Sustainability is used more and more as an effective advertising slogan in marketing by trainers and coaches. We read more and more often: “I work sustainably”; “We anchor our knowledge in your company sustainably “. But you have to check carefully whether the way it is done can actually be sustainable.
Sustainability does not mean to hand out a questionnaire to the participants at the end of a training course you and to ask them, what the training was like. Sustainability begins with a clear objective. What is to be achieved with the training measure for the participants and what is to be achieved with the training measure for the organization in which the participants work. Sustainability is achieved by accompanying the participants or even the organization, where the effectiveness of the training or personnel development measure can be evaluated. The scope depends on the objective. For many objectives, but also additional supporting measures should be planned and implemented in good time. Above all, sustainability means anchoring knowledge in the organization and in the individual and enabling both to take care of themselves.
Individual training measures do not support sustainability sufficiently. There are serious studies which show that up to 80% of what has been learned has been forgotten after only 2-3 weeks. Therefore, it is all the more important to transfer learned knowledge and competences directly into everyday work.
The effectiveness of the success of a training measure can therefore not be measured directly at the end of the training. This can take place at the earliest three months after implementation. Has the newly learnt knowledge and the newly acquired competence become anchored in everyday working life? Has this made the organization more efficient or has it been able to achieve its goals better? These are questions that an external trainer can answer rarely. He is not involved in measuring success and seldom he accompanies his clients over many years.
From the very beginning, THE MAK’ED TEAM has therefore been committed to systematically anchoring sustainability in our work for our customers. On the one hand, this means that we offer “personnel development” service for SMEs as continuous external support and thus cover the entire process chain for the sustainable achievement of the defined goals.
This also means that in countries where we see many trainers flying in and out, we have established our own local training institutions with local trainers and local employees. They accompany local companies and organizations in their development in the long term. We advise our clients comprehensively on the requirements of effective training measures and support the definition of objectives. For our company, this means not only anchoring processes and standards, but above all continuous training and coaching of local trainers and employees. Only in this way can we guarantee their competence.
And above all, it also means supporting local institutions and companies. We recommend questioning critically, whether the desired sustainability goals can be achieved with international consultants and trainers, who can neither adapt the knowledge to the country-specific context nor know the local circumstances. Many of these consultants, trainers and coaches are not even interested in accompanying their clients in the medium or long-term. A training “often out of the box”; only helps the trainer or coach, not his customers – at least not under the aspect of sustainable development of employees.
