Corporate training isn’t always a cure-all for every company problem. Learn the myths and facts behind improving workplace performance with corporate training.

1. TRAINING AS THE CORPORATE
CURE-ALL
MYTHS & FACTS

2. MYTHS & FACTS
TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. Performance Problem
2. Training Isn't Big Picture
3. Learners Get It
4. More of the Same
5. Don't Mess Up
6. Field of Dreams
7. No One Can Understand Us

3. Click the “tweet” button above to
tweet the information on each slide

4. MYTH 1:
PERFORMANCE
PROBLEM
If there’s a performance problem,
training must be the solution. PERFORMANCE
PROBLEM CURE
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5. FACT 1:
Performance can be affected
by many things, and you don’t
know if training is the solution
until you analyze the problem.PERFORMANCE
PROBLEM CURE
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6. Think about companies you’ve worked in. Could every
performance problem be traced back to lack of information or
poor training? Or were there other issues not being addressed?
It’s too easy to assume bad or insufficient training is the root
of our performance problems. However, poor management,
employee conflicts or an inefficient process can have just as
big an impact on performance. Take the time to research the
problem before designing the solution.

7. Maybe training will be the answer to your problem. Maybe it
won’t. But you won’t know until you research and analyze the
true origin of the performance issues.
LEARN MORE:
Not sure if training is the answer? Check out Cathy Moore’s
flowchart to help you make that decision.

8. MYTH 2:
TRAINING ISN’T
BIG PICTURE
Training only affects employees. EMPLOYEES
ONLY
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9. FACT 2:
Good training impacts your entire
organization, from employees to
stakeholders to customers.
When only employees complete a training
course, it’s easy to see why some people
believe only employees are affected by
training. The most immediate impact is on
the learners. However, they’re not the only
people impacted.
EMPLOYEES
ONLY
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10. You can’t control your customers, but your employees
influence them greatly. Educating, empowering and engaging
employees is the foundation to a good customer experience,
no matter what industry you’re in. According to a Harvard
Business Review report, companies who make engagement
a priority rate employee engagement as having “considerable
impact” on customer satisfaction. With a strong training
program, you can help employees understand how each
person makes a difference for the company. When they
understand their roles, your employees are better equipped
to do their jobs and create a great experience for customers.

11. In short, when people perform better and enjoy their jobs
more, they create a positive impact on the entire organization.
Don’t assume training impacts only the learner. Instead, the
impact is felt throughout an organization, and by everyone
who interacts with your company.
LEARN MORE:
TalentSpace Blog put together a great rundown of the
financial impact of having engaged employees. See how
much not investing in training could be costing your company.

12. MYTH 3:
LEARNERS
GET IT
Learners intuitively know how to
make the most of training.
WORRY FREE
ONE-TIME USE
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13. FACT 3:
Learners understand content differently
based on past experience, prior knowledge,
motivation, critical thinking skills and
preparedness.
WORRY FREE
ONE-TIME USE
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14. People’s ability to grasp new ideas or concepts varies, and
many factors can affect how well your learners are going to
be able to implement training. Past experience, existing skill
sets, motivation or critical thinking abilities can all influence
how your audience understands and integrates your training.
It does not mean your training was ineffective if learners need
extra performance support, such as scenarios, mentoring or
explicit goals to make connections between training and
on-the-job skills.

15. To get the best result, identify your learners’ problems and develop
strategies to help them make the most of your training. For example,
you may need to explain exactly how the courses build skills. For a
less experienced employee, coaching or scenarios may help
connect training and real-life applications. Be prepared to help
your learners succeed—your organization will enjoy the benefits.
LEARN MORE:
The Indiana University Bloomington’s instructional design site
underlines the importance of helping learners understand key
information. “When something is meaningfully understood, it is
retained much longer, can be built upon to acquire further
understanding, is usually very versatile in the situations and ways
it can be used, and facilitates creativity.”

16. MYTH 4:
MORE OF THE
SAME
We shouldn’t give learners
control of their training
ORIGINAL
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17. ORIGINAL
FACT 4:
You don’t need to fight engaging design
for the sake of tradition.
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18. Why not make training engaging and familiar for your learners?
For a long time, instructional designers forced old-school training
methods into new technology. They insisted that training
couldn’t scroll or that learners shouldn’t control their journey
through the information. But now your learners understand
the web, and training has caught up to technology. Why limit
yourself and your learners when you don’t have the same tech
restraints on videos, simulations, scrolling and usercontrolled
environments?

