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The Benefits of Professional Development for Remote Workers
Professional Development Training: The Uncomfortable Truth About What Really Works
I was at this corporate training session in Brisbane not long ago when the guy beside me started scrolling through emails. Can't say I blamed the poor guy. The facilitator was rabbiting on about "synergistic paradigm shifts" while showing us PowerPoint slides that looked like they were designed in 2003. Having spent over two decades in the professional development game from Perth to the Gold Coast, I've seen this same tired formula repeated everywhere from mining companies in Perth to tech startups in Surry Hills.
The thing that drives me mental? We're throwing money at training that trains zilch but definitely enriches the training companies.
Nearly all training programs are built backwards. It begins with what looks good in a brochure instead of what actually solves workplace problems. I can't count how many times I've seen HR departments excited about their elaborate training curriculum while watching their top talent head for the exit.
Want to know something that'll make you sick? Most professional development spending might as well be flushed down the toilet. I pulled that figure out of thin air, but anyone who's worked in corporate Australia knows it's probably conservative.
Let me tell you about Sarah from a logistics company I worked with in 2019. One of those special people who could look at a logistics nightmare and see the solution immediately. They invested serious money sending her to a cookie-cutter management course. Everything she learned was theoretical nonsense with zero relevance to her actual job challenges. The whole experience left her questioning whether the company understood her role at all.
That's the first problem. We've industrialized learning.
We've turned workplace learning into fast food - quick, budget, and ultimately unsatisfying. A forklift operator and a marketing director receive identical leadership training. It's the equivalent of ordering pizza and getting the same toppings regardless of what you really wanted. Sometimes it works. Usually it does not.
The next major flaw is when this training actually happens. Development programs run when it suits the organisation, not when employees are struggling with genuine problems. People get grouped together because they have similar roles, not because they face similar challenges.
I worked with a Geelong manufacturer who thought all team leaders should attend identical training sessions. Half the group were old-school managers who could sort out workplace drama with their eyes closed. The other half were terrified of giving feedback to anyone. Guess which group got the best value?
Here's where I might lose some of you: I think the majority of soft skills training is a waste of money.
Not because the skills are not important, but because we've absolutely misunderstood how adults learn tricky interpersonal behaviours. PowerPoint presentations do not create better managers any more than recipe books create master chefs. It's like trying to learn to drive by reading the manual.
Genuine professional development happens in the messy reality of actual work situations. The best training I've ever designed involved people practising new skills on genuine problems they were already dealing with. Forget theoretical scenarios and paid actors pretending to be challenging customers. Real problems that affected the bottom line.
This approach makes training managers nervous because it's harder to measure and control. They want neat learning objectives and tick-box assessments. But learning doesn't happen in neat boxes.
I do not work with companies that want cookie-cutter programs anymore. If you want standard, hire someone else. The training gets created specifically for your industry, your culture, your particular headaches.
Look at performance conversations, for instance. Most companies assume their leaders are terrible at performance discussions. But a construction foreman giving feedback to a new apprentice about safety procedures is completely different from a marketing manager discussing campaign performance with their creative team. The context, the relationship, the entire communication approach is worlds apart.
Problem three: what happens after training? Absolutely nothing.
Development finishes when the Zoom call ends. Nobody follows up, nobody checks in, nobody provides ongoing help. Imagine having one tennis lesson and expecting to play Wimbledon.
I worked with a retail chain that spent $180,000 on customer service training across all their stores. When they tested the results six months later, customer service hadn't budged an inch. The program itself wasn't terrible. There was no system to help staff actually use their new skills.
This might upset some people, but most trainers have never actually run a business.
They understand training. They know adult learning theory and can design engaging workshops. But they've never had to hit a quarterly target or manage a difficult client relationship or deal with a team member who's consistently underperforming.
This disconnect shows up in training content that sounds great in theory but falls apart when people try to use it in their actual jobs. Actual work life is chaotic and unpredictable in ways that training rarely addresses.
The companies getting real value from professional development are doing a few things differently.
Point one: they know exactly what problem they're trying to solve. Instead of vague goals like "improved management skills," they target specific issues like "cut overtime costs by improving delegation". They skip broad goals like "enhanced communication" and target "decrease project rework by 30%".
The second key is getting immediate managers on board. Your immediate supervisor has more impact on your professional growth than any external trainer ever will. But most organisations treat managers like they're obstacles to development rather than partners in it.
Point three: they track what people actually do differently, not how they felt about the training. Satisfaction surveys are meaningless if behaviour stays the same.
Telstra has done some interesting work in this area, creating development programs that are embedded directly into people's regular work rather than being separate events. People learn by working on real projects with coaching support built in.
I'm not saying all traditional training is useless. Practical skills development works well when it's done right. Health and safety programs genuinely protect people. Regulatory training protects you from legal problems.
The people skills that businesses are crying out for need a totally different strategy.
Tomorrow's workplace learning will resemble traditional trades training more than corporate seminars. Staff developing skills through actual work projects with mentoring and progressively harder challenges.
This approach requires admitting that learning is chaotic, personal, and slow. It requires training supervisors to develop people, not just assign tasks. It means measuring results that matter rather than activities that are easy to count.
Many companies resist this change because it means acknowledging their existing training investment has been largely wasted. Ordering more training feels less risky than admitting the whole system needs rebuilding.
But the companies that figure this out will have a enormous competitive advantage. These companies will build skills faster, reduce turnover, and generate actual value from development budgets.
The rest will keep wondering why their costly training programs aren't creating the changes they need.
Your call.
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