• The desire to learn;
• An effective teaching/learning environment to foster the development of knowledge;
• The environment to put the newly acquired knowledge into practice in order to come proficient.

It is estimated that these elements respectively represent 10%, 10% and 80% of the learning process. Yet, as I pointed out previously, the focus of nearly all organisational training is the course itself – the second bullet point. This seems ridiculous – especially from an organisational perspective - when the whole objective of training people is to have them apply their new knowledge effectively in the workplace. 

The Zealise solution redresses this. By valuing employees as assets and simultaneously creating a new employee ownership model to make them co-owners of the business, it creates the ideal solution to the whole training conundrum. This is because it:-

• Sparks an initial desire of employees to learn;
• Fuels the ongoing desire for additional learning in order to enhance their asset value;
• Creates a mutual benefit and common purpose that encourages constructive dialogue and greater collaboration between manager and employee to optimise the training;
• Provides the measures and the means for managing training as an investment rather than purely as an expense.

This last point is the critical one for ROT. Linking training to ongoing employee asset value essentially provides a means to capitalise a portion of training costs. This additional valuation has to take place within clearly defined, agreed and fixed rules, and only gets attributed to the employee when their performance meets the pre-agreed levels. This effectively ensures the ROT and means that both parties are committed to making it happen. This largely secures the (80%) proficiency element that is currently completely overlooked. It also boosts the desire element.

So now you have an unprecedented means of creating, measuring and managing learning and development within your organisation. It turns training from an expense into a properly evaluated investment with the appropriate return on investment (ROT) that ensures your training is more effective and actually transforms your organisational performance in the way you intend it to.

No longer will training automatically be the first thing cut when business gets tough. And, who knows, it might also signal the end of the age-old conflict between employees and their managers, and managers and owners. And the end of industrial conflict, as it has defined industrial relations since the start of the Industrial Revolution itself, is no mean by-product.

Bay Jordan

Bay is the founder and director of Zealise, a company created to help larger small to large business organisations to properly value their people and thereby inspire them to optimise their self-worth and so engage them that they transform organisational performance and bottom-line results. Bay is also the author of several books, including “Lean Organisations Need FAT People” and “The 7 Deadly Toxins of Employee Engagement.”