This post is provided by guest blogger, Callie Surber, graduate student at the University of St. Francis in Joliet, MS in Training and Development program.

Sarah Fister Gale (2018) writes from the human resources perspective for many in-depth articles and reports for Workforce. Her sector report from 2018, “Your Training Program Is Not Enough” details the collective skills businesses need to implement within their learning management system (LMS) to ensure workers of all ages and skill level continue their learning in the workplace. Gale’s sector report highlights the fact that the LMS points employees to curated content in bite-sized chunks, but then the employees ultimately do not apply what they have learned. Maddening isn’t it?

This article felt timely even though it was written almost 2 years prior. Gale remarks, “The challenge learning leaders face is choosing what to put in front of them, and making sure managers and executives encourage them to use it” (Gale, p. 50, 2018). How do managers make or force employees to use the trainings that are presented to them? I wanted the author to go into the sector report far more to examine what techniques with the LMS were working to get employees to use the training in their work. Maybe the adage, you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink, is applicable in the training world too.

Gale, S. F. (2018). Your training program is not enough. Workforce, 97(4), 50–51.