How systematic further education works in terms of measurable competence change management
According to a study by the Institute of the German Economy, over two-thirds of individuals state that they do not know or cannot analyze the specific further training needs of their employees. This makes this factor the number 1 obstacle to further education in Germany - understandably ahead of time and budget, because where no need is seen, no investment is made. Further training needs can be measured and are indeed present In a study by the Fraunhofer Institute and the magazine Personalwirtschaft, 8 out of 10 top managers consider systematic competency management to be crucial for success; the main reason for the still pending competency analyses is the feared high time required for creating a competency model, which in practice does not take more than a day, if one already has experience with it. An invested day for the sustainable success of the company - a quite positive Return on Investment (ROI). And the experience with over 15,000 responses in these training needs analyses shows: on average, 45-60% of competency questions are recognized as strengths in both self and external assessments, for which no training need exists. It is not only a waste of time and money to train and coach in these areas. It is also demotivating for all parties involved. The other half of the responses represent specific areas for improvement. And thus, there is indeed a need for further training in the most important 'company resource' - humans. Accompanying changes from training & coaching in implementation Not only should the brain be engaged in training & coaching - with understandable, practice-oriented, new approaches. The individual participant must also recognize the benefits for themselves and their daily work, and their concerns must be addressed so that they actually change their familiar ways of thinking and behaving sustainably in their daily work. Proven successful further education programs also include structured implementation support with a modular structure of training & coaching, tracking of individual improvement to-dos, learning partnerships, support from the supervisor, and improving transfer strength - so that not 80% of the learning content falls victim to the infamous forgetting curve. Trainers or coaches should be familiar with the phases and tools of professional change management - still more of an exception than the rule today and increasingly important. Successful, measurable competence change management There is also an increasing call for a review of the success of the time and money invested in training measures. For decades, too many companies have been stuck with the famous happy sheets (positively filled feedback forms), and only a negligible percentage of less than one in ten companies actually assesses the real success of training & coaching (Return on Education, ROE). "Turning affected individuals into participants" - one of the key success factors in successful change management - is taken into account by this methodology tested in many industries with the pre-and-post competency success analysis as well as individual, modular support.
