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The training room was packed. Forty-three middle managers crammed into a space designed for twenty, notebooks balanced precariously on their knees, frantically scribbling down every pearl of wisdom from the $15,000-a-day consultant who’d flown in from Sydney. Sound familiar?
I’ve been in corporate training for seventeen years now, and I can tell you with absolute certainty that 78% of companies are essentially setting their training budgets on fire. Not because they don’t care about development – quite the opposite. They care so much they’re making spectacularly expensive mistakes.
The Conference Room Circus
Last month I watched a Perth mining company spend $40,000 on a leadership retreat. Beautiful venue. Catered lunch. Branded notebooks that probably cost more than my first car. The facilitator was dynamic, engaging, even inspirational. Everyone left feeling motivated and ready to change the world.
Three weeks later? Business as usual. The same toxic behaviours. The same communication breakdowns. The same people avoiding difficult conversations like they were radioactive.
Here’s what nobody wants to admit: most professional development courses miss the mark entirely because they treat symptoms instead of causes.
The One-Size-Fits-Nobody Approach
Corporate Australia has fallen in love with standardised training packages. You know the ones – glossy brochures promising to “transform your workforce” with their proven methodologies. These cookie-cutter solutions ignore a fundamental truth: every organisation has its own culture, challenges, and quirks.
I once worked with a family-owned construction company in Queensland. Lovely people, but their idea of conflict resolution was having a beer after work and pretending nothing happened. The generic communication course they’d purchased assumed participants would be comfortable with role-playing exercises and sharing feelings in groups.
You can imagine how well that went.
The facilitator spent two days trying to force square pegs into round holes whilst the participants sat there looking like they’d rather be getting root canal surgery. Here’s what experts say about tailoring training to your specific workplace culture.
The Sheep-Dip Mentality
Then there’s the beloved “sheep-dip” approach – dunking everyone in the same training bath regardless of their role, experience, or development needs. I’ve seen companies send their entire management team through identical leadership programs, from first-time supervisors to seasoned executives with twenty years’ experience.
It’s like sending both your grandmother and your teenage nephew to the same driving course. Sure, they both need to operate vehicles, but their learning needs are slightly different, wouldn’t you say?
The worst example I witnessed was a Melbourne law firm that mandated the same customer service training for everyone from receptionists to senior partners. Because clearly, a QC with thirty years at the bar needs the same lesson on greeting clients as someone fresh out of university.
The Follow-Up Fantasy
Most training programs have the lifespan of a mayfly. Participants attend, feel briefly enlightened, then return to their desks where absolutely nothing has changed to support their new learning. No systems. No accountability. No reinforcement.
Research shows that without follow-up activities, people forget 90% of what they’ve learned within a week. Yet I’d estimate that less than 20% of companies I’ve worked with have any meaningful post-training support.
I remember one Adelaide manufacturing company that spent a fortune on time management training for their supervisors. Brilliant content, excellent delivery. But these supervisors returned to workplaces where they were still expected to attend seventeen unnecessary meetings per week and respond to emails within fifteen minutes.
It’s like teaching someone to swim then throwing them back into a pool filled with concrete. Professional development needs ongoing support to create lasting change.
The Metrics Mirage
Companies love measuring training success with “happy sheets” – those evaluation forms asking participants to rate their satisfaction on a scale of one to ten. These forms tell you approximately nothing about whether the training will actually improve performance.
I’ve seen programs rated 9.5 out of 10 that had zero impact on workplace behaviour. People enjoyed themselves, felt the content was relevant, and would recommend it to colleagues. Twelve months later, nothing had changed except the company’s training budget was $50,000 lighter.
Real training evaluation requires measuring behaviour change, performance improvement, and business outcomes. But that takes effort, time, and honesty about what’s actually working.
The Quick-Fix Obsession
Australian businesses are addicted to training solutions that promise instant results. “Transform your team in just one day!” “Become a master negotiator in three hours!” “Unlock your leadership potential this afternoon!”
Personal development doesn’t work like that. It’s more like learning to play piano than taking an aspirin for a headache. You don’t become Elton John after one lesson, and you don’t become an inspirational leader after one workshop.
The companies that get real results from training treat it as an ongoing investment, not a one-off purchase. They understand that developing people is a marathon, not a sprint.
Some organisations get this right. Companies like Atlassian have built learning into their DNA rather than treating it as an annual obligation. But they’re frustratingly rare.
What Actually Works
After nearly two decades in this industry, I’ve noticed some patterns among companies that genuinely transform through training:
They start with honest assessments of what specific problems they’re trying to solve. Not “we need better communication” but “our project teams waste four hours per week in unproductive meetings.”
They involve participants in designing solutions rather than imposing them. The best training programs I’ve facilitated began with extensive consultation about what people actually needed to learn.
Research supports this approach – when employees help shape their own development, engagement and retention rates skyrocket.
They create systems that support new behaviours. Training people to give better feedback means nothing if their performance review process doesn’t provide opportunities to practice these skills.
They measure what matters. Instead of satisfaction scores, they track whether customer complaints decrease, whether team productivity improves, or whether staff turnover reduces.
The Reality Check
Here’s an uncomfortable truth: some of your training budget should probably be redirected to fixing systemic issues that no amount of workshops can overcome.
If your company culture is toxic, leadership training won’t help. If your processes are broken, efficiency courses are pointless. If your managers are incompetent, team-building exercises become elaborate ways to avoid dealing with the real problem.
Sometimes the best training investment is hiring better people or removing obstacles that prevent good people from doing their jobs effectively.
The Path Forward
I’m not suggesting companies abandon professional development. Far from it. The organisations that invest wisely in their people’s growth consistently outperform those that don’t.
But it’s time to get serious about how we approach training. Stop buying shiny packages that promise magic transformations. Start having honest conversations about what problems you’re really trying to solve and whether training is the right solution.
Many organisations are rethinking their development strategies to focus on practical, sustained improvement rather than feel-good exercises.
Your people deserve better than expensive entertainment disguised as professional development. They deserve training that actually helps them grow, perform better, and feel more confident in their roles.
The choice is yours: keep wasting money on training theatre, or start investing in real development that creates lasting change.
Either way, I’ll still have work. But I’d much rather help you succeed than watch you fail expensively.