What is in Your Training Plan?

Most training plans I've seen are products of training needs surveys; hence most of them are basically lists of training programs to be run one after another. What is wrong with that picture? Whether or not you identified the right programs to run and identified the best trainer to run it, there is still no guarantee that training will translate to learning and demonstration of skills. Why, because something is missing. That something is called a strategy.

Training often fail to make a dent in the organization's performance because of two things. The failure of the training manager to think strategically and their failure to build a strong partnership with line management to create the right environment for the new learning to be applied and prosper.

A good training plan in my opinion is one that clearly defines the strategy or strategies for transfer of learning to performance and the partnership between the training managers and line from identification of the needs to making training attendees accountable for the demonstration of the new behavior.

I believe training plans should be able to address two purposes; one is to equip employees to adopt to change and the other is to equip the employees to maintain a high standard of performance or competencies. If we all look at these, we can all agree that it will take more than a few classroom sessions to achieve and then maintain ideal behaviors that support performance. Without strategies and partnership between training managers and the line, it is difficult to convert training to learning and most certainly most difficult to convert into behaviors that work.

So, what should we see in your training plan aside from the usual bundling of training schedules? I drafted a sample training plan to help illustrate what I mean. Please feel free to download and use it if you like it. Here's a deal, let's make this template open source shall we? I encourage you to make some improvements to it, then send it back to me and I will update the document I am sharing here. Fair?
Strat HRD Plan Template

Please check out our literature on team culture building and communication skills enhancement to find out how we at ExeQserve apply the same principles in our programs.

Training too much of a big investment to just go to waste. If you want return on your training investments, start working on your strategy. If you need help, let me know.

Butter N Toast Lessons on Leadership and Teamwork

Butter N Toast is a Toastmasters Club running on it's fifth year. In the last four years, it received one Select Distinguished Club award and 3 President's Distinguished Club award, distinctions given to clubs that are able to hit their goals. The jury is still out on this term, but as a member I am completely confident that we are destined for another banner year.

A typical Toastmaster's club in the Philippines will have around 15 to 20 people in a meeting or less. On a good night, Butter N Toast can have as much as 40. The conversion of guests to members is also high. We attribute it to the quality of our meetings and the warmth and welcoming nature of the club members. At a time when some Toastmasters club struggle to keep members attending, what keeps Butter N Toast's meetings well attended and vibrant? The reasons, I believe are just about the same ones that keep employees engaged at work and performing well.

A Shared Goal
When we found the club, Michelle Lim, our Charter President kept harping on achieving club goals ,which as a new member, I cared very little about. I mean, who cares about a club goal when all I was interested in was my own goals. Michelle's ability to communicate the importance of the goal to the club and to its members helped me appreciate it more. When it was my time to lead, I didn't have any difficulty rallying the club towards it and succeeding to achieve it because by then, I was completely bought into the goals.

Lesson: the leader's ability to communicate and get members' buy-in on goals enhance their commitment to it.

Holding the other leaders and members to the same high standards you hold your self to.
On the second year of Butter N Toast, Sheila Dela Cruz took the helm as President. I was Vice President for Membership and future President Gege Sugue was VP for Education. It was the same year when we had our first taste of the President's Distinguished Club award. I remember it to be a tough year for Sheila because she was still adjusting in her new job. She, however was able to keep her presence felt not only on meetings but online. She made sure that the other leaders were doing their parts and members were on their way to achieving their individual goals. When members were being remiss, sheila would call, text or email to make sure that members know that they were being missed. the communication was open and members were made clearly aware of what was expected of them. Those who were unwilling to commit to the club's goals and culture left or was let go, those who like what was going on stayed up to this day.

Lesson: keeping communication clear and lines open enhances accountability. It also keeps the right people in and the wrong people out.

Make it happen
When it was my turn to be President, I had the fortune of inheriting a solid club brought about by two successful leaders before me.

My job was to enhance the already strong club culture. I did it by strengthening teamwork among leaders and continuing to strengthen the personal relationship among members through activities outside club meetings. When my term was done and we received our award, I can only attribute it to strong friendship and leadership teamwork.