19. And by holding onto old ways of instructional design, you restrict your
creativity. For example, to design in HTML5, you must allow learners to
interact with the page by clicking and scrolling. If you choose to limit
learners’ interactivity, you miss out on opportunities for responsive
design that HTML5 offers. Or if you don’t think learners should scroll,
you could be fragmenting information that is better grouped together.
It’s time to stop fighting the technology people know and make it work
for you. Embrace engaging design principles to improve your training design
by making it more intuitive for learners. By working with what your
learners are used to, you remove learning barriers and strengthen retention.
LEARN MORE:
AllenComm Chief Learning Officer Michael Noble outlines his thoughts
on how to make web-based training more engaging.

20. MYTH 5:
DON’T MESS UP
Don’t let learners make mistakes
because it will demoralize them.
THE ART OF
TRUTH TELLING
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21. FACT 5:
Mistakes can be valuable
learning experiences.
THE ART OF
TRUTH TELLING
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22. No one likes to fail all the time, but if your learners have
opportunities to succeed it’s okay to let them fail sometimes.
In fact, as Rita Gunther McGrath, Columbia Business School
professor, points out, there is no way to avoid failure, and
organizations who teach employees how to deal with and
learn from failure are stronger and more innovative. Allowing
people to make mistakes lets them find a better way, and
form stronger connections between information and actions.

23. There’s also a good business reason to show people it is okay to fail. If you
expect zero mistakes from people, you also get zero innovation. Innovation
requires experimentation, which includes failure. By communicating in
your training materials that it’s more important to work toward the best
answer than to be safe on the first try, you encourage creativity and
innovation. Help your learners understand how to work through failure, and
you’ll build a stronger company.
LEARN MORE:
In his book Learn or Die: Using Science to Build a Leading-Edge Learning
Organization, Edward Hess helps companies overcome the fear of mistakes
so they can create a better learning culture. In an interview with the
Columbia University Press blog, he says, “Mistakes and failures are a
necessary part of innovation, experimentation and learning. Most learning
comes from mistakes—fixing things or trying things and learning by iteration.”

24. MYTH 6:
FIELD OF
DREAMS...
If you build it, they will come.
ORIGINAL
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25. ORIGINAL
FACT 6:
You need to market your training
programs to your learners.
No matter how good your training is, you
need to let your learners know that it’s
there. The right communication plan builds
engagement with your training course and
motivates people to participate. In many
companies a simple email or intranet
notification isn’t enough. You put a lot of
time and effort into creating something
awesome, so make a little noise!
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26. HP is a great example of how to market training. HP loved the
net promoter score game they were launching, but they knew
their large voluntary audience would need an incentive to
check it out. HP launched an intense internal marketing
campaign to foster competition within their teams. They sent
out emails to supervisors and managers each week with the
scores of each team, a list of the team members who had not
yet completed the training and incentives for full team
participation and teams with the best scores. With this strategy,
they reached more than 250,000 voluntary completions.

27. Even with a mandatory program, you should help people
understand the value of training. The right communication
plan lays the foundation for a more successful course.
Communicating and marketing to learners about the importance
of the training helps overcome the bias some learners have
against training.
LEARN MORE:
Listen to the Building Better Training podcast to find out
how marketing and training are converging and why they
should be working together even more.

28. MYTH 7:
NO ONE CAN
UNDERSTAND US
We could never have a vendor
help with our training because
our business is too hard to
understand.
MAGIC ELIXIR
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29. FACT 7:
Good vendors have proven processes
to marry your expertise with adult
learning principles and best practices.
Nobody wants to invest time and
money creating training that doesn’t
meet its goals. But the truth is that
a high-quality vendor will know
how to get the information needed
from your experts and package it
into a training curriculum that creates
results.
MAGIC ELIXIR
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30. By using the right processes, your vendor can transform
highly technical information into a format that makes sense
to your learners and targets your goals. By analyzing your
pain points and objectives, your vendor can identify
need-to-know information and extract it from your experts.
Then the vendor’s consultants conduct extensive questioning
to make sure they understand the content. Your subject
matter experts’ involvement doesn’t end there. Effective
vendors will engage experts throughout the process to
ensure your content is accurate and on brand.

31. Training and development vendors have decades of instructional
design knowledge and experience in building high-impact training.
An experienced vendor will know how to engage subject matter
experts to minimize time and maximize impact. So go ahead and
look for a vendor to help you take that complex information and put
it in the right format for your goals.
Good training can change your company and boost the bottom line.
Training isn’t a magic cure, but with the right planning and a good
strategy you can boost employee engagement and transform your
organization. Ready to start? Talk to AllenComm today about your
business problem and see how we can create a program to meet
your goals.

32. Looking For Guidance on How To Implement The
Right Training Strategy For Your Organization?
Contact one of our training experts today.
CONTACT US