The Surprising Science Of Workplace Training

The Brilliant Blog:

The problem with workplace training is that it seems so simple: Show employees what to do, have them practice it a few times, and you’re done. But “training is not as intuitive as it may seem,” notes Eduardo Salas, a professor of psychology at the University of Central Florida. “There is a science of training that shows that there is a right way and a wrong way to design, deliver, and implement a training program.”

Salas is the lead author of “The Science of Training and Development in Organizations: What Matters in Practice,” a report published recently in the journal Psychological Science in the Public Interest. The thorough literature review included in the report makes clear that there is, indeed, a science of training—one that has developed and matured over the past 30 years. But this science is too often ignored by vendors selling their own decidedly unscientific approaches to training, and by well-meaning employers and managers who assume that their intuition is a reliable guide in putting together a worker training program.

Read the whole story: The Brilliant Blog