Training
Content
INFORMED CHOICES FOR DECISIONS MADE ABOUT TRAINING
How Learning and Training Work: A Roadmap for Improved Workplace Performance
Note to Key Decision-Makers and Influential Stakeholders of Training in Customer Organizations: This 5,000-foot view need-to-know paper is aimed at those of you who’ve little/no understanding of training, yet must make important decisions impacting its design and implementation. You may be an HR manager, a project director, a manager from another function who’s responsible for training, or you’re a person who plays a supporting role in training implementation.
Extrapolating for a Reality Check
If you’ve ever witnessed or participated in an organization-wide paradigm shift, then you know it takes two to five years for that shift to become a reality: The budget expended, the number of planning and strategic sessions involved, the countless staff and management implementation meetings, the myriad of training events and organizational development interventions that had to transpire, the volumes of lessons learned—and finally the organization successfully transformed from its status quo into something new. Extrapolating, if a department or division needs training on a technological advancement, or some new regulatory knowledge base, how soon would you expect to see significant change reach critical mass? Two months? Six months? No matter the scope of any change project, numerous factors will have an impact on the probability for learning, performance, and technology to actually transfer to the workplace as envisioned. This paper is about both positive and adverse factors of a universal nature. The adverse factors are so comically out of proportion in their widespread prevalence that on average “less than 15% of what people learn in training actually transfers to the job in a way that enhances performance” (Wang and Wentling, 2001; Baldwin and Ford, 1988; Broad and Newstrom, 1992).
Location, Location, Location
If yours and your client’s companies sell high technology products/services, then training’s usual end goal of performance improvement gets a rightful nudge backward to a penultimate slot in the training-needs pecking order.
I can think of no greater disservice than to sell a customer on adopting some new technology, but then deliver training at half-measure on how to apply it.
Because the irrefutable end goal then becomes transference of technology (through the medium of training) into the hands of your workforce and your customer’s end users. Technology transfer, technology transfer, technology transfer: This should be the mantra of your sales force. What so many organizations fail to give equal focus to is how employees will daily apply the new technology within the context of their jobs; i.e., the human performance side of the very same solution commanding an unrelenting focus of the technical side of transfer (i.e., where the hardware and systems get installed and implemented). Being equally attentive to necessary changes in policy,
© 2008 Benjamin E. Ruark
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INFORMED CHOICES FOR DECISIONS MADE ABOUT TRAINING
business practices, job designs, work contexts, and so on, is the technology-transfer responsibility of both training and organizational development. I can think of no greater disservice than to sell a customer on adopting some new technology, but then deliver training at half-measure on how to apply it.
Prudently Knowing When to Exit
If we use the roadmap as a metaphor then behavior change for some group(s) of employees is our destination, or more colloquially, ‘Change City.’ You see in Figure 1 the business route exit for Training. This route is oftentimes bypassed in favor of keeping to the fast lane in a rush to meet some project destination and deadline.
For many, if there’s any awareness, early in a project, of a need for training at all, at best it’s a fleeting thought. The delusional belief is that training plans can be put off until last minute—which basically relegates a training effort to being nothing more than an afterthought.
The Training Rut of Waiting until Last Minute
This is one of those quirky instances where it’s more informative to examine the adverse missteps of a training effort borne by afterthought, than it is to look at training done strategically (i.e., THE TRAINING BUSINESS
ROUTE,
summarized later). On the next page, Figure 2 illustrates the numerous ways organizations leave
themselves vulnerable to repeating the same training missteps each time a new change initiative’s performance target has been identified. This particular rut earns the label of the ‘Training Afterthought Cycle.’
