Vital Insight Into Management Training Success

“Change” is often a scary word in the business world. Employees dread it, managers are intimidated by it and, many times, the change fails before any team members are even faced with it. But, with the right management training, change doesn’t have to be a looming threat to your company’s stability.

Change management isn’t just about dealing with a time of transition. It’s about changing the way you manage the transition to keep things running smoothly for employees. To do this effectively, it’s important to understand three major challenges you’ll need to overcome.

Have you fallen into the trap of compliance-based training and failed to promote a commitment-based approach? Many companies check off training boxes to simply stay compliant. But, if you want to make real improvements to how your company operates, you need to cultivate a workforce that’s committed to learning. Are management training and self-improvement part of your regular routine?

Setting professional development goals for your team is an effective way to motivate performance. While there are a number of goals that impact the way your leaders manage their employees, it’s imperative to look at how your teams are operating, too.

Whether you’re developing quarterly objectives for your team or setting broad goals for your company, take time to think about what goals you want to establish and how to do so properly.

How does your company view management training? Are you using it as a compelling professional development tool, or are you just checking off training boxes to remain compliant?

Many companies are just scraping by, completing the bare minimum when it comes to training – and nothing more. But, the most successful management programs are ones that companies are dedicated to over the long term. It’s about more than compliance. It’s about commitment.

The right investment in management training goes beyond purchasing a course and providing it to your employees. You need to integrate training and self-improvement into your company culture.

Every business’s main goal is profitability. So, when you hear professionaldevelopment programbenefitslike “team morale” and “employee loyalty,” you might write them off as “nice-to-haves” that aren’t really essential to your company’s bottom line.

But, you’d be wrong.

The right professionaldevelopment program returns much more than an intangible ideal: It reaps real monetary advantages for your organization.

When you’re facing a transition within your company, you want to know that your managers are capable of leading and managing the change. 

Before you roll out any change initiative, take the following steps to ensure that your managers are adequately prepared and have the tools they need to be successful.

Change in the workplace isn’t easy. It’s difficult on employees, and it often impacts the overall productivity of your company. In fact, 60 to 70 percent of change management initiatives fail. 

So, you might be thinking: Why even bother with change at all? But, you don’t have to feel this way.

Some of the reasons why change management has a low success rate include:

• Lack of communication prior to the transition
• Not enough preparation before moving forward 

Find out how to avoid these pitfalls in your approach to change management.

If one of your top leaders left your organization tomorrow, what would happen?

Perhaps you’d begin the arduous task of hiring an outside replacement. But, this process is long and you’re never absolutely sure that a candidate would be the right fit.

There is a better alternative: Hire your next leader from within your company. There are numerous benefits to promoting a current employee:

• They already have a working knowledge of company culture and processes.
• Hiring from within saves costs on training and time on onboarding.
• Outside hires typically require higher salaries.

Succession planning prepares future leaders and saves your company time and money when a transition arises. Unfortunately, there are three mistakes that companies usually make in this area, and they’re easy to avoid. 

Think about the last time your day was interrupted by a staged fire drill. The deafening noise of the fire alarm, the inconvenience of leaving your work behind to practice evacuating the building in an orderly fashion – it was all probably a major inconvenience, right?

The answer, of course, is "wrong." We train in order to prepare for the future, for the unknown. Practicing preemptive training helps you maintain calm when an actual emergency occurs. Instead of waiting for a problem to arise, you take steps to prepare yourself in advance.

Change management training is a lot like practicing fire drills (but without the loud noise). About 70% of change initiatives fail, which makes cultivating change management skills so important. While you may not be facing an imminent change right now, one is sure to arise in the future. Preparing yourself in advance helps increase productivity and keep operations running efficiently.

Explore these five benefits to making a preemptive investment in change management and find out how it helps you prepare for the future.

Did you know that 85% of the global workforce considers themselves to be on the job market? According to LinkedIn’s Talent Trends 2014 study, these candidates are either actively searching for or passively open to the prospect of leaving their current job in the dust. What does that mean for your team members today? Well, it looks like less than a quarter of them are actually content to stay with your company.

When it comes to retaining winning talent, it may seem like the odds are stacked against you. But, you want the continuity of keeping good team members who know your processes, clients and industry. It’s been proven that retaining talented team members saves you money.

One way to encourage loyalty among your employees is by developing opportunities and pathways that lead to promotions. If your workers see a future with you, they’re less likely to look for one elsewhere.