Does Your Training Support the Business Needs?

Imagine this: Your department manager, division VP, or training director asks you to develop training on effective communications. What do you do? Jump to action and create the course? Or ask questions to identify the business drivers, operational gaps, and performance gaps to ensure the course you create delivers results to the business?

I ask these questions because I frequently conduct course audits for my clients and see a common trend in the audits: The stated learning objectives do not clearly align with business needs. So, how can you go about developing training that supports business needs? In this e-letter you will read about a 4-step checklist to help ensure alignment. But first, a picture to help you see where the steps fit in:

Customer-employee link

Ideally, customer and shareholder desires and expectations will drive organizational goals, which in turn will inform department and employee goals and outcomes. Moving from the inner circle outward, the work performed by employees ideally support department goals, which support organizational goals and meet customer and shareholder desires and expectations. Thus, any interventions (such as training, a new system implementation, or an updated work process) should ultimately support the outer circle.

Often, requests for development of training programs originate from somewhere in the inner circles. As instructional designers, curriculum developers, and organizational development practitioners, it is our responsibility to ensure alignment of training with business needs. Use this checklist to help ensure alignment.