“Ughhh, training!” is a very common sentiment at most companies. This feeling is often shared by the training participants, management, and sometimes even those who deliver the training. So much so, that some employees will actually pay their co-workers to complete training for them. I have seen it many times with many employees at many companies. Here are the top five things I have seen in the training world which clearly indicate the program is failing their employees. These are not presented in any particular order, because they are all equally problematic to a successful training program.

Sign Number One

The participant bladders suddenly become very small. It is quite the feat for participants to tinkle for 5 minutes every 15 minutes. How much water did they drink? This is a clue that they want OUT of the class!

Sign Number Two

Employees manage to create meetings out of thin air. I have seen completely empty schedules suddenly swamped with meetings, and miraculously this particular person just does “not have the time for training.”

Sign Number Three

Management says “you have to take this” or “Just do this for me, it will be over soon”. When even those at the top don’t like and support training initiatives, how do you think their employees are going to feel about it?

Sign Number Four

The trainers say “I know you don’t like it, but we have to go through this”. This is one of the largest gaps I see in training, a baseline assumption on what qualifies someone as a trainer. Enthusiasm and a little pizzazz goes a long way to engaging participants.

Sign Number Five

Sleep, sleep, and more sleep. In all my years of training, I have seen employee’s sleep sitting down, I have watched them literally go to sleep, standing up, and even outside in 30 degrees weather. I kept thinking that everyone has Netflix marathons like me, but eventually realized that it was much simpler than that. They were bored!

After recognizing these common patterns in your training classes, you may begin asking, “how do I fix my training? How do I make it more engaging? How do I train my people?”

My answer, “Do your training program right!”

This can be easily accomplished by effective planning through a comprehensive audit and analysis, effective task analysis , qualified and trained facilitators, and most importantly custom experiential courses.