Lesson: high performing leadership teamwork reflects on the whole organization. Friendship among team members create a desirable working environment.

Make the most of your organization
"Make the Most of Butter N Toast" was the mantra of the fourth president, Gege Sugue. She made clear to us that the club's success can only come through the members' individual success. She motivated the members to take their goals seriously and the officers to do whatever they can to help the members succeed. During Gege's term the club enhanced it's coaching and mentoring practices and increased it's membership two-folds due to positive meeting experience by guests who turned into members. New members were taken care of and given mentors to help them through their basic projects.

Lesson: create an environment that is conducive to success. If people know that they are in a desirable environment, they are most likely to pursue success.

What is common among the four past Presidents is their ability to be present. Half-way through her term, Michelle had to go to the US. She left management of the club to the officers. Mind you, I said she left the management of the club, but she didn't leave leadership. She continued to be present virtually to give directions, make decisions and step in whenever needed. This club continue to benefit from the presence of the past Presidents. Whenever we have elections, we don't really change leadership, we just add more.
Stay on top and keep it coming
This is the battle cry for this term with Pat Pascua at the Helm. To most of us this simply means keep the success flowing. Today's Butter N Toast Leaders are doing the best they can to make it happen. As a student of leadership, I can't wait to learn what lessons this year is going to teach us as an organization. I'll be sure to blog about it.

Click here to find out more about Butter N Toast, Toastmasters Club.
Click here to find out how we can help you strengthen leadership and teamwork for your organization.

HR Associations in the Philippines

"A group needs only two things to be a tribe:a shared interest and a way to communicate." - Seth Godin in his book "Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us"

If this is how tribes are defined then I know of a number tribes in the Philippines who have shared interest in HR management and development. If you are an HR practitioner in the Philippines or a Manager who is interested to communicate with like-minded professionals, the list I am sharing here is for you.

People Management Association of the Philippines (PMAP)
Is the premier organization of human resource practitioners and people managers in the Philippines as the the organization's website claims and I agree. I am not yet a member of this group but plans to join it after realizing I can now qualify as a member. The last time I checked, I didn't and that was ages ago. After that, I lost interest thinking I wasn't qualified. After researching for this post, I realized that membership requirement is not as prohibitive as I used to think.

Anyway, there are a lot of benefits to joining this group. You get invited to general monthly meetings, symposia, fora and annual conferences. You can also participate in various organizational activities. as far as HR Management is concern, this is the most happening place in the Philippines.

Aside from the home page, I found a linkedin group and a Facebook group related to PMAP. Check it out.

HR Philippines
Is not really a formal organization but an e-group of about 3, 601 people (as of my last count) who are interested obviously in anything HR (pun intended)related. I am actively involved in this group. It is one big forum for people who want to ask about or share ideas on HR issues, practices, resources and opportunities. If you join this group, be prepared to get occasional truckloads of emails from members for various reasons. My good friend Ford Hipolito tries to minimize these occurrences by patiently and voluntarily moderating the emails to ensure members get quality information from the group.

Things to look forward to with being a member of this e-group;

- answers to your inquiries coming from all directions (not all of them are correct so feel free to sift through and do due diligence);
-discounts from member HR services providers;
-annual HR Philippines convention that is so far incredibly affordable and worth every peso; and
- there are a lot of things that are going to happen in 2010 as a result of recently held planning session by the core group so I suggest you join this one. Otherwise, you will miss a lot.
The e-group address is hrphilippines@yahoogroups.com. There is also a linkedin, Facebook and a Facebook-like HR Philippines social networking group. Please check all of them out and join.

Philippine Society for Training and Development (PSTD)
I just renewed my membership in this group after many years of absence. If PMAP is the Premier HR organization in the Philippines, PSTD is the premier training practitioners' organization. Group membership means invites to very affordable monthly meeting-cum-learning sessions called Tipanan, Annual conventions and opportunity to network with seasoned training professionals. Joining the group also gets you an invite to the association's e-group which gives you the opportunity to ask your questions and share your ideas. Find the group's Facebook page here.

