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Synchronizational Training Strategies
Training & Organizational Development
Synchronizational Training Strategies
A forum for exchanging ideas about skills training, leadership training, management training, compliance training, e-learning, as well as organizational development and effectiveness.
Coming from a large organization, we are finding some struggles in delivering sychronized training and I personally would like to extract strategies from other large corporations as to what their syll
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Synchronizational Training Strategies
posted at 1/2/2008 4:40 AM EST
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Posts: 14
First: 4/12/2007 Last: 5/4/2011 |
Coming from a large organization, we are finding some struggles in delivering sychronized training and I personally would like to extract strategies from other large corporations as to what their syllabus, curriculum, and strategies that have worked for them.
To be more specific in identifying our organizations needs would be in having to train teams of 20 new hires every six to eight weeks sales, service, and product knowledge; systems and programs in a very hands on learning environment. I am curious in hearing the pros and cons of what other companies have experienced, so bring it on. Thanks! |
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Synchronizational Training Strategies
posted at 1/14/2008 7:22 AM EST
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Posts: 14
First: 12/12/2007 Last: 2/6/2008 |
It just occured to me that you may be talking about what I normally have heard as "Synchronous Training" - as in Synchronous and Asychronous on-line learning environments. Is that what you're asking about? |
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Synchronizational Training Strategies
posted at 1/14/2008 7:49 AM EST
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Posts: 14
First: 4/12/2007 Last: 5/4/2011 |
You're right, GB104 on both postings. Any tricks of the trade out there that may lend some insight as to what works well and what issues or situations other trainers in my situation have had to deal with. |
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Synchronizational Training Strategies
posted at 1/17/2008 3:55 AM EST
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Posts: 14
First: 12/12/2007 Last: 2/6/2008 |
Wow, thats a lot to take on. Ill try to give you some broad concepts that may address your situation.
At a high level, you might consider looking into developing Competency models and succession planning for your workforce. Good competency models help you define what you want people to be able to do, how well they should do it, and where they can obtain the knowledge, skills, and abilities to get there. You can use these models to define many different positions in your organization including management. Theres a ton of info on the web about competencies. Succession Planning spins off of competency models generally in terms of progressing peoples careers and planning for changes in the workforce like moving people up the career ladder. This kind of high-level model can help you in planning training and making sure that you dont have a great degree of duplication and inconsistency in your overall training program. Both of these above suggestions can be fairly long-term efforts to put in place. Something thats more immediate and visible in the classroom (computer-based or face-to-face) is making your training events more performance-based rather than information-based. Im using very general terms here, but essentially youve probably got a very information-based training program if you have lots of PowerPoint slides in your training and big training manuals that you constantly have to update when the information changes (e.g., product changes, service procedures, etc). Todays world of electronic information means that there are volumes upon volumes of information available to us and it is constantly changing. Imagine a course that tried to teach you the information on the Internet. By the next day, the course material put together would be outdated because of the changes that would have been uploaded and training developers would go crazy trying to keep the course materials up to date. A more performance-based design would teach the tasks involved using the internet and probably use a lot of scenario or problem-based activities to teach the performance expected. In a more practical example, you have sales training. An information-based course will probably spend time teaching people about the product, all of its features, etc. If the product goes through changes or sales tools change or procedures change, the training developers will find themselves changing course materials along with each of these changes. A performance-based design will take more of the tack that regardless of the product specifics, the trainees are expected to conduct their work to certain standards and with given resources. Look at it this way; salespeople sell products its what they do, its the performance expected of them. Regardless of the features of the product, the performance is selling and is unlikely to change. The features of the product, however, may change, but their effect on the performance may not be significant. Product knowledge is important, yes; but, how I sell and how I interact with clients as a salesperson is constant. Traps to avoid Institutionalizing the idea that quantity of training equals quality of training Being unable to show value (e.g., how training affects performance) |
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Synchronizational Training Strategies
posted at 1/17/2008 7:32 PM EST
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Posts: 108
First: 4/15/2007 Last: 8/17/2009 |
Hello BevVotta. Im very confused about your situation? You agreed with gb104 that you meant synchronous training in an online training environment. Synchronous online training requires some infrastructure setup; for web seminars or synchronous discussion forums, etc. Is this what you have? What I dont grasp then is that you say that your learning environment is very hands on. Can you please elaborate more about how you currently train your new hires? Its difficult for me to share experiences when I dont grasp where you are at.
Your training of 20 new hires every six to eight weeks; does that mean that you have a high attrition rate for new hires, or that your company is large and expanding rapidly. Your answer to this question will bear significantly on what you will need to do to improve training (or recruitment/retention). gb104 offers some sterling advice. Many times, I find the difficulties with inefficient and ineffective training starts with the front-end analysis. I continuously browbeat managers to articulate what they want employees to do, not what they want them to know. Thrashing this out and then building the course and practice sessions around these is a great start. Les Allan Author: From Training to Enhanced Workplace Performance Business Performance Pty Ltd http://www.businessperform.com |
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Synchronizational Training Strategies
posted at 1/18/2008 12:59 AM EST
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Posts: 14
First: 12/12/2007 Last: 2/6/2008 |
Ah yes - Part II of this is the online synchronous and asynchronous training. These are also often described as online collaborative learning environments. If you already have web-based training, this is generally a big "next leap" in online learning that has active instructor participation. Blackboard is probably on of the most widely recognized providers of this kind of learning environment.
The difference between synchronous and asynchronous is essentially whether the communication is "real-time" or not. Synchronous is real-time - like chatting or a webinar. In practice this can also look like a Q&A session that an instructor holds with class members online. Asynchronous is not real-time - like this forum thread. The instructor can post a case study online to start the thread and students can post their solution to the situation as part of an assignment. As Les said, this kind of training environment requires some serious technical infrastructure to establish and run. It also can require a completely new set of skills for instructors for online facilitation. But it's a great way to get that intructor-student and student-student collaboration without having to ship so many people away for training (if that's an issue with your company). If you're in a situation where you already have this infrastructure and/or your instructors are already skilled in this kind of training and you're looking for application ideas, let me know more about your situation and I'll see what I can provide. |
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