What is the right amount of time to spend on training?

That's the question a customer service leader recently asked me. He had contacted me with some questions about lesson plans for a training class he was running with his team.

The team had gathered to take my Customer Service Foundations course on LinkedIn Learning. It was taking the team 4.5 hours to watch the videos and complete the exercises as a group. The manager wondered if this was too much, or too little time.

My answer surprised him because I suggested he spend less time on training, not more.

Instead, I suggested he leverage a little-known concept called the 70-20-10 rule. It could easily cut the time spent on training by nearly 50 percent while generating better results.

Here's what it is and how you can use it.

What is the 70-20-10 rule?

The concept was first developed based on research from the Center for Creative Leadership that showed leaders developed their skills from a variety of sources:

• 70 percent of their skills came from challenging assignments.

• 20 percent were learned from a boss or mentor.

• 10 percent came from formal training.

Two big caveats here:

• The word "rule" implies it's hard and fast science, but it’s not. It's more of a guide.

• While originally derived from leadership training, it's a good model to follow for other training topics.

I've had tremendous success applying this concept to customer service training by acknowledging that we learn a lot more from our experiences and our boss than we do from a formal class.

The amount of time you spend training is a lot less relevant than whether you align all three parts of the 70-20-10 model so they send the same message.

"70 percent" = learning from daily work

Most of what we learn comes from experience. While the 70 percent in 70-20-10 is not a hard rule, it’s a good reminder that our experiences play an important role in the learning process.

Your smartphone is an example.

You figured out how to use it without ever attending a class. Perhaps you asked a friend for a quick tip or watched a YouTube video, but you directed all of your own learning.

That’s the power of experience.

One of my recommendations to the customer service leader was to break the formal class into small chunks so employees could spend more time practicing their skills.

For example, Customer Service Foundations contains a 3 minute and 17 second video that explains a technique to easily start conversations with customers. I suggested the manager follow this plan:

1. Have employees watch the video on their own.

2. Ask employees to practice the technique on the job for one day.

3. Gather the group for a team discussion about their experience.

That plan would dramatically re-allocate how training time was spent:

• Formal training: 3 minutes, 17 seconds to watch the training video

• Experience: One day of on-the-job practice and experimentation

• Boss or mentor: 10 minutes for a team discussion

"20 percent" = learning from a boss or mentor

A lot of what we learn comes from a boss, mentor, or some other influential person. They impart information, challenge us to grow, and in the case of a boss, hold us accountable.

A credit union sent all new tellers to the corporate office for the same formal training program. After attending the program, an audit revealed tellers in some branches were following the training while tellers in other branches had developed shortcuts that made their jobs easier, but resulted in poor customer service and less accuracy.

What caused the difference?

The tellers who excelled after training had managers who set clear expectations, gave regular feedback, and reinforced what was learned in the formal class. The tellers who struggled had managers who were more hands-off or actively coached the tellers to disregard what they learned in training.

One way to fix this is with a workshop planning tool.

It's a simple way to get training participants, their managers, and the trainer all on the same page before training ever happens. Here's a short video that explains how it works:

"10 percent" = formal training

Formal training includes classes, eLearning, and other highly structured learning events. It also includes training videos, such as the ones I've made with LinkedIn Learning.

This is often where new skills or concepts are introduced for the first time. For many organizations, formal training is a great way to ensure employees learn a consistent way of doing things.

That was the case at the credit union.

Every teller attended the same class, taught by the same trainer. The curriculum was standardized, so each subsequent class received the same information, completed the same activities, and had to demonstrate the same skills to pass.

Yet the performance of tellers attending the training was widely variable.

That's the lesson I shared with the customer service leader who contacted me. Formal training is important, but it's more important to align coaching and on-the-job experience with what people learning in training.

Conclusion

The best training aligns all three elements of the 70-20-10 rule.

1. Formal training: introduce a new concept

2. Manager/mentor: reinforce the concept

3. Experience: practice the concept

Here’s the overall plan I recommended to the manager:

1. Have employees watch the training videos on their own, assigning one ~five minute video at a time. (Total time = 1 hour, 22 minutes.)

2. Ask employees to practice the skills highlighted in each video on the job.

3. Gather the team to discuss their experiences (total time = 1 hour).

This would shave two hours from the original training plan. You can find a more detailed explanation of how to best use training videos here.

LinkedIn Learning subscribers can learn more about the 70-20-10 rule from this short video.