American companies spent $156,200,000,000 on learning programs in 2011,141 a staggering sum. A hundred and thirty-five countries have GDPs below that amount. Roughly half the money went to programs put on by the companies themselves, and the other half was paid to outside vendors. The average employee received thirty-one hours of training over the year, which works out to more than thirty minutes each week. Most of that money and time is wasted. Not because the training is necessarily bad, but because there’s no measure of what is actually learned and what behaviors change as a result.
