The lie of the cost of the lack of training

June 30, 2022

Did you find the statement “the cost of the lack of training”?

But why do we need to care about this lack of training? Because generally, people will learn. Learning can be better or worse. Many times, they learn because they have time and enough resources. The apprenticeship from a master, for instance, had an important waste of time, dedicated to useless rituals to worship a master, and it worked. An older butcher told me that an apprentice only swept the floor for the first 4 months. You won’t need training because you will have informal learning. But it will be a matter of efficiency.As I realized that, I have been searching these late days for good research that compares informal learning vs formal learning with data in case we need to decide between these. And I found trillions of pages explaining what they are both. But I didn’t find a single study with these data. Instead, academia.edu is sending me everyday stuff related. And I have to thank academia.edu, but they couldn’t nail it yet.

The L&D function has a presence with formal learning in middle-big organizations. Because It is a cultural thing, and everybody thinks of formal learning when we talk about Learning and development in organizations. And even though nowadays, some organizations in development are aware of the famous 70/20/10 rule. 70% and 20% of the learning are experiences and relations, and only 10% comes from formal learning. We still focus on formal learning.

But these L&D advanced departments manage formal learning and informal learning. They decide what they want to create or assist in, both. Formal learning (curricula, courses, e-learning, lectures, etc.) or informal learning (job aids, expert panels, on-the-job, assessments, books, etc.) without criteria and a clear view yet of what kind of approach is better.I would look at every learning situation individually, and I would decide on quality and time. This is what the best L&D can care for. Push and pull learning around knowledge, enablement, performance, and change, in the best quality and efficiency conditions.

We have intuitions about the loss of information, knowledge, quality, the time wasted, and because we don’t have precise criteria we act more to impose L&D function given nonsense learning, or we left learning alone at the manager’s discretion to be good friends provoking possible waste too.

If anybody knows more about it, we can talk. Because instead of good catchphrases, L&D requires evidence-based practice, isn’t it? 😉