When training goals are linked to employee performance, the leap to business-performance improvement seems clear. Yet, too often, progress stalls and new skills are underused or ignored when employees get back to work. This article describes what to do to make a difference...

1. Six ways to link training with
business performance
Aligning HR
with overall
business
objectives
STRATEGIC COMMENTARY
Lucy McGee
e-HR
Redesigning the company intranet to
focus HR on “Me”
HOW TO...
Build an effective global knowledge
workforce
PRACTITIONER PROFILE
Irene Cowden, Group 4 Securicor
Q&A: WITH LUISA DELGADO
How do I find HR practitioners, not
HR pretenders?
HR AT WORK
Tying up loose ends in HR: using a
value-adding formula
HR AT WORK
Fairchild Semiconductor's 10 ways to
identify “intrapreneurs”
REWARDS
Rolling out voluntary benefits for
public sector employees
RESEARCH AND RESULTS
More female staff take on
international assignments
November/December 2006
Volume 6, Issue 1
PAGE 20
DEPARTMENTS
Making dynamic changes at Northern Foods
Connecting staff research with
company success
Restructuring talent sourcing at DuPont
Management development strategies at
Fujitsu Services
Defining the strategic agenda for HR
FEATURES
by Ron Vonk

2. 20 Volume 6 Issue 1 November/December 2006
HEN TRAINING GOALS ARE linked
to employee performance, the leap to
business-performance improvement
seems clear. Yet, too often, progress stalls
and new skills are underused or ignored
when employees get back to work.
Based on more than four decades of helping
organizations improve performance through training,
Kepner-Tregoe, a management consulting firm, has
identified six key actions that will encourage employees
to change and really utilize new skills. Taking these
actions can help ensure the success of any good
training program by clearing the path from training to
improved business performance.
The actions can be summarized as “creating an
effective performance system” – in this case, making
sure everything in an organizational context is
contributing to a person or group of persons
(performer) using the skills they’ve been trained in
(response). See Figure 1, right, for Kepner-Tregoe’s
performance framework.
1. Set expectations before training begins
People are enrolled in a workshop and know the date
and time it begins. But do they know what to expect,
how to prepare, or how the learning is relevant to their
work?
One pharmaceutical company we worked with,
which has operations in more than 60 countries,
tracked a direct relationship between setting training
expectations and achieving results in several North
American facilities. The company had received a Food
and Drug Administration warning letter citing its
backlog of open investigations and the company’s
failure to consistently get to root cause. A select group
of employees went through Kepner-Tregoe’s “Train-the-
Trainer” program to become Program Leaders. In this
program, employees were trained to conduct Problem-
Solving and Decision-Making workshops as a licensed
trainer for colleagues themselves, coach them in
application on a daily basis and facilitate tough
corrective and preventive-action programs.
Putting new knowledge to the test
Initially, the Program Leaders conducted workshops for
all employees involved in the writing of investigations.
This was followed by facilitated corrective and
preventive action programs using troubleshooting skills
learned in the workshops.
In one facility, the Program Leaders also conducted
hour-long, pre-workshop meetings that set expectations
for the workshop participants. This facility
outperformed all others in reducing backlog and
finding root cause of product quality problems and
equipment failures. In addition, the departments in
this high-performing facility that had managerial
participation in the pre-workshop meetings
by Ron Vonk, Kepner-Tregoe
Six ways to
link training
with business
performance
Strengthening the impact of acquiring
new skills
W
Maintaining momentum after learning new skills and
techniques is of paramount importance if companies
are to maximize the benefit of upskilling employees.
Management consulting firm, Kepner-Tregoe, has
identified six steps to ensuring the training doesn’t go
to waste, but is instead harnessed early, to produce a
positive, noticeable effect on the business.

