By Lisa Toenniges
Aug. 18, 2011
Are you getting the performance you need from your employees? Do you throw training at a problem and keep your fingers crossed that performance will improve? The best solution doesn’t have to be complex and doesn’t always need to involve training.
It never makes sense to conduct training just for the sake of conducting training. You want employees to engage in training so they perform better on the job. That improved performance, in turn, should help the company achieve its business goals.
That being said, there are many factors that influence performance. Training is the right solution only if your employees lack skill and knowledge. To understand if employees truly need training, ask yourself, “If their life depended on it, could they demonstrate the skill or knowledge?” If the answer is yes, training isn’t needed. It won’t fix the problem. Something else is happening that’s preventing them from performing well.
Understanding How Performance Works
In general, 80 percent of performance problems are caused by environment issues. People don’t wake up and say, “I’m going to perform as poorly as possible today and do everything I can to produce terrible results.” Therefore, if you’re responsible for the performance of others, you need to understand how to look at performance and determine what’s working and what’s not.
Thomas F. Gilbert’s Behavior Engineering Model, "Human Competence – Engineering Worthy Performance"1978, is a simple model that can help you determine the root cause of poor performance. The model’s top row shows the environmental factors that influence performance; the bottom row shows factors of the individual that influence performance.