© 2008 Benjamin E. Ruark
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INFORMED CHOICES FOR DECISIONS MADE ABOUT TRAINING
It is where performance- and technology-transfer get repeatedly marginalized. There are (at least) ten common missteps where training- and performance-transfer plans and decisions set the stage for marginal results: No FEA – Omitting a training needs front-end analysis (FEA) is like running your business without a business plan or operating strategy. A haphazardly or cosmetically performed FEA won’t identify (1) a clear training outcome (goal), (2) the gap analysis metric used to compare before-and-after training results, and (3) an appropriate ROI scheme to hold the training investment accountable. Seminar Formatted – A seminar is an educationally formatted presentation conventionally organized in lecture format. The audience passively watches on and gets informed and/or entertained by some Subject Matter Expert (SME), also unflatteringly known as a Great Talking Head (GTH). According to the National Training Laboratory (NTL) Institute, on average an audience retains about 5% of what is covered in a lecture (and this pertains strictly to knowledge—skills are excluded from representation). “2/3” Workshop – This training misstep fails to go the distance. Typically, it is but another GTH performance with the added feature of provided demonstration; for example, on a hit ‘n’ miss basis, a software application’s guru supplies demonstrations of its functionality interspersed with product-boasted bells and whistles. The audience may or may not have computers in front of them. Even if they do, instructional direction is at the
© 2008 Benjamin E. Ruark
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INFORMED CHOICES FOR DECISIONS MADE ABOUT TRAINING
mercy of the GTH’s whims, not keyed to learning steps and objectives. And the GTH may be witnessed to sparsely provide practice and remedial coaching; hence this workshop’s short-winded tag of ‘2/3’ the breadth. Unmanaged Customer Expectations – In many instances a customer organization’s key decision-maker/contact person responsible for a training project has little/no knowledge of how training, learning, and performance transfer gel. S/he will likely have personal assumptions as well as biases/prejudices about the design and delivery of training. Failure to manage these expectations both realistically, and to maintain project integrity, predictably results in training programs becoming so compromised that they cannot deliver as originally envisioned. Calendar & Content Driven – This miscreant is ever ubiquitous, and the latest surge in its frequency is primarily due to our incapacity to deal with knowledge management. The familiar refrain from uninformed customers (and also IT spin-off training departments) is ‘Give me a two-week course on_______.” The course outline invariably follows some supposedly logical order of topics. No thought is given to optimal learning (dependency) steps, workflow, or other learning-facilitated tactics. Thus the course configuration isn’t learner-friendly. Hand-in-hand with assorted topics compressed into a tight training schedule is an undue emphasis on content. How the content should be best segmented and delivered (information mapping) is quickly lost to the monopoly of including every single information object known, and how to keep it interesting within an e-Learning format. Job Standards and/or Work Context Omitted – Both F2F instructor-led classroom and Web-based training are artificial learning environments. With the possible exception of sophisticated (and expensive to design) training simulations, instructional settings do not represent the real work world. Yet adult learners learn best when critical components from their work context are integrated with new knowledge and skills being taught; the new learning gets anchored to ‘old knowledge’ and familiar work cues that enable transfer to the workplace more readily. One important niche in the work context is the performance standard expected of employees and its mastery in training. A training curriculum’s performance objectives should mirror actual work standards to the extent this is possible (using testing throughout and at the end of the course); i.e., no one gets a free pass. Skills Exposure Only – This training misstep is all too frequent. It typically piggybacks off of several of the other missteps populating this ‘black sheep’ list. Under what are typically tight training timeframes, and with too much content to cover, a curriculum’s allocated skills practice invariably gets trivialized: Practice frequency and duration are inadequate to the task of learning and retention. Learners not only get thin exposure to the skills, they’re also denied sufficient time for individual feedback/coaching. Invalid/Inadequate Testing – This misstep refers to invalid tests that miss their mark at representing actual job criteria tying directly to successful job performance (i.e., why employees get a paycheck). Inadequate testing refers to testing only for knowledge while ignoring critical skills altogether. Or by hit ‘n’ miss testing of some but not all key skills; or neglecting to test whole job tasks and entire work processes that make or break real job success.
