KZ: Often, organizations with subpar training results want employees to complete courses on their own time, outside normal business hours. If you expect them to study on evenings and weekends, you’re essentially asking them to choose between personal responsibilities and work responsibilities. Some will be happy to do that. Others have commitments outside work, such as caregiving responsibilities, and simply don’t have the time and energy to extend their workday in this way.
To get employees up to speed on a particular technology by a specific date, it’s essential to carve out dedicated learning time during regular business hours.
If you’re not getting the training results you want, also consider looking at these two questions:
- Do your learning programs include assignments, due dates and a person who can answer questions if learners get stuck?
- Are you assessing employees’ ability to apply their new learning to use cases that mirror the work they’ll be doing on the job?
When employers rely exclusively on employees to manage their own learning, it’s common to get uneven results. And an online course may or may not map directly to your organization’s use cases. Software developers may need some guidance on how to apply the online learning to your specific projects.
