Training Industry Magazine - January/February 2018 - 29

roles and responsibilities are within the
organization. This will help to establish
the appropriate areas to cover as well as
the desired outcome from the training.
Learning about the audience can be done
through reviewing internal documents
and procedures, conducting interviews,
performing on-the-job observation, or
even spending time in the employee's
shoes. The learning developer should
gather and document the knowledge
gained from these observations. The
next step is analyzing this information
and pulling from it everything that can
and should be used for developing
the training regimen. This knowledge
will help ensure that the training is
significant and impactful.

CREATE A CULTURE
OF ACCOUNTABILITY
A 24X7 learning survey revealed that
only 12 percent of learners say they
apply the skills from the training they
receive to their job. This is where learning
developers need to not just know
their audience, but understand their
role within the organization. Establish
a specific action for the audience to
take with them to establish employee
accountability and ownership.
When employees see how they can
apply their knowledge they continue
to be engaged. Training should not just
cover the "what's in it for me," but also
educate employees on how this impacts
them and what to do next. This leaves
them with a better understanding of
how they can apply what they learned
to their jobs.
Adapting role-specific training does not
necessarily mean reinventing the wheel
or constantly creating custom content.
Organizations should have documented
policies and procedures for their business
practices. Training should always direct
employees to applicable policies and

procedures. While much of the time,
these documents may be sitting on the
top shelf, it is time to take them down
and blow off the dust. Acclimating these
policies and procedures into the training
content has multiple purposes. For
starters, it keeps the documents living
and breathing instead of becoming
forgotten about. Often utilized policies
and procedures are frequently viewed
by key stakeholders and subject matter
experts, which is prime motivation for
keeping them up to date.

EMPLOYEES POSSESS
A DESIRE AND A NEED
FOR TRAINING THAT IS
PERTINENT TO WHAT
THEY ACTUALLY DO.
ONLY PROVIDE
APPLICABLE CONTENT
One out of three employees say that
"uninspiring content" is a barrier to
learning. Training is most optimal when
the content is customized to what the
employee does on a day-to-day basis.
For example, is the training for a
customer service employee who handles
general customer inquiries the same
training given to a collections employee
making outbound calls to collect on a
debt? Both employees are speaking to
their company's customers, but they
each have their own procedures as their
roles are different. Should an employee
who works with welding equipment
receive the same training as a machine
operator? Both need to know about
safety procedures and requirements, but
more specifically, they should be trained

on what could happen during their shift
and what to do in that scenario.
Similar job positions are often combined
from a training perspective, but might
not be the best approach. Role-based
training should not be one-size-fitsall. Training needs to be tailored to the
employee's role so that it can be wholly
applied on the job.

TRAINING DELIVERY
When developing the training content,
the material may change depending
on the direction and overall tone of
the training. This delivery execution is
critical to how employees will retain and
apply the material. In a growing age of
e-learning, a virtual course may have the
same (or greater) impact than a meeting
that lasts for an hour.
According to eLearning Industry,
corporate e-learning has increased by
an astonishing 900 percent over the
last 16 years. When working through
scenarios,
an
interactive
virtual
classroom or live cohort may be the best
choice. In a primarily Gen-X workforce,
ATD reports that social learning
approaches have a 75-to-1 ROI ratio over
web-based training.
In addition to knowing the roles
and responsibilities of the audience,
take into consideration factors such
as classroom size and participants'
location. These factors will also have
an impact on deciding how to best
conduct training.
Strong training content alone does not
make a training session impactful. While
the content is good, the delivery and
presentation materials should have an
equal impact. To tie the training content
to the overall session, supporting
training materials and activities keep
the audience engaged. When generating
the supporting training materials,

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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Training Industry Magazine - January/February 2018