© 2008 Benjamin E. Ruark
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INFORMED CHOICES FOR DECISIONS MADE ABOUT TRAINING
Poor Provision Planning on: Job Information, Tools/Resources – A training needs FEA is likely to identify critical job information/data, tools, equipment, and other resources that directly enhance superior job performance rather than impede it. Some of these resources, in fact, earn special attention as a necessary component of the training (i.e., are key to the work context). To not plan for their provision is a training misstep because they may detract from the training itself; or they’ll surely deter improved performance from transferring later on. Poor Planning on: Transfer Monitoring, Coaching, Rewards/Consequences – This is the most violated training misstep around due to its conspicuous absence. Many Learning & Development (L&D) managers are so fraught with other issues demanding their attention that they either gloss over performance/technology transfer strategies, or are unsuccessful in both selling and deploying them. By definition, this short-sighted misstep represents a missed opportunity to go the extra mile: To put in place mechanisms that ensure newly-trained employees perform as taught, and to the standards taught; and target where and when a job most critically warrants upgrading. The caveat to post-training follow-through is that the bosses of the learner audience need to get directly involved (maybe even specially trained). The new/upgraded performance must be monitored; ‘dipstick’ measures (i.e., work samples) must be taken to ensure the new performance not only prevails but at the expected standard. Done long enough, and by random spot checks, individual employee change will transpire. Follow-up coaching and reinforcement of changed behavior prevents both old work habits from returning, as well as any risk of degradation to former standards. Use of incentive/reward systems clearly spells out the consequences. [More discussion of these is provided in Appendix A] Hardly exhaustive, these missteps routinely carve a familiar rut for many last-minute training ventures; but also explain why they get relived repeatedly via the afterthought cycle: Customers requesting training lack sufficient knowledge about how learning occurs and the concomitant instructional technology steps required to produce effective training design, delivery, and transfer; Those in charge of training fail to educate their customers, and fail to due-diligently manage realistic expectations; (or the customer and other stakeholders steadfastly refuse to budge in their biases despite protestations from their training provider); An internal training marketing void exists: Word-of-mouth, small successes of effectively launched pilot training, and other internal marketing strategies have not been deployed to change negative/neutral perceptions about training’s efficacy. And especially where an organization’s culture has an aversive or low-expectations training-legacy, aggressive strategies are advised to prove otherwise.
Roadmap for Improved Workplace Performance
Figure 3 (next page) supersedes the negative training-afterthought missteps just discussed with a robust systems approach. This figure highlights the importance of an intentional early departure from the fast lane in order to formulate a beefier training plan of strategic complenentarity with business and/or technology transfer goals.
© 2008 Benjamin E. Ruark
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INFORMED CHOICES FOR DECISIONS MADE ABOUT TRAINING
Training as an afterthought represents only the tip of a gigantic organizational performance iceberg known as Human Performance Technology (HPT). HPT is an umbrella term for all the variables that impact organizational performance, and instructional technology is merely one of them. Likened to a physician’s desk reference, an HPT manual should be on every HRD and Training Manager’s desk as a guide to helping their organization effectively train and develop in ways that align with some business strategy and with all current research evidence available on achieving effectiveness. At Figure 3’s third mile marker, ADDIE (Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation, and Evaluation), the framework of instructional systems design, I hope soon to see being replaced by ARDDIE—with Research harvesting the most current evidence we can muster on effectiveness. Conclusion As implied throughout this paper, training—a generally short-lived event—isn’t the solution. It is only one link in a chain of factors that must bind together to eliminate all guesswork at achieving performance and technology transfer. Thus it should come as no surprise that the phenomena of human learning and behavior change prove so difficult to engineer and orchestrate in a predictable fashion. Only rarely can a quick-fix job aid get the job done. To continue to operate from a training rut, however, is to forge ahead half measure while throwing good money into low-return outcomes. Especially where a new/upgraded technology is concerned, the people-training side demands its equal share of strategic attention in order to pull off a unified, successful transfer.
© 2008 Benjamin E. Ruark
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INFORMED CHOICES FOR DECISIONS MADE ABOUT TRAINING
As there’s much to be absorbed from this paper: If in finishing it, you’ve forgotten the most compelling reason that gave it purpose, you’re urged to re-read page 1, 2nd paragraph, sixth sentence.
References
Baldwin, T. T. & Ford, J. K. (1988). Transfer of training: A Review and Directions for Future Research. Personnel Psychology, 4(1), 63-105. Broad, M. L., & Newstrom, J. W. (1992). Transfer of Training. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley. Clark, R. E. (2002). Six Principles of Effective e-Learning: What Works and Why. Learning Solutions e-Magazine, (September 10), Santa Rose, CA: The eLearning Guide. [Accessible online at: www.eLearningGuild.com.] Ruark, B.E. (2008). ISD Model-Building: From Tabula Rasa to Apple Peel. Performance Improvement Journal, in press. Shank, P. (2004). Can They Do It in the Real World? Designing for Transfer of Learning. The e-Learning Developers’ Journal, (September 10), Santa Rose, CA: The eLearning Guide. [Accessible online at: www.eLearningGuild.com.] Wang, L., & Wentling, T.L. (2001). The Relationship Between Distance Coaching and The Transfer of Training. Paper presented at the Academy of Human Resource Development Conference, Tulsa, OK., February 28 – March 4, 2001.
