Follow up Training With Coaching

by Peggy Carlaw

Remember the last time employees attended a training session where they came away with wonderful ideas and/or methods for improving their job skills? Actually, it happens every day. Employees leave training sessions pumped with information that will change the way they communicate, handle customers, or perform more effectively on the job. However, their enthusiasm can quickly diminish without management's support. Long-term retention of newly learned training skills requires ongoing coaching and assistance from immediate supervisors. This means frequent inquiries into how recently trained employees are progressing and feedback that will help them continue practicing what they have learned.



Coaching: The Muscle Behind Customer Relations Training
Like any other service-oriented organization, government agencies need to take a hard look at programs that encourage co aching after training. Eddie Dwyer, program manager for communications at Blue Cross & Blue Shield Association/Federal Employee Program in Washington D.C. oversees as many as 350 healthcare representatives who continuously receive telephone calls from federal employees around the globe. It's a tedious job for employees who often receive less than positive responses. What benefits Dwyer and the employees is having a coaching/monitoring program in place after their training. "The customer service reps have quite a few challenges," says Dwyer. "Our training is intensive, and follow-up coaching and monitoring are essential in reinforcing a positive attitude about what they are doing. The coaching program that we have stuck with from the very beginning is extremely hands-on. We are not monitoring our employees' telephone calls from some far off location. Rather, we are right there with them giving positive feedback. It provides our employees with a security blanket that they can always fall back on."

A compelling argument for providing employee training and coaching follow-up is perhaps best described by Jim Clemmer, author of Pathways to Performance, published by Future World 1999-2002. "Most organizations use their training investments about as strategically as they deploy their office supplies spending. And, the impact on customer satisfaction, cost containment, or quality improvement is just as useless. One of the biggest causes of wasted training dollars is involving employees in training sessions that offer ineffective methods. Too often, organizations rely on lectures, inspirational speeches or videos, discussion groups, and simulation exercises. While these methods may get high marks from participants, research shows they rarely change behavior on the job. Knowing isn't the same as doing; good intentions are too easily crushed by old habits."

Clemmer goes on to explain that training should be used as a key strategic tool. It's essential to the success of both the organization and the individual employees. However, a study conducted by Xerox, Inc. showed a paltry 13 percent of skills were retained by trainees six months after training if managers failed to provide coaching and support as the skills were being applied.

On the flip side, a study conducted by Motorola, Inc., found that follow-up on training sessions with on-the-job coaching and support from managers resulted in significant improvement across-the board. The Motorola study finds that those plants where quality improvement training was reinforced by senior management got a $33 return on every dollar invested. The resulting report also indicates that Motorola plants, which provided the same training with no top management follow-up, produced a negative return on investment. The bottom line: on-the-job coaching and follow-up can result in considerable savings and return-on-investment for any organization investing in employee training.

What Gets Watched Gets Done
Dwyer and her employees know that in most consumer inquiry related jobs individuals may be relegated to small cubes, wear telephone headsets, and rarely meet the customer face-to-face. Too frequently these employees fall back into the same monotonous conversational routines from call to call. To ensure continuous "friendly" and prompt customer service, most service-oriented organizations, especially the government, monitor their customer service phone calls. However, monitoring customer calls and reviewing employee responses are only quick fixes to building long-term customer relations and motivated and upbeat employees. In service organizations training is not an option. It should be required before hiring employees as well as reinforced frequently during their employment.

"Because our federal customer relations program runs in three to three and a half month spurts, takes a sabbatical, and then returns in a few months, our training has to happen quickly," adds Dwyer. "I honestly don't know how we could do this without continuous coaching and on-the-job reinforcement. Without it we would realize a constant turnover in employees, and no organization can afford huge turnover."

Making Training Stick
When an organization sends employees to training programs, there is a lot at stake. It's an investment in employee time as well as dollars and cents. To get the highest return for each dollar, follow-up programs and coaching need to be established to guarantee that employees will apply what they've learned on the job.

To accomplish this, programs that include a coaching component are much more likely to provide long-term retention of the training. It paves the way for managers or direct supervisors to reinforce the training by using these practical approaches:

a. Voice expectations regarding the training and how it relates to the employees' jobs.
b. Encourage employees to identify specific skills they would like to develop or improve upon.
c. Plan a debriefing with employees upon their return. Suggest they return with brief summaries of their learning experiences, including what they learned, how they plan to use the training, and how it will benefit them, the organization and their customers.
d. Schedule a staff meeting where the trainees can share information with co-workers to help them apply skills learned to their jobs.
e. Establish a system of continuous follow-up with employees to be sure they are progressing toward their goals.
f. Provide employees with job aids to reinforce classroom learning.
g. Schedule review and coaching sessions with a focus on praise for continued effort.

Transferring Training from the Classroom to the Job
Enabling employees to successfully transfer what they learn in the classrooms to what they do in their jobs is the responsibility of management. With out buy-in and a continuous support system in place, training is a waste of time and money. Conversely, employees need to be receptive to incorporating what they learn at training sessions into their daily work habits and be willing to take active roles in sharing their progress and experiences with their coaches and peers.