Are Your Systems Sabotaging Employee Training & Growth?

Even the most well-intentioned employee training programs can fail if underlying systems and metrics don’t support the desired outcomes.

In my 20+ years in learning and development, there is nothing that has frustrated me more than developing a person’s ability to perform and behave in the way that the company wants, only to have my employee training efforts thwarted.

What “systems” may be preventing your team members from applying the skills training that your company is delivering?

Customer Service Employee Training Falls Flat

In the early years of my learning and development career, I was certified by an external vendor to train how to deliver exceptional customer service. The company wanted the employee training because customer satisfaction scores were abysmal and it wanted to change the service delivery experience.

The training taught call center staff members how to create positive moments during each call that led to highly satisfied customers. It was positively received and they were able to demonstrate the skills that they learned when role-playing various difficult scenarios in class.

Here was the problem: The application of the skills during a call made each call last longer. And the call center representatives were primarily measured by their call handle time.

Calls were only allowed to average three minutes per customer. Applying the skills hurt our call handle time metrics, even though they led to positive customer outcomes and higher customer satisfaction scores. As a result, many of the employees who were enthusiastic about the skills when they learned them, and were excited to put them to use while working, abandoned the skills when they began getting in trouble for longer call times.

The funny thing is, the shorter calls were usually “unresolved,” meaning that customers ended up calling back. However, two calls of less than three minutes each were better than one call that was five minutes long. In fact, I later learned that one employee would “accidentally” disconnect calls around the 2:55 mark and call the customer back in order to complete the call so as not to get in trouble for longer call handle times.

In this case, performance tracking and evaluation wasn’t aligned with the training objectives. A more sophisticated HR analytics system could’ve provided a holistic view of employee performance, balancing metrics like customer satisfaction scores, first-call resolution rates and call duration.

The “system” thwarted the good behavior that the employee training had instilled. Although the employee training initially created better customer outcomes, the leaders held firm to the average call handle time metric.

Sales Enablement Exceeds Expectations

Several years after that experience, I landed a job training mortgage sales consultants how to sell using a needs-based selling approach that was customer-focused. The company was competing against the big banks, and they wanted to differentiate themselves by operating with the highest levels of integrity that demonstrated their commitment to the customer’s success.

In these technology-enabled sessions, they learned how to:

1. start each call by focusing on what the customer wanted to accomplish
2. ask good questions to find out about the customers’ priorities
3. offer solutions to meet those needs (and be honest if we had nothing to offer), and
4. ask the customer for their business, or for a lesser commitment if they weren’t ready to do business just yet.

The company used technology to track customer relationships, recommendations and referrals rather than focusing solely on call duration.

The company shared and celebrated calls where the sales consultant really demonstrated an understanding of the customers’ needs. We also held monthly reinforcement and discussion sessions where we practiced the skills with actual customer situations and got input from others on ways to improve. Leaders actively participated in these sessions, demonstrating organizational commitment to the new approach.

However, when a new CEO was appointed, he was concerned that the sales calls were taking too long and the cost for the employee training was too high (the cost per person was roughly $1,200-$1,400).

The senior vice president and I leveraged analytics to demonstrate that the longer call times were actually resulting in higher sales conversion rates. In fact, in my three-plus years training for this company, our sales conversion rates went from 8% to 10% before we started the workshops, to 18% to 22% after the employee training. Call volumes were dropping during that time, yet revenues held steady. The investment in training was far outpaced by year-over-year revenues.

In this case, the system supported the training, and we achieved great results and business outcomes.

The Bottom Line

These experiences highlight the role of technology in supporting skills training that aligns with organizational goals. Before implementing any training program, HR leaders should ask:

• Is our HR tech stack aligned with the desired training outcomes?
• What changes to our HR systems are needed to support and reinforce new skills?
• How can we leverage HR analytics to measure and demonstrate the impact of training initiatives?

Modern HR technology solutions offer powerful tools to address these challenges:

• Learning Management Systems that integrate with performance management platforms to track skill application and development
• AI-powered analytics tools that provide a nuanced view of employee performance, balancing multiple metrics and KPIs, and
• Talent management systems that align individual goals with organizational objectives, ensuring training initiatives support broader business strategies.

By carefully aligning HR technology with training objectives, organizations can create an ecosystem that not only facilitates learning but also encourages and rewards the application of new skills. This alignment is crucial for maximizing the return on investment in employee development and driving meaningful organizational change.