Appendix A – Read More About Each of these 10 Training-Related Missteps
No FEA – As many organizations convert/repurpose paper-based training into e-Learning modules, emphasis on content development holds sway under tight deadlines. Since distance learning affords ever-attractive economies of scale advantage, course designers fall prey to the ‘oooh, shiny!’ narcissism of e-Learning media bells and whistles. Learning and performance objectives might get airbrushed into Web-Based Training (WBT) with little or no forethought about whether a job aid might do the job better at this point; or whether the performance requires the social construction of knowledge (discovery learning); or whether policy, work standards, new regulations, etc., dramatically alter the task landscape being tended to by a repurposed curriculum. Seminar Formatted – A seminar can be very useful for introducing some major change in the wings; especially if the audience is invited into discussion. In fact a series of such seminars is critical to marketing upcoming change. “2/3” Workshop – This show-and-tell (minus practice and feedback) formula is useful for demonstrating low skills relatively easy to imitate; phone and e-mail etiquette, for example. Use of live/video modeling of certain cultural norms depicting appropriate employee conduct is another example (e.g., observing an exemplary model getting positively rewarded).
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INFORMED CHOICES FOR DECISIONS MADE ABOUT TRAINING
Unmanaged Customer Expectations – Key focal areas include: (a) the quality of (and working relationship formed with) assigned Subject Matter Experts (SMEs); (b) agreement on (and enforced provision of) accessibility to/ availability of SMEs; (c) clarity of purpose and agenda to be covered in review meetings and tech review walkthroughs; and (d) agreement on cutoff dates for major changes to curricula. Calendar & Content Driven – In manufacturing settings, it isn’t enough that engineers design a competitive product, they must also design its manufacturability. The same concept underscores instructional design: Usable content is obviously part of the production process, but how and at what points content objects are best learned is the analytic work of instructional technologists. Job Standards and/or Work Context Omitted – Elsewhere I’ve written of the need to dismantle job tasks to the point of integrating course content where it most fits in a training curriculum (Ruark, 2008); especially such elusive socalled competencies as those attributed to managing and leading; for example, the Achilles’ heel of curriculum design is a curriculum that never wholly transcends the abstract: It doesn’t connect theory, concepts, and principles concretely to specific job tasks performed by a learner audience. This glaring omission is also noted when work scenarios for trying out a new theory, concept, or principle are missing from a curriculum. Skills Exposure Only – A reverse cousin to the skills exposure shortfall is the use of trite learning/performance objectives that each workshop participant likely won’t get tested on (but are more likely to be tested in an eLearning format) due to workshop time constraints. As a quick example, you don’t need to explain how an internal combustion engine works in order to drive a car (to be a troubleshooting mechanic, yes); yet we’ve all witnessed similar instances where a job-irrelevant learning objective has been added. Invalid/Inadequate Testing – Even in soft skills training, with a little imagination and various Microsoft Office tool skills it’s possible to develop fairly sophisticated assessment instruments for delivering accurate measurement of proficiency (that can also be fed back immediately); I’ve personally witnessed such ‘homemade’ examples. Poor Provision Planning on: Job Information, Tools/Resources – This misstep concentrates on the ‘technology around the machine.’ In both high tech manufacturing and services you have the lead technology, whatever it may be. Then you have work practices and ‘lessons learned’ (tacit knowledge) in the form of job aided information, plus smart tools and equipment designed to produce to customer specification. Stemming from decades past, this description likely calls to mind Thomas Gilbert’s seminal model for engineering human performance. Poor Planning on: Transfer Monitoring, Coaching, Rewards/Consequences – By now you’ve surmised that learning and performance transfer occur along a chain-like series of connecting links, anyone of which, if weakened, so goes the entire chain and the predictability of a less than stellar outcome.