3. 21
3. Require evidence of application of new skills
Once people have received training, they’re ready to
apply the ideas. But they may not know that they have
the opportunity to do things differently, especially
when surrounded by others who don’t share their new
skills.
Engineers at an oil refinery we worked with were
hesitant to apply our troubleshooting process after
completing our workshop because the process required
them to go out and ask questions of the operators. The
problem was that they weren’t accustomed to asking
the operators questions because they were “supposed to
know what was going on.” They thought the operators
would think less of them.
Managers overcame this by setting the expectation
that participants would be required to begin specific
troubleshooting applications during class and then
complete them back on the job. Managers asked for
status reports, gave participants enough time to
complete their applications, and had them present the
results of their work.
Analyze existing processes
The training produced immediate benefits. One
participant had chosen to work on solving the problem
of an increase in gasket wear – gaskets had been
wearing out faster than in the past. Some colleagues
thought this might not be very important; replacing
gaskets is an inconvenience, but it’s a
cost of doing business. However, the
analysis uncovered that an explosion
that had occurred in the recent past
had loosened gritty material that was
working its way through the system.
The next question asked was,
where else could this material
outperformed the departments that didn’t have
managers attending the pre-workshop meetings.
Taking the time to set expectations and provide
management support before training begins, helps
learners to understand what will be expected of them
and how the training relates to their work.
Management involvement demonstrates that the
organization is committed to the training and considers
it a high priority.
2. Provide coaching to support success
Many organizations recognize that applying new skills
in a rapid-paced, day-to-day work environment can be
daunting. A good coach or facilitator can make this
transition easier. Coaches can guide employees as they
apply their skills on the job and ensure that skills are
used properly. For issue resolution, facilitators should
structure a facilitation before it begins, manage the
participants as they struggle with important issues and
then follow up until the issue is resolved.
A major health insurance company enhanced
training with coaching to support performance goals
within its IT function. After expanding its IT
infrastructure, the company began soliciting data-
management contracts to leverage this new capacity. As
the business grew, there was a need for improved skills
in problem solving, decision making and project
management. Employees were trained as Program
Leaders, and then taught skill-development workshops.
During training, Program Leaders helped workshop
participants apply new skills to IT-related issues and
projects, and then followed up with them after class.
Within the IT group, the Program Leaders
developed a reputation for helping to resolve issues and
plan projects effectively – this reputation spread
throughout the organization. As other groups began
requesting their coaching help, many of the Program
Leaders were redeployed to spend over 50 percent of
their time coaching and facilitating others to perform
better. Other employees have since been trained to
replace coaches who are promoted to other jobs or
leave the company.
Ensure adequate feedback is provided
One critical factor for performance success that coaches
can provide is feedback. People need feedback if they
are to improve. Practice makes permanent; feedback
makes perfect. Coaches can use feedback to address
application errors in real time when leading individuals
or a group. Or they can provide short-interval
monitoring if they’re reviewing material prepared
independently. Coaches give learners an opportunity to
correct their work and learn from their efforts. Positive
feedback of work well done encourages others to take
the extra effort and risk of using a new skill.
Ron Vonk
is director of Kepner-
Tregoe’s European client
account services team.
Ron’s engineering expertise helps
organizations achieve results by identifying
improvement opportunities, implementing
projects and embedding processes.
Volume 6 Issue 1 November 2006
t
Figure 1. Kepner-Tregoe’s performance-excellence framework

