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Why Your Company's Training Budget is Being Wasted (And I Should Know - I Used to Be Part of the Problem)

Mate, let me tell you something that's going to make every HR manager reading this squirm a bit. After seventeen years in corporate training and consulting, I've watched companies flush more money down the training drain than a Melbourne Cup punter on a losing streak. And here's the kicker - for the first eight years of my career, I was one of the vultures circling overhead, happily taking their cash while delivering what I now realise was mostly expensive theatre.

The numbers are staggering. Australian businesses collectively spend over $2.8 billion annually on employee training and development. Sounds impressive, right? Here's what they don't tell you in those glossy annual reports: roughly 67% of that investment produces zero measurable improvement in employee performance or business outcomes. None. Zilch. You might as well set fire to the cash and at least get some warmth out of it.

The Cookie-Cutter Catastrophe

Walk into any major training provider's office in Sydney or Brisbane, and you'll see the same depressing sight: rows of identical course brochures promising to transform your workforce in three easy days. "Leadership Excellence!" "Communication Mastery!" "Change Management Champions!" It's like a buffet of buzzwords designed to make executives feel good about ticking boxes rather than actually developing people.

I remember one particular client - a mining company in Perth - who spent $180,000 on what they called "comprehensive leadership development." The program was a beautiful example of everything wrong with corporate training. Thirty middle managers crammed into a hotel conference room for two days, listening to someone read PowerPoint slides about "authentic leadership principles." No context for their actual work environment. No follow-up. No practical application opportunities.

Six months later, employee engagement scores were exactly the same. Productivity? Unchanged. Retention? Actually got worse because people felt insulted by the patronising content.

But here's where it gets interesting - and this is an opinion that'll ruffle some feathers - most training fails because companies are fundamentally approaching it backwards. They start with generic solutions and try to squeeze their specific problems into pre-made boxes. It's like buying a suit off the rack and wondering why it doesn't fit properly.

The Real Culprits (And Why We Keep Making the Same Mistakes)

Culprit #1: The Sheep Mentality

Australian businesses have this bizarre tendency to copy whatever's happening in American corporate culture, usually about five years too late. Remember when everyone was obsessed with "disruption" workshops? Or when emotional intelligence became the flavour of the month and suddenly every training provider was an EI expert?

The truth is, most training decisions aren't made based on actual organisational needs. They're made because someone attended a conference, heard another CEO mention their "game-changing" program, and decided they needed the same thing. It's corporate FOMO at its finest.

Culprit #2: The Measurement Mirage

Here's something that'll make you laugh (or cry): the vast majority of training effectiveness is measured by satisfaction surveys collected immediately after the session. "Did you enjoy today's workshop?" "Would you recommend this course to a colleague?"

Of course people say yes! They've just spent eight hours away from their actual job, been fed decent catering, and participated in group activities that made them feel heard and valued. It's like asking someone if they enjoyed their holiday while they're still on the beach - of course they're going to give you positive feedback.

Real measurement happens months later. Does the salesperson actually use those negotiation techniques? Is the manager having better one-on-ones? Are customer complaints decreasing? But tracking those outcomes requires effort, time, and a willingness to admit when something isn't working. Much easier to just collect the happy sheets and call it a success.

The Training Providers Nobody Talks About

Let me be brutally honest about something the industry doesn't want you to know: there's a massive difference between trainers who've actually worked in corporate environments and those who've made a career out of talking about work without doing much of it.

Some of the most effective training I've seen comes from smaller, specialised providers who really understand specific industries. Take emotional intelligence training - when it's delivered by someone who's actually managed teams through redundancies, mergers, and genuine workplace crises, it hits differently than someone reading from a manual about "understanding emotions in the workplace."

The big training companies? They're often staffed by people who sound impressive on paper but have never had to fire someone, never had to deliver bad news to a client, never had to make decisions when there's no clear right answer. Their content is theoretically sound but practically useless.

But here's my most controversial opinion: some of the worst training comes from companies trying to do everything in-house to save money. I've seen organisations assign their best performer to "just run some workshops" because they're good at their job. Being excellent at sales doesn't automatically make you good at teaching sales. Being a great manager doesn't mean you can facilitate leadership development.

What Actually Works (The Stuff Nobody Wants to Hear)

After years of watching training programs succeed and fail, I've noticed some patterns that make procurement teams uncomfortable because they don't fit neatly into tender documents or budget line items.

The 70-20-10 Rule Actually Matters

For those unfamiliar, the research suggests that 70% of learning happens on the job, 20% through interactions with others, and only 10% through formal training courses. Yet most organisations spend their entire budget on that 10% slice and wonder why nothing sticks.