© 2008 Benjamin E. Ruark
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INFORMED CHOICES FOR DECISIONS MADE ABOUT TRAINING
Appendix B – 100-Foot (Granular) View of Learning & Training
Adults learn differently than do adolescents and children (browse the Web for adult learning principles) Adult learners have different learning styles (e.g., Kolb’s classification) Learner populations respond better to training when the curriculum and instructional methods take into account learning style, IQ, reading comprehension level, motivation, gender differences, and other (responsivity) factors Retention increases when a ceiling of 5-7 new pieces of knowledge/skill is maintained in training sessions of approximately no more than an hour in length (for e-Learning, introduce fewer new pieces of K/S and reduce session time to a recommended 15 minutes (with additional breaks added) Eliminate the background noise of nice-to-know content from a curriculum’s mainstream. This enables learners to relate relevant need-to-know knowledge/skills to their jobs more easily (less clutter); provide nice-to-know in an appendix or some other supplemental browsing device for the curious minority High level knowledge and skills (e.g., cognitive, interpersonal, some psychomotor) require multiple sessions of graduated practice anchored to qualified assessment and feedback (with remedial coaching) Skills practice frequency and duration need to increase, the more complex and critical a skill Learned behavior is nested in any work environment: performance antecedents (cues), various resources used/consumed, thoughts/feelings./attitudes, as well as rewards/punishments—all play a holistic role in determining the shape of performance, its strength (longevity), and therefore its predictability Work context addresses some of the nesting effects of any work behavior, good or bad. Training curricula that embed work context—e.g., work practices, key decision branches, regulations/policies, special contingencies, etc—increase a learner’s ability to associate new knowledge/skills with ‘old’ (current) knowledge. Embedding work context in training enhances transfer of new learning and performance As applicable, for post-training follow-up make every attempt to institute either peer, supervisory, or executive coaching (research-supported, there are too many advantages to list here) For any complex task whose performance requires discretionary latitude (since key elements vary across work situations), necessitates a ‘deep transfer’ design via a scenario-based training format (Shank, 2004) E-Learning is as effective as Instructor-led training (ILT) when the appropriate instructional methods are matched to learning objectives. However, effective use of media elements in e-Learning needs to comply with current research findings (Clark, 2002) Performance tends to erode/fade over time if there’s no formal quality assurance mechanism for reassessing it and refreshing it with booster training. Maintenance of high performance levels requires either self-monitoring or some other means to gather data, feed it back, and make needed adjustments
© 2008 Benjamin E. Ruark
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How Learning and Training Work: A Roadmap for Improved Workplace Performance
Note to Key Decision-Makers and Influential Stakeholders of Training in Customer Organizations: This 5,000-foot view need-to-know paper is aimed at those of you who’ve little/no understanding of training, yet must make important decisions impacting its design and implementation. You may be an HR manager, a project director, a manager from another function who’s responsible for training, or you’re a person who plays a supporting role in training implementation.
Extrapolating for a Reality Check
If you’ve ever witnessed or participated in an organization-wide paradigm shift, then you know it takes two to five years for that shift to become a reality: The budget expended, the number of planning and strategic sessions involved, the countless staff and management implementation meetings, the myriad of training events and organizational development interventions that had to transpire, the volumes of lessons learned—and finally the organization successfully transformed from its status quo into something new. Extrapolating, if a department or division needs training on a technological advancement, or some new regulatory knowledge base, how soon would you expect to see significant change reach critical mass? Two months? Six months? No matter the scope of any change project, numerous factors will have an impact on the probability for learning, performance, and technology to actually transfer to the workplace as envisioned. This paper is about both positive and adverse factors of a universal nature. The adverse factors are so comically out of proportion in their widespread prevalence that on average “less than 15% of what people learn in training actually transfers to the job in a way that enhances performance” (Wang and Wentling, 2001; Baldwin and Ford, 1988; Broad and Newstrom, 1992).
Location, Location, Location
If yours and your client’s companies sell high technology products/services, then training’s usual end goal of performance improvement gets a rightful nudge backward to a penultimate slot in the training-needs pecking order.
I can think of no greater disservice than to sell a customer on adopting some new technology, but then deliver training at half-measure on how to apply it.
Because the irrefutable end goal then becomes transference of technology (through the medium of training) into the hands of your workforce and your customer’s end users. Technology transfer, technology transfer, technology transfer: This should be the mantra of your sales force. What so many organizations fail to give equal focus to is how employees will daily apply the new technology within the context of their jobs; i.e., the human performance side of the very same solution commanding an unrelenting focus of the technical side of transfer (i.e., where the hardware and systems get installed and implemented). Being equally attentive to necessary changes in policy,
© 2008 Benjamin E. Ruark
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INFORMED CHOICES FOR DECISIONS MADE ABOUT TRAINING
business practices, job designs, work contexts, and so on, is the technology-transfer responsibility of both training and organizational development. I can think of no greater disservice than to sell a customer on adopting some new technology, but then deliver training at half-measure on how to apply it.
Prudently Knowing When to Exit
If we use the roadmap as a metaphor then behavior change for some group(s) of employees is our destination, or more colloquially, ‘Change City.’ You see in Figure 1 the business route exit for Training. This route is oftentimes bypassed in favor of keeping to the fast lane in a rush to meet some project destination and deadline.
