How To Invest in Training That Will Future Proof Your Organization
Is your training aligned with strategic goals and helping to future-proof your organization?
If you’re in business for the long term, you’re likely thinking about future-proofing your organization, and your strategic goals focus on growth, innovation, and sustaining a competitive advantage.
But what’s your strategy for investing in training and developing your people?
It’s a good question to ask because people can make or break your organization. When it comes to the impact of training, recent research tells a compelling story.
Did you know:
- 45% of employees are more likely to stay with an organization that offers development opportunities
- Over 90% of employees won’t quit if they receive meaningful training
- Companies with strong learning cultures can increase retention rates by 30-50%
These statistics demonstrate that training is not just about skill development—it’s about creating an environment where employees feel valued, connected, and motivated to grow with your organization.
Mulling around these stats when I sat down to write this blog, I was struck by the similarities between growing a garden and growing an organization. I’m a passionate vegetable and herb gardener, and I’ve learned it takes more than a few seeds to feed a family.
Do you have a long-term plan for cultivation?
Let’s have a bit of fun and play with this analogy.
Think of your organization as a garden and your employees as the plants.
When it comes to training, are you buying random seeds, planting without soil preparation, and watering inconsistently?
Without a long-term cultivation plan, plants struggle, produce little, and die quickly, leaving you with an unsustainable garden lacking the resources needed to flourish.
On the other hand, if you’re carefully selecting seeds aligned with your garden’s strategic goals, preparing rich, nutrient-dense soil (your organizational culture), providing consistent targeted nutrients (continuous learning), creating an ecosystem that supports growth (a collaborative environment), pruning and supporting plants to maximize their potential, adapting to seasonal changes (market shifts) and developing a sustainable, regenerative system, you know what you end up with?
Robust, resilient plants (adaptable employees), consistent, high-quality yields (organizational performance), and a garden that thrives across changing conditions. In other words, you’ve grown an innovative, competitive organization well-positioned to meet the future.
Are your training investments seeding the growth that will future-proof your organization or are they leaving you hungry for results?
By planning and focusing on future needs, you can ensure lasting impact and sustained organizational success. Below, we share our key strategies for maximizing training investments.
“An organization, no matter how well designed, is only as good as the people who live and work in it.”
—Dee Hock
Maximizing Training Investments: Taking a Strategic Approach
To truly future-proof your organization, consider these key strategies:
1Align training with strategic goals
Ensure that every training initiative is directly connected to your organization’s long-term strategic goals. Don’t just teach skills—develop capabilities that support your future vision. This means teaching skills in the context of a real business challenge and desired change in performance. Help people bridge individual skills gaps with practical application and hold them accountable to building on your investment in them.
2Create adaptable learning resources
Design training materials and job aids that can be:
- Repurposed across departments
- Modified for different skill levels
- Easily updated to reflect changing business needs
- Offer clear examples of what “good enough” looks like in the new environment
Think beyond the immediate need when you’re designing training materials and job aids. How else might we use this? What if our business process changes? How can we minimize future costs of running this training as is or adapting it for other audiences? If there’s one thing you can count on, it’s that something will change; the question is, how easily can you adapt?
3Foster a culture of continuous learning
Encourage employees to:
- Take ownership of their development
- Be accountable to applying what they’ve learned
- Ask critical questions
- Share knowledge across the organization
- Practice reflective thinking
Continuous learning requires emotional intelligence, which is enhanced through reflective thinking and self-awareness. This article on Gibbs Reflective Cycle sheds light on the symbiotic relationship between continuous learning and reflective thinking.
4Implement structured feedback mechanisms
- Conduct regular training reviews
- Measure impact beyond immediate skill acquisition
- Use insights to refine and improve learning programs
We are big fans of running training pilots and capturing lessons learned, not only immediately after training but at significant milestones back on the job. Our favourite tool to do this is The Learning Cycle from the FourSight Problem Solving Toolkit.
5Design to overcome the inevitable
Ever heard about Ebbinghaus’s Forgetting Curve? Our brains tend to forget new things unless we plan to overcome this natural phenomenon.
Designing learning and reinforcing application on the job is crucial to protecting your return on investment. Research shows that:
- 70% of new information is forgotten within 24 hours
- Less than 50% of information is retained after one hour
- 90% of new information is forgotten after 7 days
How can you grow and adapt if you’ve forgotten what you learned?
You can overcome the inevitable forgetting curve by recognizing that training is an event, but learning to effect a change in performance is a process. Some of our favourite techniques to improve retention are:
- Using micro-learning techniques
- Providing ongoing support and resources
- Creating opportunities for practical application on the job
- Implementing structured follow-up and review processes by capturing lessons and sharing them with others
- Holding people accountable for doing what they were trained to do.
Growth Is a Continuous and Intentional Process.
A favourite quip of a client, when her team wasn’t making good on her training investment, was to remind them, “I’ve taught you how to skate; now it’s time to lace up.”
The most successful organizations, like the most productive gardens, recognize that growth is a continuous and intentional process. It requires patience, strategic thinking, and a commitment to nurturing potential. Your organization, like a carefully cultivated garden, has the potential not only to survive but also to truly thrive.
By approaching training as a long-term investment in your people and your organization’s future, you create a powerful mechanism for growth, innovation, and sustained competitive advantage.
We have a series of questions that we ask to help our clients align their training investments with strategic goals.
Hungry for better results? Are you keen to seed growth and future potential?
Book a discovery call with me to learn more.
