My Thoughts

Why Your Company's Training Budget is Being Wasted (And How to Fix It Before Your CFO Notices)

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Three months ago, I watched a middle manager spend $15,000 on a "revolutionary leadership workshop" that promised to transform his team into productivity machines. The facilitator arrived wearing a motivational speaking headset and cargo pants. Red flag number one.

After two days of trust falls and personality assessments that would make Myers-Briggs blush, his team went right back to the same dysfunctional patterns they'd perfected over years. The only thing that changed was the manager's LinkedIn headline, which now included "Certified Transformational Leader."

This isn't just one company's problem. It's an epidemic.

The $366 Billion Training Industry Lie

Australian businesses alone throw over $8 billion annually at corporate training programs. That's roughly $2,300 per employee, every single year. Yet productivity rates have remained stubbornly flat for the better part of a decade.

Something doesn't add up.

The truth is uncomfortable: most corporate training is theatre. It's elaborate performance art designed to tick compliance boxes and make executives feel like they're "investing in people." Meanwhile, the actual problems plaguing your workplace – poor communication, unclear expectations, toxic middle management – remain completely untouched.

I've seen companies spend massive budgets on emotional intelligence training while their senior leadership team operates like a collection of sociopaths. The irony is lost on everyone except the employees who have to endure both the dysfunction and the mandatory training about fixing it.

Why Generic Training Programs Fail Spectacularly

The training industry has convinced us that all workplace problems can be solved with the right PowerPoint presentation and a facilitator who's read "The 7 Habits" seventeen times. This one-size-fits-all approach is precisely why your training budget is disappearing into a black hole of irrelevance.

Here's what actually happens when you book that three-day workshop:

Day One: Employees arrive skeptical but willing to give it a chance. The facilitator establishes credibility by sharing war stories from other companies. Everyone nods politely.

Day Two: Breakout sessions reveal that half the participants are dealing with issues the training doesn't address. The other half are already experts in whatever skill is being taught. Engagement plummets.

Day Three: Action planning sessions produce commitments that sound impressive but have zero connection to daily reality. Everyone leaves with workbooks they'll never open again.

Six weeks later, absolutely nothing has changed. Except now you're $15,000 poorer and your team is more cynical about future training initiatives.

The problem isn't that training doesn't work. It's that most training programs are designed by people who've never actually worked in your industry, solving problems they've never personally experienced, using methods that sound scientific but are actually just recycled self-help concepts.

The Real Reasons Your Training Budget Gets Wasted

Reason #1: You're Solving the Wrong Problems

Most companies approach training like a medical prescription: "We have low morale, so we need a motivation workshop." But low morale isn't a disease you can cure with inspiration. It's a symptom.

Maybe your morale problem is actually a workload distribution problem. Or a recognition problem. Or a "your middle managers are incompetent" problem. No amount of rah-rah training will fix structural issues that require management decisions.

Reason #2: Timing is Terrible

I cannot count how many times I've seen companies schedule major training initiatives during their busiest periods. "Let's do a two-day customer service workshop during Christmas shopping season!" Brilliant strategic thinking there, chief.

When people are stressed, overworked, and behind on their actual job responsibilities, they're not exactly in the optimal headspace for learning new skills. They're in survival mode, which means your carefully planned communication training gets filed under "another thing management is making me do when I should be working."

Reason #3: No Follow-Through Framework

This is the big one. The absolute killer of training effectiveness.

You spend thousands getting everyone excited about new approaches, then send them back to the exact same environment that created the problems in the first place. Same managers, same systems, same incentives, same pressures. What did you think was going to happen?

It's like teaching someone to swim, then throwing them back into a pool full of sharks and expecting them to practice their backstroke.

What Actually Works (Prepare to Be Disappointed by How Boring It Is)

Effective training isn't sexy. It doesn't involve rope courses or personality tests or motivational speakers who charge $10,000 for two hours of recycled TED Talk material.

What works is stupidly simple:

Focus on One Thing at a Time

Pick the single biggest skill gap that's actually costing you money or customers. Not the most interesting problem, not the problem that's easiest to train, the one that matters most to your business outcomes.

If your customer service scores are consistently poor, don't also try to fix leadership skills and time management in the same program. Fix customer service. Period. Everything else can wait.

Make It Job-Specific

Generic training is the enemy of effectiveness. The negotiation skills a salesperson needs are completely different from the negotiation skills a procurement manager needs. Treating them the same is lazy and wasteful.

Build Practice into the Process

This is where most training programs die. You can't learn to manage difficult conversations by watching someone else do it on a video. You need to practice with real scenarios, get feedback, practice more, get more feedback, and gradually build competence through repetition.

One company I worked with replaced their expensive annual leadership retreat with monthly two-hour skill-building sessions focused on specific challenges their managers were actually facing. Cost: 60% less. Results: dramatically better because people could immediately apply what they learned.

The Uncomfortable Truth About Internal Capability

Here's something the training industry doesn't want you to know: you probably already have the expertise you need sitting in your own building.

Your best salespeople know more about effective selling than most external trainers. Your customer service superstars understand customer psychology better than consultants who studied it in business school. Your most productive employees have figured out time management systems that actually work in your specific environment.

Instead of paying outsiders to teach generic versions of skills your people have already mastered, why not build internal knowledge-sharing systems?

This requires swallowing some corporate pride. It means admitting that Susan from accounts receivable might be better at handling difficult customers than the $500-per-hour consultant you've been considering. But Susan's methods work in your context, with your customers, using your systems.

She's also more likely to be available for follow-up questions and ongoing support.

When External Training Actually Makes Sense

I'm not completely anti-external training. Sometimes you genuinely need outside expertise.

If you're implementing new software, bringing in technical trainers makes perfect sense. If you're entering new markets or launching new product lines, external specialists can accelerate your learning curve significantly.

The key is being honest about what you actually need versus what sounds impressive in budget presentations.

Do you need a two-day workshop on "Innovative Thinking in the Digital Age," or do you need someone to teach your team how to use the new CRM system effectively? Be honest.

Measuring What Matters (Hint: It's Not Satisfaction Scores)

Training satisfaction scores are meaningless. Worse than meaningless – they're actively misleading.

People rate training highly when it's entertaining, when the facilitator is charismatic, when they get nice workbooks and good catering. None of that correlates with actual skill development or behaviour change.

What you should measure:

Are people actually using the skills three months later?
Have the problems you were trying to solve actually improved?
Can people demonstrate competence in real work situations?

This requires more effort than handing out evaluation forms, but it's the only way to know if your training investment is generating actual returns.

The CFO Test

Before approving any training program, apply the CFO test: If you had to explain to your CFO exactly how this training will either save money, make money, or reduce risk – and provide evidence that it worked – would you be comfortable having that conversation?

If not, you're probably about to waste money on training theatre.

The good news is that effective training does exist. It's just not as flashy as the alternatives, and it requires more strategic thinking than most companies want to invest.

But when you get it right, the results are undeniable. And your CFO will definitely notice.

The choice is yours: keep funding elaborate corporate entertainment, or start building actual capability.

Just don't expect the training industry to make this easy for you. There's too much money in selling solutions that feel good but don't work.