How to increase participation in training session

Hi,
In our company we have recently started training division and we are providing various behavioral training to our staff. However, we are facing serious issues with the attendance. Hardly 50% of the nominated participants are turning up resulting in loss of Training Division. It is not possible to link training with appraisal as it will not be supported by the other HODs.
Requesting you all to kindly give ideas which may improve the attendance. Also I would like to know, do all company face similar issues at the beginning.

Hi Tanuja,
today's rapid change & competitive marketplace has created importance for behavioral competencies. Let it be any type of organisation/business knowledge, skills & abilities are vital. hence organisations are spending lot of resources in learning & development to keep their human capital agile. but employees participation is one of the biggest challenge in such initiatives.
For lack of employees participants in training sessions have many reasons; may be training content, design, module, employees priorities, learning needs, motivation & many more. only improving training attendance will not make it effective. to make it effective kindly address following points;
1. Gather information/Identify training needs:
Gather information on Organisation needs-identify employees skills needed at present & future organisation and identify employees skill gaps gaps. Partner with business head and employees in data gathering. Get employees feelings, what they want to learn and priorities learning needs.
2. Training content, design, module: look at the training delivery methods. if employees are not attending classroom training get away from it. make it flexible & available online training module. make it available on mobile devise.
3. Relate it to career advancement: communicate training is for career advancement. encourage to learn future strength. show them preparing them to claim career ladder within organisation.
4. Reward milestones: make training activities as a important milestones in their career growth. reward them with cash prize, a gift card, a certification of recognition after each training.
5. Value Feedback: There is always room for improvements. Treat employees as your customer and get employees opinion & feedback improve on it.
above all management support & guidance is very important in training & development initiative.
hope this will help you.
thank you

Dear Tanuja,
This kind of problems arise when the focus of the training programmes is on people rather than organisation. Why do we conduct the training? We conduct the training to improve organisation's performance. Therefore, what you need to do is to identify various ratios or costs associated with the business and conduct the training to decrease the cost or increase/decrease some ratio.
A cost based or ratio based training is generally focused at the departments and HOD is accountable to show the results. In contrast, in behavioural training how will you make the participants accountable? In your company people are reluctant even to attend the training programme. Therefore, those who attend must be doing it perfunctorily! Amidst this, measurement of ROI could be far difficult.
Earlier, I have given comprehensive reply on the subject of employee. You may click the following link to refer it:
https://www.citehr.com/523786-traini...ml#post2222367
Go through the above reply and start conducting training programmes that impact your business. Once you start doing that you should not face resistance from the HODs.
Thanks,
Dinesh Divekar

Make the training relevant.
Make the training interesting.
Make the training participative.
Make the training future oriented
Make the HODS interested and involved in training.
Make the training short and concise as possible.
Finally remember ‘Training is useless without a purpose"
Make the purpose clear and known to all.

Dear Mr Nathrao,
Sir, howsoever training relevant might be, howsoever trainer might be good who makes the training participative , purposeful and so on, a company requires a culture of learning. Please note that I am saying culture of learning and not culture of training.
I have conducted training programmes for giants in their industry segment who are not just public limited companies but listed on Bombay Stock Exchange as well. Nevertheless, I observed that those companies lacked a culture of learning or even training and there was a great apathy towards training programmes.
I am into training full-time for the last 11 years. In 99.9% companies where I conducted the training programmes, I found that the training programme never started on time. Almost all the times, I found HR or Training Managers giving calls to the nominated participants and calling them. After 15-20 minutes, they generally tell me to start the training without waiting for those who did not turn up.
Any culture is always shaped by the leader of the organisation and culture of learning is no exception. If leadership does not take initiative in measuring ROI in training, why lower level staff take interest?
Hardly any company is there in India that thinks that the employee training is conducted to enhance operational effectiveness. Almost all the companies conduct the employee training perfunctorily or just to maintain image of the company but result-oriented training is a far cry.
Thanks,
Dinesh Divekar

Dear Mr Dinesh,
Fully agree with your leanred views on the subject
But my short post was limited to the making the particular class interesting to those who Finally attend .
I had recently conducted a lecture of fire safety and building evacuation where I found during the lecture of my fellow officer, few people were dozing off.
Sometimes people feel fire will not happen in my office and are indifferent.
It is tough to get over such mindsets of people.

Hi Tanuja
Greetings
Information given by Mr. Divekar & Mr. Nathrao are absolutely to the point..
Training module you are making, or timing of training, period of training, Organisation Culture, members/participants taking part in training, further to this, HODs interest..Managment interests etc need to be taken in to account.
Training is continuous process, Hardly few company managements agrees for temporary loss of production, but after training they can get more production...they forget this.. But lastly this depend on the trainer how lively he conveys the messages to the participants..and how much deep he/she penetrate inside the employees of particular company...this needs experience...interest and goal of management to achieve target...etc
Best Regards
R.R.Inamdar
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Mobile No.09408004617
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Dear Madam,
Mr Raj has laid out broad canvas of training philosophy.
Other learned practicing trainers have shared their practical views/experiences which should help you.
Your challenges are not uncommon. You may like to examine reasons for participants 'apathy. You may look at the following:
1. Such challenges occur when there is disconnect between what are learning needs and what is offered.
2 Lack of whole-hearted support from HODs if they are not involved in training need identification.
3. Training conducted outside working hours and no time off granted.
4 Training feedback not obtained .
5 Appreciation for attending training given
Most important, training content ,methodology, active participation of participants in discussiions and the credibility of the trainer matters a lot for its success.
Regards,
Vinayak Nagarkar
HR-Consultant