People@Work or pawcommunity@yahoogroups.com
Is an e-group moderated by my good friend Reggie Reyes, the President of Optimus Innovations and MyTrabaho.com. The privileges of this egroup are similar to that of HR Philippines minus the discounts and annual conventions (at least none that I remember).

hr-it_forum@yahoogroups.com
This is what the e-group description says:

"Hello there! Welcome to the HR-IT Forum. We are a group of HR practitioners in the Philippine IT Industry.

We exchange information on HR Related matters,benchmark and conduct mini-surveys amongst ourselves.

Membership is by-invitation only using these criteria:

1. You are currently a practitioner with an IT company in the Philippines.
2. IT company belong to the Hardware, Software, Systems and Networks, Internet and Consulting sectors.
3. You are endorsed to the group by one of our existing members.
4. You attend one of our forums and introduce yourself and your company.

No cost to be a member though you have to be willing to host a forum meeting.

We are not just a virtual group as we try to see each other at least once a month. The forum is hosted by a member at their preferred venue. We all prefer forums to be both a social and learning experience hence a relevant topic is presented by the host."

My suggestion, if you are an HR practitioner in an IT company here in the Philippines, visit the e-group's page and then ask to be invited. Here's the link.
I'm sure I missed some, so please feel free to add any other Philippine-based HR practitioners group information that you know in the comment section below.

Philippine Industrial Relations Society (PIRS) (Phil_ir_society@yahoogroups.com)
I have not attended the society's meetings for a very long time but I have a very high regard for its organizers and members.

Here's is what the e-group homepage says about the group:

"The Philippine Industrial Relations Society (PIRS, Inc.) is the Philippine national organization of the International Industrial Relations Association (IIRA) founded in 1966. Its founding members were the British Universities Industrial Relations Association, the Industrial Relations Research Association (USA), the International Institute for Labour Studies (Geneva, Switzerland) and the Japan Institute of Labour. Its seat is in Geneva, Switzerland. It was established in response to a growing need to develop and exchange knowledge on industrial relations at the international level, providing the academic and the practitioner with a forum for discussion and research. Contact us at tel-fax (632) 9620422, email- edsison@ymail.com and website- http://pirs08.webs.com"

Here's the e-group's URL: Phil_ir_society@yahoogroups.com

There is just too many benefits to being associated with like-minded individuals for you not to be in a group. If you are still alone in your HR practice, you are missing a lot. I suggest that you join any or all of these tribes.

Key to Successful Employee Performance Management Implementation

How do you know you have a successful performance management system? That's when your employees' performance are improving and you have a definite way of telling. How do you know it isn't working? If managers are doing as little as possible to achieve minimum compliance, which is probably to submit shabbily filled out performance appraisal sheets.

If there is one thing that will make your performance management system work, what would it be?

First, let me tell you what it won't be.

It won't be the level of sophistication of the system. You can use all sorts of technologies including balanced score cards, competency-based system, 360 degrees, etc. Without the key, they will all be for naught.

You can spend all your time calibrating your appraisal criteria and do everything you can to make performance goal setting and appraisal as objective, accurate and fair as possible but without the key, your employees won't appreciate any of it.

It helps to use all the latest technologies available out there to set goals, monitor and evaluate performance. Automation for example makes the tasks easier and information easier to stack for you to determine performance trends and make relevant performance-related decisions. That, however is still not the key.

Is the suspense killing you? Alright, here it is. The key to successful implementation of a performance management system is a complete buy-in of the whole concept by all the users from the managers to the individual employees. As I said earlier, it doesn't matter if you have the most sophisticated, most technologically advanced performance management structure or the crudest one. What matters is how committed your managers are in doing what needs to be done and how well the employees are responding.

How to get the complete buy-in? By incorporating change management from the inception to institutionalization of your performance management system. So, the question now is how did you incorporate change management in your implementation plan? If you did not deliberately draw a plan and followed it, I can already guess that you are experiencing a lot of resistance from the recipients of the new system.

