How many times have you been sent on an external training course, only to find that three months later, when you need to use what you were taught, you can’t remember it?
Formal learning, the established approach to training staff, has been shown to be relatively ineffective unless the theory is immediately put into repeated practice. The problem has grown in recent years, as we are exposed to an ever-growing amount of information which changes and becomes outdated at an increasing rate.
In this article, Charles Jennings argues that traditional training techniques are neither effective nor efficient in the modern workplace. Rather than declaring training redundant, however, he makes a convincing argument for seeking out new, and increasingly informal, approaches to learning, which have multiple benefits for both the individual and the organisation.