4. 22 Volume 6 Issue 1 November/December 2006
5. Integrate new skills into routine activities
Training is a key resource – when the opportunity is in
place – for people to excel. This is achieved by setting
clear priorities for how and when the training should
be applied. Using the skills learned in training needs to
become the rule rather than the exception. One way to
accomplish this is to incorporate the intent of the
training into daily operations and forms.
Facing a rapidly changing industry, a leading steel
manufacturer was able to successfully transform a mill
that was a potential candidate for closure, by providing
the training and opportunities needed to improve
performance. After providing training in problem
solving, decision making, situation appraisal and
risk/opportunity management to all employees at the
mill, management used shift change-over meetings to
set expectations about what employees needed to
address over the course of the next shift.
In the past, this had been done with the outgoing
chief hastily scribbling notes for his in-coming
counterpart to decipher. Now, the outgoing chiefs, who
understood the existing situation they were leaving
behind, ran shift-change meetings that were attended
by the outgoing and incoming key shift operators and
key support staff. Meetings were held in a workroom
where defective products could be brought in and
shown.
Ensure management support
Over the course of 18 months, the mill improved
against all metrics by 30 percent and moved from
worst to best. The division head arranged for other
plant managers to visit and observe. During one of
these visits, a skeptical plant manager asked one of the
mill’s shift coordinators what he thought about the
shift-change meetings.
He said, “I hate them, but I would never go back to
the other way.” The new skills had been integrated into
the way work was done, which was sometimes painful,
but the results were dramatic.
Given the resources and opportunity, people will
excel. A good training program needs to be supported
by appropriate opportunities to use the skills learned in
training. Experience demonstrates that management
involvement, clear expectations, a supportive setting
and a well-integrated program can strengthen the link
from good training to real business performance
improvement.
t be? The answer turned out to be in an important but
rarely used part of the plant that was due to be started
up shortly. If they hadn’t applied new skills, asked
questions and found the true cause of the gasket wear,
this line would have shut down at the moment it was
most needed.
Requiring learners to overcome on-the-job barriers
and demonstrate their use of new skills quickly
transitions training to application, integrates skills into
the workflow and accelerates the return on training
investment.
4. Create an environment that supports new skills
If the work environment makes it difficult to use new
skills, training dollars are wasted. Program Leaders at
one of the world’s largest paper manufacturers had
trained many employees at one of the company’s paper
mills, but no-one was consistently using the
troubleshooting process learned in training.
This became apparent to the plant manager when he
observed a group of operators standing at a
malfunctioning machine discussing possible causes. He
called them into a conference room and asked a
Program Leader to guide them through the process to
address the issue. Within 30 minutes, the problem was
solved.
A week later, he observed the same group of
operators standing at another malfunctioning machine,
jumping to possible causes and making no progress on
resolving this next problem that had developed. His
initial reaction was to provide a refresher course,
because he knew the process worked if people used it.
On reflection, he realized that this wasn’t the
appropriate response – the crew had successfully used
their training a week earlier. The difference was that
the week before, the manager clearly communicated
that he wanted them to use the new troubleshooting
process, provided a facilitator and gave them a suitable
work environment.
The manager then took action. He provided the
Program Leaders with facilitation training so that one
would always be available for each area of operation.
He set expectations that the process should be used
after no more than 20 minutes of downtime. Finally,
he provided a dedicated workspace with log books,
easels, white boards and coffee. Within two months,
facilitators were trained, the new skills were used and
downtime was significantly reduced.
Provide extra tools and support
An appropriate work environment can be virtual. In
addition to providing project governance for the
organization, a virtual office can offer project support
with intranet-based project tools, a centralized
repository for sharing project documentation and
access to coaching/facilitation support via e-mail and
telephone.
“People need feedback if they are
to improve. Practice makes
permanent; feedback makes
perfect. ”

5. 6. Monitor ongoing application of new skills
Your people have received training and have begun to
apply the ideas. But how do you encourage them to
continue to use what they have learned in the future?
A global food products company with over US$15
billion in sales initiated a program at a key facility that
added the application of newly acquired skills to their
associates’ scorecards. Managers required documented
use of the new skills each quarter. In this way, managers
set expectations for participants and provided them
with self-regulating feedback. Trained facilitators were
provided to help employees apply their training and
meet scorecard requirements. As people started using
their training, they achieved better and quicker
resolutions. Within a year, the application of these skills
was simply the way work was done.
Under stress, people revert to their comfort zone, the
way things have “always” been done. Managers need to
provide encouraging incentives to people for changing
the way they work. If managers maintain an interest in
the use of the new skills, so will the people they
manage.
Training is often a necessary component of a change
initiative. But training alone is not sufficient.
Organizations can improve their success at achieving
training and organizational goals by setting
expectations before training, providing motivation and
support, integrating new skills into the workflow and
monitoring training and results over time.
Managing human performance
The choices employees make, the actions they initiate
and the behaviors they demonstrate all take place
within an organizational context. This human
performance system (as depicted in Figure 1) is like any
other system that helps you manage valuable assets; it
must be managed to achieve your organization’s
objectives. The approaches outlined in this article and
other actions can modify the performance system to
support use of new skills acquired in training.
23Volume 6 Issue 1 November/December 2006
CONTACT
Ron Vonk
,
E-mail: rvonk@kepner-tregoe.com
KEY POINTS!
In order to get the most out of your employee-training initiatives, follow
the steps below and implement the ideas at your organization:
1.Set expectations before training begins
Provide participants in training programs with details about any
preparations they may need to make.
2. Provide coaching to support success
Developing Program Leaders will help to establish a robust coaching
system in order to roll-out knowledge around the organization. Ensure a
feedback process is included in order to facilitate increased learning.
3. Require evidence of application of new skills
Set tasks for post-training. This helps to overcome on-the-job barriers.
4. Create a work environment that supports the use of new skills
Ensure managers receive and give support to implementing new ideas
learned during training.
5. Integrate new skills into routine activities
Find ways to improve existing practices and ensure that a new standard
or way of working becomes routine as soon as possible.
6. Monitor ongoing application of new skills
Ask for training participants to document the use of their new skills and
feed back their use of initiatives to managers.