For many, if there’s any awareness, early in a project, of a need for training at all, at best it’s a fleeting thought. The delusional belief is that training plans can be put off until last minute—which basically relegates a training effort to being nothing more than an afterthought.
The Training Rut of Waiting until Last Minute
This is one of those quirky instances where it’s more informative to examine the adverse missteps of a training effort borne by afterthought, than it is to look at training done strategically (i.e., THE TRAINING BUSINESS
ROUTE,
summarized later). On the next page, Figure 2 illustrates the numerous ways organizations leave
themselves vulnerable to repeating the same training missteps each time a new change initiative’s performance target has been identified. This particular rut earns the label of the ‘Training Afterthought Cycle.’
© 2008 Benjamin E. Ruark
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INFORMED CHOICES FOR DECISIONS MADE ABOUT TRAINING
It is where performance- and technology-transfer get repeatedly marginalized. There are (at least) ten common missteps where training- and performance-transfer plans and decisions set the stage for marginal results: No FEA – Omitting a training needs front-end analysis (FEA) is like running your business without a business plan or operating strategy. A haphazardly or cosmetically performed FEA won’t identify (1) a clear training outcome (goal), (2) the gap analysis metric used to compare before-and-after training results, and (3) an appropriate ROI scheme to hold the training investment accountable. Seminar Formatted – A seminar is an educationally formatted presentation conventionally organized in lecture format. The audience passively watches on and gets informed and/or entertained by some Subject Matter Expert (SME), also unflatteringly known as a Great Talking Head (GTH). According to the National Training Laboratory (NTL) Institute, on average an audience retains about 5% of what is covered in a lecture (and this pertains strictly to knowledge—skills are excluded from representation). “2/3” Workshop – This training misstep fails to go the distance. Typically, it is but another GTH performance with the added feature of provided demonstration; for example, on a hit ‘n’ miss basis, a software application’s guru supplies demonstrations of its functionality interspersed with product-boasted bells and whistles. The audience may or may not have computers in front of them. Even if they do, instructional direction is at the
© 2008 Benjamin E. Ruark
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INFORMED CHOICES FOR DECISIONS MADE ABOUT TRAINING
mercy of the GTH’s whims, not keyed to learning steps and objectives. And the GTH may be witnessed to sparsely provide practice and remedial coaching; hence this workshop’s short-winded tag of ‘2/3’ the breadth. Unmanaged Customer Expectations – In many instances a customer organization’s key decision-maker/contact person responsible for a training project has little/no knowledge of how training, learning, and performance transfer gel. S/he will likely have personal assumptions as well as biases/prejudices about the design and delivery of training. Failure to manage these expectations both realistically, and to maintain project integrity, predictably results in training programs becoming so compromised that they cannot deliver as originally envisioned. Calendar & Content Driven – This miscreant is ever ubiquitous, and the latest surge in its frequency is primarily due to our incapacity to deal with knowledge management. The familiar refrain from uninformed customers (and also IT spin-off training departments) is ‘Give me a two-week course on_______.” The course outline invariably follows some supposedly logical order of topics. No thought is given to optimal learning (dependency) steps, workflow, or other learning-facilitated tactics. Thus the course configuration isn’t learner-friendly. Hand-in-hand with assorted topics compressed into a tight training schedule is an undue emphasis on content. How the content should be best segmented and delivered (information mapping) is quickly lost to the monopoly of including every single information object known, and how to keep it interesting within an e-Learning format. Job Standards and/or Work Context Omitted – Both F2F instructor-led classroom and Web-based training are artificial learning environments. With the possible exception of sophisticated (and expensive to design) training simulations, instructional settings do not represent the real work world. Yet adult learners learn best when critical components from their work context are integrated with new knowledge and skills being taught; the new learning gets anchored to ‘old knowledge’ and familiar work cues that enable transfer to the workplace more readily. One important niche in the work context is the performance standard expected of employees and its mastery in training. A training curriculum’s performance objectives should mirror actual work standards to the extent this is possible (using testing throughout and at the end of the course); i.e., no one gets a free pass. Skills Exposure Only – This training misstep is all too frequent. It typically piggybacks off of several of the other missteps populating this ‘black sheep’ list. Under what are typically tight training timeframes, and with too much content to cover, a curriculum’s allocated skills practice invariably gets trivialized: Practice frequency and duration are inadequate to the task of learning and retention. Learners not only get thin exposure to the skills, they’re also denied sufficient time for individual feedback/coaching. Invalid/Inadequate Testing – This misstep refers to invalid tests that miss their mark at representing actual job criteria tying directly to successful job performance (i.e., why employees get a paycheck). Inadequate testing refers to testing only for knowledge while ignoring critical skills altogether. Or by hit ‘n’ miss testing of some but not all key skills; or neglecting to test whole job tasks and entire work processes that make or break real job success.
