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Why Your Company's Training Budget is Being Wasted

Three months ago, I watched a colleague fall asleep during a $3,000-per-day leadership workshop. Not subtle nodding off, mind you - full-blown, mouth-open, snoring-like-a-freight-train unconscious. The facilitator kept talking about "synergistic paradigm shifts" while half the room checked their phones and the other half wondered if the coffee machine was broken.

That's when it hit me: we're throwing money at training like confetti at a wedding, but nobody's bothering to check if it's actually landing anywhere useful.

The Great Training Theatre

After seventeen years in workplace development, I've seen companies spend more on training than some small nations spend on education. Yet walk into any office in Melbourne or Sydney, and you'll find the same communication breakdowns, the same leadership disasters, and the same customer service nightmares that existed before all that training money got spent.

Here's what nobody wants to admit: most corporate training is expensive theatre. It makes executives feel good about "investing in people" while delivering roughly the same impact as a motivational poster in the break room.

I've delivered training to over 200 companies across Australia, and I can tell you the uncomfortable truth - about 73% of participants forget everything they learned within two weeks. The other 27% remember just enough to sound clever in meetings but not enough to actually change their behaviour.

Why Traditional Training Fails

The problem isn't that Australians are lazy learners. We're not. The problem is that most training programs are designed by people who've never actually worked in the environments they're trying to improve.

Take conflict resolution training, for instance. I once sat through a session where the facilitator - a lovely woman with impressive credentials - taught us to "seek first to understand" and "find win-win solutions." All very Stephen Covey, very professional. Except she'd clearly never dealt with Dave from accounting who thinks every request is a personal attack on his ancestry.

Real workplace conflict isn't solved by active listening techniques. It's solved by understanding power dynamics, recognising personality disorders, and sometimes just accepting that some people are going to be difficult regardless of how many courses they attend.

The same applies to customer service training. You can teach scripts and smile techniques until you're blue in the face, but if your staff are overworked, underpaid, and treated poorly by management, no amount of training will create genuine customer care.

The One-Size-Fits-All Disaster

Here's where I'm going to upset some people: most training providers use the same content for everyone. That pharmaceutical company in Perth gets the same leadership program as the construction firm in Brisbane. Different industries, different challenges, same PowerPoint slides.

I learned this the hard way early in my career. I delivered what I thought was brilliant time management training to a group of emergency room nurses. Spent two hours explaining priority matrices and goal-setting frameworks. Complete waste of time. These people were already masters of prioritisation - they just needed better systems and adequate staffing.

That experience taught me something crucial: effective training starts with understanding the actual problems, not the perceived ones.

The Follow-Up Fantasy

Let's talk about something that makes my teeth itch: the complete lack of follow-up in most training programs. Companies spend thousands getting their people trained, then immediately throw them back into the same dysfunctional environment with zero support.

It's like teaching someone to swim, then pushing them into the ocean during a storm.

Real behaviour change requires ongoing support, regular check-ins, and systematic reinforcement. But that's harder to sell than a two-day workshop with certificates and catered lunch.

What Actually Works (And Why Nobody Does It)

After years of trial and error, I've identified what actually creates lasting change in organisations. Fair warning: it's more expensive upfront and requires actual commitment from leadership.

First, diagnose before you prescribe. Spend time understanding the real issues. I once worked with a company convinced they needed communication training. Turned out their problem was an autocratic CEO who punished anyone for speaking up. No amount of communication workshops would fix that power structure.

Second, customise everything. Generic training is like generic medicine - occasionally helpful, usually useless, sometimes harmful. What works for accountants won't work for tradies. What works for millennials won't work for baby boomers.

Third, integrate with existing systems. Training that exists in isolation dies quickly. The best programs I've seen weave new behaviours into existing processes, performance reviews, and daily operations.

The Measurement Problem

Here's another uncomfortable truth: most companies can't measure training effectiveness because they never defined what success looks like in the first place.

"We want better leadership" isn't measurable. "We want to reduce staff turnover by 15% within six months" is measurable. "We want improved communication" means nothing. "We want to decrease email volume by 30% while increasing project completion rates" means something.

I've seen companies spend $50,000 on emotional intelligence training, then measure success by asking participants if they "felt more emotionally intelligent" afterward. That's like asking people if they feel smarter after watching a documentary. Feelings aren't outcomes.

The Australian Context

Working across different states, I've noticed some interesting patterns. Brisbane companies tend to be more receptive to ongoing development programs. Melbourne businesses often prefer intensive, short-term solutions. Sydney organisations sometimes treat training as a box-ticking exercise for HR compliance.

Perth companies, isolated as they are, often have the most innovative approaches because they can't rely on fly-in facilitators as easily. Darwin businesses? They just get on with it and figure things out themselves.

These regional differences matter more than most training providers acknowledge.

What Needs to Change

If you're responsible for training budgets, here's my unsolicited advice: stop buying training like you're ordering office supplies. Start thinking like an investor.

Before spending another dollar, ask these questions:

What specific business problem are we trying to solve?
How will we know if we've solved it?
What support will people need after the training?
How does this fit with our existing culture and systems?
Who has the authority to remove barriers to implementation?

Most training fails because it's trying to change people without changing the environment those people work in. It's like trying to grow tropical plants in a desert, then blaming the plants when they die.

The Real Solution

Want to know what the most successful companies do differently? They treat learning as an ongoing process, not an event. They invest in their people consistently, not just when problems become obvious. They measure results, not just participation.

And here's the kicker: they often spend less money overall because they're not constantly re-training the same people on the same issues.

Companies like Atlassian and Canva didn't become great by sending people to generic workshops. They created cultures where learning happens daily, where feedback flows freely, and where people have the autonomy to apply what they learn.

The Bottom Line

Your training budget isn't being wasted because training doesn't work. It's being wasted because most training is designed to feel good rather than do good.

Stop buying training that makes you feel like you're investing in people. Start buying training that actually changes how people work.

The difference between those two approaches? About $2.3 million per year for the average Australian company.

Just saying.

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