendar integration and mobile applications remove barriers to meeting while keeping mentors and mentees engaged on the go.

REFERENCES1. https://comdev.osu.edu/sites/comdev/files/imce/Metrics_that_Matter_Whitepaper_-_Confronting_Scrap_Learning.pdf

2. https://theme.gartner.com/story/2019-hr-priorities#!/page/3/1

3. https://comdev.osu.edu/sites/comdev/files/imce/Metrics_that_Matter_Whitepaper_-_Confronting_Scrap_Learning.pdf

4. http://www0.dmst.aueb.gr/nikolaou/blogs/training.pdf

5. https://trainingmag.com/trgmag-article/2018-training-industry-report

6. https://cdn2.hubspot.net/hubfs/478187/2018RetentionReport/WorkInstitute2018RetentionReport043018-Final.pdf

7. http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/why-external-hires-get-paid-more-and-perform-worse-than-internal-staff/

8. https://act.cgsinc.com/rs/756-XUI-889/images/CGSEnterpriseLearning-AnnualTrendsReport-03302018.pdf

9. https://www.ccl.org/articles/leading-effectively-articles/70-20-10-rule/

10. https://www.td.org/insights/dont-forget-the-ebbinghaus-forgetting-curve

11. https://joe.org/joe/2006december/tt5.php

12. https://comdev.osu.edu/sites/comdev/files/imce/Metrics_that_Matter_Whitepaper_-_Confronting_Scrap_Learning.pdf

13. https://www.hrdive.com/news/atd-mentoring-programs-boost-retention-engagement-rates/514663/

14. https://www.trainingjournal.com/articles/opinion/mentoring-how-does-it-impact-your-business

15. https://www.td.org/newsletters/atd-links/best-practices-in-developing-high-potentials

Documents

How to Combat Scrap Learning - Chronus · 2020-04-21 · Scrap learning occurs when a company implements employee training that fails to be applied after the training is over. In