Moving from a no system or from a strictly performance appraisal system to an honest to goodness complete performance management system IS ONE BIG SCARY LEAP. This is why the transition has to be managed well. A lot of selling and championing by both HR and organizational leadership has to be done if this system is to succeed. One more thing, a big lump of your change management activity has to do with enabling everyone to use the system through thorough training. When, I say thorough, I mean not just a half-day briefing or a whole day orientation but a thorough training on how to use whatever system you are implementing. Click here to find out what I mean with thorough performance management training. Speaking of training, a big chunk of it should be on empowering the performance managers to discuss performance and engage their staff in a coaching relationship.

Not all companies can invest in all those fancy performance management systems but all of them, whether big or small, need one. For as long as you have the five basic elements of performance management, you'll do fine. What matters really is the quality of communication that is happening between the manager and the employees as they go through those five elements.

Call ExeQserve if you need help in setting up your performance management system for your company or if you need help in making your existing system work better. We can help you:

- Design a suitable performance management system for your company
- Come up with a change management plan
- Facilitate the training of all users or help you run your own performance management training
- Design a performance-based incentive scheme for your employees.
-Provide the necessary coaching as you go through your implementation process.
-Or do whatever you want us to do :)

Related Training: Performance Management Training

HR on Employee Engagement and Retention

What can HR do to improve employee engagement and retention?

There is no single answer to this question. Everything that HR does or not do can impact on employees wanting to stay or leave a company. Let's look at them one by one.

Hiring
Hiring the right people that can match the performance expectations of the company and those who can thrive in the company's work culture is an important function of recruitment. HR should strive to design it's recruitment and selection strategy so that it is able to distinguish between ones who can't succeed in the company and those who can. The strategy should include methods of describing people requirements, tools for screening and training of people involved in the process. If you want to hire people who are likely to stay in your company, here are your courses of action:
- Device a means to describe your requirements not only in terms of skills but also in terms of personality. Mind the potential boss and team mates. What kind of person will enjoy (or bear) working with them?
- Use the most reliable tools you can find to determine the presence of the characteristics you want to find in a candidate.
-Train your managers to screen applicants properly.

Onboarding
Another important factor in employee retention is engagement. One of the ways to help strengthen engagement is by establishing an onboarding process that begins when the employee accepts the offer of employment up to when the person fully assimilates the role. What should be included in the onboarding program? Here's a good related article I found on the web.

Training
You are not interested in retaining all your employees for a long time. You only want to keep people who are talented, contribute highly to your organization's goals, costly to let go and hard to replace. A lot of these people are career and success oriented and will therefore want to choose and stay in a company where their needs for personal and professional development are addressed. It helps that the company has a good human resource development program in place where employees can draw their career path and be given various options on how they can develop the competencies needed to get them ready to take on the next higher responsibility.

Leadership Development
In a Gallup research, they found that many employees leave their bosses and not their company. (here's an interesting article on this topic)This emphasizes the importance of the bosses' ability to establish a good working relationship with their employees in order to keep them. In a third world country like the Philippines where work opportunities are limited for individuals with equally limited abilities, this may not be true. I've seen people hang on to dear job even if they're bosses are like devil incarnates themselves. But for those who have options, a bad relationship with the boss is a signal to move on. What can HR do? A good HR manager can influence the building of a positive work climate. Sell the idea of teamwork, appreciative inquiry and coaching for positive performance. Equip the leaders of your organization to create that positive work climate.

Performance Management
Help them succeed. Make their goals and roles clear. Give them feedback about their performance. Reward excellent performance and coach them so they can improve. Equip your managers with all the right tools to do all these. A potentially good performer may leave your company if he can't see himself succeeding in your organization.

Compensation
If you don't have any of the above, you better have a really competitive compensation scheme, where employees would endure bad work condition just to keep the pay. Yes, I said the pay, not the job. The thing is, if the only thing that's keeping your employees is the pay, you cannot expect them to be engaged. Keeping your compensation scheme competitive is important. If it isn't, your employees will be curious about how much more they can get if they work elsewhere. This will tempt them to explore. it will take more than a competitive salary, however to keep them engaged.