What Belongs on the Training Plan?
A Better Way to Decide What Employees Really Need to Learn
Photo credit: Vera Mikhailova
Someone opens last year's training plan.
- Forklift safety? Keep it.
- Cybersecurity? Obviously.
- Leadership fundamentals? Probably.
- Communication skills? People liked that one.
Then someone suggests a new AI course. Another manager wants refresher training after a recent quality issue. Someone else found a seminar that looks useful. By the end of the meeting, last year's training plan has grown, but has organizational capability?
The Hidden Problem
Training plans are often built around the training that already exists. Organizations carry requirements forward, add new priorities, respond to incidents, and incorporate new programs.
The plan becomes the starting point. The work should be the starting point.
- What does the organization need to accomplish?
- What does the job require employees to do?
- Where is performance falling short?
- What capabilities will employees need tomorrow that they do not have today?
Only then should the conversation turn to training. A business need is not automatically a training need.
Reducing scrap, improving throughput, decreasing incidents, introducing new equipment, or improving customer retention are organizational objectives.
Training belongs in the solution only when achieving those objectives requires employees to develop knowledge or skill they do not currently possess.
Think of the decision this way: Business Need → Performance Requirement → Capability Gap → Training Need
Not: Course Catalog → Training Plan
What Research Shows
Research on training needs and transfer supports taking a more deliberate approach to training selection.
Cotes and Ugarte (2021) developed a systemic approach to training needs analysis that connects organizational strategy, performance gaps, and employee competencies. Their work reinforces the importance of beginning with what the organization is trying to accomplish rather than treating training selection as an isolated activity.
Blume et al. examined training activity, supervisor support, and transfer among employees participating in management training. Their findings reinforce an important consideration when selecting training: what happens after the course matters. Employees need an environment in which the learning can actually be applied.
Training needs analysis has also traditionally considered three levels: the organization, the task, and the person.
Together, these perspectives shift the question from What courses should we offer? to something much more useful:
What capability does the organization actually need?
What This Means at Work
Before adding training to the plan, work through four questions.
Is it required?
Some training decisions are made for us. Regulatory requirements, certifications, safety requirements, and customer requirements belong on the plan because they must.
Is it relevant?
Who actually performs the task, encounters the risk, uses the equipment, or makes the decision?
The answer does not always need to be everyone.
Is there a capability gap?
Determine whether employees actually lack the required knowledge or skill.
If they already possess it, verification or test-out may be more appropriate than retraining.
Can they apply it?
What should employees do differently after training?
If there is no opportunity, equipment, authority, process, time, or support to use the new capability, training alone is unlikely to produce the intended result.
What to Do Instead
Before approving a proposed training requirement, build a simple Training Selection Scorecard.
| Criterion | Ask |
|---|---|
| Business Need | What organizational problem or objective does this support? |
| Job Relevance | Who actually needs this capability? |
| Capability Gap | What must they know or do that they cannot reliably do now? |
| Application | How will they use the learning on the job? |
| Measurement | How will we know whether it worked? |
This does not need to become a complicated scoring system. The purpose is to force the conversation. If leaders cannot answer one of these questions, that does not automatically mean the training should be rejected.
It means there is something they need to understand before approving it and every training-planning process should ask one additional question: What comes off the plan?
Review existing requirements for duplication, outdated material, changing job requirements, opportunities for consolidation, and employees who may already possess the required capability. A training plan should be maintained, not merely accumulated.
The Bottom Line
Training requires organizational resources. More importantly, it requires employee attention. Every requirement on the training plan should therefore be able to answer: Why this? Why them? Why now? What should change afterward?
Don't build a training plan around courses. Build it around the capabilities your organization needs.
References
Blume, B. D., Ford, J. K., Surface, E. A., & Olenick, J. (2023). Promoting transfer of hybrid training: Interaction of task-contingent conscientiousness and supervisor support. Human Resource Development Quarterly. https://doi.org/10.1002/hrdq.21473
Cotes, J. E., & Ugarte, S. M. (2021). A systemic and strategic approach for training needs analysis for the International Bank. Journal of Business Research, 127, 464–473. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2019.05.002
