Why do most Automotive Training Programs fail to produce strong ROI?

The answer is two-fold, the inability to develop the correct content and/or training sustainability. Unfortunately, in the automotive industry, content development is either very generic and recirculated because of lack of comprehension of what actually could be developed academically, or the content does not match the specific needs of the business. Both come down to an O.E.M. training manager that often lacks academic education or formal business training. We would strongly encourage working with a firm that has formal business training, academic acumen, and automotive industry experience in helping you design training content. Once we have the right content chosen, the rest comes down to understanding training sustainability.

Many businesses invest heavily in training, but unfortunately sometimes the instruction doesn’t move the needle. To understand why, we must take a few pages out of the Change Management Concepts handbook; because after all, the intent of training is usually to change a behavior or adopt a new skill. Training is merely information. It is not until a person applies what they have learned that they develop this new skill or behavior.  Thus, training sustainability depends on a variety of factors, many of which go far beyond training design, and this is where businesses make fundamental mistakes.

Increasingly, training and development departments are realizing that they must invest as much time, attention, and funds into making the training stick, as they do in the training itself. There are a myriad of conditions and factors that either enable, or undermine, a learner’s ability to absorb and make productive use of this new information.

Content Development / Facilitation

Developments in the field of brain science, through technologies like MRIs, reveal the best training design and development practices. Research confirms that incorporating engaging elements such as movement, activity variation, dialogue vs. lecture, use of technology, and imagery all support greater learning and transfer. (Think group problem solving, case study analysis, animated slide decks, role-play, electronic workbooks, etc.)

How training is scheduled is also a factor. There’s a pile of psychological evidence that shows that learning retention works better in repetitive bite-sized pieces, rather than a single delivery with the ‘drill them until they have got it’ strategy. (Repetitive training costs more than single delivery…or does it?) More on how repetition develops facilitator trust and its impact on sustainability in just a moment.

Numerous studies support the efficacy of interleaving, or intermixed content for greater engagement. (Think multiple unrelated subjects intermixed in the same program, rather than a day of department process training.)

The ability of a facilitator to captivate an audience also goes much deeper than simply being a subject matter expert. Facilitators should be graded on strong communication and interpersonal skills, a passion for continuous learning, innovative thinking, and an ability to recognize the different training needs of individuals within a group and mold the environment accordingly.

Engagement

Changing behavior requires overcoming inertia. No one makes a behavioral or process change until they understand what is in it for them. Learners are no different. To be willing to put in that effort, people must be ‘sold’ on the value of the change. To engage the learner and create behavioral sustainability, the material development and facilitation must become meaningful to the individual. This connection to the ‘thinking, feeling, and willing, social self” is the foundation for impactful and authentic employee engagement.

Support Structure

Management support plays a pivotal role in the extent to which learning transfers to a new and different behavior on the job. New knowledge must be integrated into every day work behavior to shape desired changes and over time become a habit. To achieve success, managers must 1) set expectations, 2) encourage application and practise, 3) coach through providing feedback, and 4) hold people accountable for putting new skills into practice. The extent to which managers provide encouragement, support, and model the skill themselves, influences engagement verses compliance.

Of course, this assumes that the manager themselves have a comprehensive and comfortable working knowledge of the learnings, and have training in new process implementation and coaching techniques. If not, the manager must also receive training in these areas, or sustainability will be compromised due to lack of support structure.

Culture

Training sustainability is also enabled or undermined, dependant on the culture of the organization. It will be meaningless if the learner is unable to perform these skills under actual work conditions, because the current policies and practices do not support these new behaviors; or because the incentives and rewards are not aligned with what we are trying to achieve. (Think training the Service Walk-Around with insufficient time to perform, due to lack of supporting processes; or training the value of CSI to Advisors without Managers reconsidering existing processes that don’t support that initiative.)

Shareholder Alignment

The stronger the psychological and human behavioral connection is between the learner and the facilitator, the greater the trust factor and the less resistance of new learning acceptance and implementation. Business consultants have learned that they must create relationships with new clients before recommending improvements, or recommendations left to client implementation, will simply not take root. Previous training recommendations by a facilitator that proved successful, will foster a relationship of trust, lower the risk of new learning implementation, and improve training sustainability.

Sustainability Program Solutions

The challenge to sustainability and accomplishing the O.E.M. business objectives is to assess all the above factors and develop a program that directly addresses the areas of need. In the Automotive Sector, because many of the discussed elements are sizeable factors, the most successful methodology is to add both a dealership business assessment, and a coaching element to the O.E.M. training program.

The on-site dealer business assessment provides improvement recommendations and areas of opportunity for each dealership department, which strongly assists in creating dealer principal and G.M. shareholder alignment and further training program support. It allows for identification and improvement recommendations that left unchecked would directly undermine training sustainability as mentioned above.  (Management support structure, Culture, and Shareholder Alignment are the biggest reasons why quality training initiatives fail.) Assessment also provides the O.E.M. with a future training content development resource.

Introducing a periodic on-site dealer coaching element (8-10 days / year), allows for continued coaching and mentoring as necessary in support of the dealership business assessment and the O.E.M. classroom training initiatives. (In many cases Managers are the learners and require support to create new behavioral habits.)

Individual dealership business assessment and a post-training follow up in conjunction with a strong training program, will allow the O.E.M. to gain the maximum return on its training investment while executing its business objectives. Sustained application of desired behaviors will enhance workforce productivity, CSI, and employee engagement, and demonstrate a measurable ROI.