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Essential Soft Skills You Can Develop Through Training
Why Most Workplace Training Programs Are Missing the Point: A Honest Assessment from the Trenches
We've turned workplace learning into a compliance exercise instead of skill building.
After nearly two decades in the training industry, and honestly? Most of what passes for training today is complete nonsense. In the old days, you learned by working alongside someone who actually knew what they were doing. Messy, sure. But it worked.
These days it's all about costly platforms and metrics that tell us nothing useful. It's crazy.
The uncomfortable truth is that we're solving the wrong problems with the wrong tools. Just recently I watched a company spend four hours teaching people to use software that any teenager could work out in ten minutes. They were discussing advanced features whilst participants couldn't even log in properly.
The Real Problems Nobody Talks About
Australian businesses are pouring money at training like it's confetti at a wedding. According to some report I read lately, companies spend around $350 billion internationally on learning and development. That's a enormous number. The reality is that retention rates for formal training are terrible.
I was working with a mining company in Perth last year. Brilliant operation, safety record that would make Wesfarmers envious. But their mandatory compliance training? Absolute disaster. Online courses that people completed while doing other work. People learned more from casual chats than formal sessions.
It became apparent that we're focused on compliance rather than competence.
Production environments often have better approaches to skill development. Been to plants in regional Victoria where people develop skills through real projects rather than academic exercises. The magic happens when knowledge gets passed down through hands-on experience.
Good luck convincing head office when they've spent six figures on digital platforms.
Simple Solutions We Keep Overlooking
Person to person knowledge transfer outperforms everything else. This pattern shows up everywhere I work. Put someone who knows their stuff with someone who wants to learn, give them real work to do together, and magic happens.
The big banks like Westpac have figured out peer learning in their retail operations. Nothing fancy, just experienced staff paired with new hires working on actual customer issues. The results speak for themselves: better retention, faster skill development, higher job satisfaction. Simple stuff that works.
Yet most organisations still default to classroom style sessions where someone talks at people for hours about theories they'll never use. Why? Because it's easier to monitor. Easy to create compliance reports and impress management with participation statistics.
All that accumulated wisdom walks out the door when veterans retire because we've ignored informal learning.
Fell into the same trap when I started out. Assumed I could build one size fits all programs. Wasted countless hours building supposedly perfect welcome modules. Polished presentations, engaging activities, cringe worthy simulation games.
Total disaster.
Realised that everyone requires different methods and support. Who would've thought?
EQ Training Mania
EQ development programs drive me mental. Every second RFP I see these days wants modules on EQ development. As if emotional awareness comes from presentation software.
I'm not saying emotional intelligence isn't crucial. Obviously it matters. The method we're using is completely wrong. Emotional skills come from practice with actual people. Not by completing online assessments that tell you whether you are a "red" or "blue" personality type.
Worked with a company that invested huge money in emotional intelligence development. Expensive consultant, flash location, comprehensive materials that gathered dust. Six months later, their employee engagement scores were exactly the same. Turnover actually increased.
Real impact would come from leaders learning to listen properly. How to pay attention instead of waiting to speak. How to admit when they don't know something.
But that's harder to package into a neat training module.
Technology's False Promise
Technology vendors keep claiming their platforms will transform how people learn. Individual learning journeys, responsive materials, targeted knowledge delivered instantly. Sounds brilliant in theory.
Fact: the technology fixes non problems and creates new ones.
I watched a company deploy a "smart" learning platform that was supposed to identify skill gaps and recommend relevant training. Expensive exercise that consumed months of effort. Software offered remedial training to experienced users but overlooked essential capability shortfalls.
At the same time, top performers were running casual learning meetings over sandwiches. No technology required.
Genuine breakthroughs in training aren't emerging from tech companies. It's coming from organisations that figure out how to create cultures where people actually want to share what they know.
What I'm Seeing That Actually Works
A few organisations have figured this out, which keeps me hopeful.
Bunnings has this excellent approach to product knowledge training. Rather than classroom courses, vendors deliver practical workshops to employees. Physical items, honest questions, practical issues. Employees develop skills to serve clients better, not to satisfy bureaucratic requirements.
Traditional apprenticeships mixing classroom learning with workplace experience outperform university style programs. Technical colleges working with actual companies offer meaningful employment opportunities.
The formula never changes: education tied to genuine tasks, supervised by competent practitioners, with instant application possibilities.
But we continue choosing lecture format training because it's comfortable and trackable.
The Reality of Learning Effectiveness
This will annoy training professionals: satisfaction ratings rarely connect with skill development. I've run sessions where participants rated the experience highly but couldn't demonstrate any behaviour change six months later. Conversely, run training that participants hated initially but that genuinely improved their capabilities.
Effective development can be confronting since it questions current practices and demands new behaviours. But uncomfortable experiences don't generate positive feedback scores, so we avoid them.
Development programs prioritise positive feedback over meaningful behaviour change. It's like judging a gym by how much members enjoy their workouts rather than whether they get fitter.
What Happens Next
No magic bullets exist for these challenges. To be frank, nobody seems to have figured it out. The training industry has become so focused on efficiency and scale that we've lost sight of what actually matters: helping people develop skills they can use to do better work.
Could be that enhanced modules aren't the answer. Possibly it's designing environments where skill development occurs organically through job structure and human connections.
Maybe we need fewer formal training modules and more opportunities for people to learn from each other whilst doing actual work that matters.
Maybe the best development happens when we stop trying to control every aspect of the learning process and start trusting people to figure things out with appropriate support.
Or maybe I'm just getting old and nostalgic for simpler times when learning meant watching someone who knew what they were doing and gradually getting better at it yourself.
Regardless, current approaches fail the majority of learners in most situations. Denying these problems won't make them disappear.
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