The companies getting real results are investing in mentoring programs, job rotations, project assignments, and structured peer learning. Not as sexy as flying everyone to a resort for a three-day intensive, but infinitely more effective.

Timing is Everything

The most successful training interventions I've witnessed happened when people were already facing the challenges the training addressed. Teaching conflict resolution to someone who's currently dealing with a difficult team member? Gold. The same content delivered to someone in a harmonious team? Complete waste of time.

This means good training providers need to be flexible, responsive, and willing to customise content based on real-time organisational needs. Most won't do this because it's harder and less profitable than running standardised programs.

The Australian Context (Why Location Actually Matters)

Here's something that drives me mental: importing American training content wholesale without adapting it for Australian workplace culture. We've got different labour laws, different cultural expectations around hierarchy and communication, and frankly, different bullshit tolerance levels.

I once sat through a session on "difficult conversations" where the facilitator spent twenty minutes explaining how to document everything for potential legal action. Might be relevant in a litigious society, but in Australia, that approach would destroy trust faster than you could say "unfair dismissal." Our focus needs to be on having genuine conversations and building relationships, not creating paper trails.

The best workplace communication training I've experienced acknowledged these cultural differences and worked with them rather than against them.

The Technology Trap

Don't get me started on e-learning platforms. Actually, do get me started - this needs to be said.

Every few years, some tech-savvy consultant convinces leadership teams that online training is the future. "It's cost-effective! Scalable! Self-paced!" What they don't mention is that completion rates for mandatory online training hover around 20%, and actual behaviour change rates are even lower.

I'm not anti-technology - when used well, it can enhance learning. But replacing human interaction with clicking through modules is like replacing a conversation with reading a transcript. You lose all the nuance, the ability to ask questions, the peer learning, and the accountability that comes from being in a room with other people.

Plus, let's be honest - most corporate e-learning feels like punishment. Dry content, multiple choice questions, and the inevitable "Congratulations! You've completed Module 3!" message that nobody ever feels genuinely congratulated by.

The Real ROI Conversation

Here's the conversation every executive should be having but most avoid: what does good training actually cost, and what should you expect in return?

Quality training isn't cheap. A proper leadership development program for a team of ten managers might cost $25,000-40,000 when you factor in design, delivery, follow-up coaching, and measurement. That sounds like a lot until you consider that losing just one good manager to a competitor typically costs between $50,000-120,000 in recruitment, onboarding, and lost productivity.

But - and this is crucial - that ROI only materialises if the training is designed well, delivered by someone who knows what they're talking about, and supported by organisational systems that reinforce the learning.

The uncomfortable truth is that bad training is worse than no training at all. It wastes money, creates cynicism, and actually reduces people's willingness to engage with future development opportunities.

What I'd Do Differently (If I Were Starting Again)

Looking back at all the training budgets I've helped spend (and helped waste), here's what I'd change:

Start with exit interviews and stay interviews, not training needs analyses. Find out why good people leave and why good people stay. The gaps you identify will be more accurate than any survey about "desired skill development."

Spend 60% of your training budget on your best performers, not your worst. This feels counterintuitive, but your stars are the ones most likely to benefit from additional development and most likely to stay with the organisation long enough for you to see returns.

Make managers accountable for reinforcing training. Not just encouraging people to attend - actually using the concepts, having follow-up conversations, and modelling the behaviours themselves.

And finally - this one's going to upset some people - be willing to tell certain employees that training isn't going to help them. Sometimes performance issues aren't skill gaps; they're attitude problems or fundamental mismatches between people and roles. No amount of training will fix these situations, and pretending otherwise just delays difficult conversations.

The Bottom Line

I've probably contributed to millions of dollars in wasted training over my career. The difference now is I know what good training looks like, and I'm not interested in delivering anything less.

Good training is messy, specific, and often uncomfortable. It challenges people's existing assumptions and forces them to practice new behaviours in safe environments before trying them in the real world. It follows up relentlessly and measures outcomes that actually matter to the business.

Most importantly, it treats adults like adults - acknowledging their experience, respecting their intelligence, and giving them tools they can actually use rather than theories they'll forget by Thursday.

Your training budget isn't being wasted because training doesn't work. It's being wasted because you're buying the wrong training from the wrong people for the wrong reasons.

Time to change that conversation.

After seventeen years in corporate training and business consulting across Australia, the author now specialises in helping organisations design training programs that actually deliver measurable results. He's based in Melbourne and still occasionally catches himself using corporate buzzwords in casual conversation.