© 2008 Benjamin E. Ruark
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INFORMED CHOICES FOR DECISIONS MADE ABOUT TRAINING
Poor Provision Planning on: Job Information, Tools/Resources – A training needs FEA is likely to identify critical job information/data, tools, equipment, and other resources that directly enhance superior job performance rather than impede it. Some of these resources, in fact, earn special attention as a necessary component of the training (i.e., are key to the work context). To not plan for their provision is a training misstep because they may detract from the training itself; or they’ll surely deter improved performance from transferring later on. Poor Planning on: Transfer Monitoring, Coaching, Rewards/Consequences – This is the most violated training misstep around due to its conspicuous absence. Many Learning & Development (L&D) managers are so fraught with other issues demanding their attention that they either gloss over performance/technology transfer strategies, or are unsuccessful in both selling and deploying them. By definition, this short-sighted misstep represents a missed opportunity to go the extra mile: To put in place mechanisms that ensure newly-trained employees perform as taught, and to the standards taught; and target where and when a job most critically warrants upgrading. The caveat to post-training follow-through is that the bosses of the learner audience need to get directly involved (maybe even specially trained). The new/upgraded performance must be monitored; ‘dipstick’ measures (i.e., work samples) must be taken to ensure the new performance not only prevails but at the expected standard. Done long enough, and by random spot checks, individual employee change will transpire. Follow-up coaching and reinforcement of changed behavior prevents both old work habits from returning, as well as any risk of degradation to former standards. Use of incentive/reward systems clearly spells out the consequences. [More discussion of these is provided in Appendix A] Hardly exhaustive, these missteps routinely carve a familiar rut for many last-minute training ventures; but also explain why they get relived repeatedly via the afterthought cycle: Customers requesting training lack sufficient knowledge about how learning occurs and the concomitant instructional technology steps required to produce effective training design, delivery, and transfer; Those in charge of training fail to educate their customers, and fail to due-diligently manage realistic expectations; (or the customer and other stakeholders steadfastly refuse to budge in their biases despite protestations from their training provider); An internal training marketing void exists: Word-of-mouth, small successes of effectively launched pilot training, and other internal marketing strategies have not been deployed to change negative/neutral perceptions about training’s efficacy. And especially where an organization’s culture has an aversive or low-expectations training-legacy, aggressive strategies are advised to prove otherwise.
Roadmap for Improved Workplace Performance
Figure 3 (next page) supersedes the negative training-afterthought missteps just discussed with a robust systems approach. This figure highlights the importance of an intentional early departure from the fast lane in order to formulate a beefier training plan of strategic complenentarity with business and/or technology transfer goals.
© 2008 Benjamin E. Ruark
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INFORMED CHOICES FOR DECISIONS MADE ABOUT TRAINING
Training as an afterthought represents only the tip of a gigantic organizational performance iceberg known as Human Performance Technology (HPT). HPT is an umbrella term for all the variables that impact organizational performance, and instructional technology is merely one of them. Likened to a physician’s desk reference, an HPT manual should be on every HRD and Training Manager’s desk as a guide to helping their organization effectively train and develop in ways that align with some business strategy and with all current research evidence available on achieving effectiveness. At Figure 3’s third mile marker, ADDIE (Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation, and Evaluation), the framework of instructional systems design, I hope soon to see being replaced by ARDDIE—with Research harvesting the most current evidence we can muster on effectiveness. Conclusion As implied throughout this paper, training—a generally short-lived event—isn’t the solution. It is only one link in a chain of factors that must bind together to eliminate all guesswork at achieving performance and technology transfer. Thus it should come as no surprise that the phenomena of human learning and behavior change prove so difficult to engineer and orchestrate in a predictable fashion. Only rarely can a quick-fix job aid get the job done. To continue to operate from a training rut, however, is to forge ahead half measure while throwing good money into low-return outcomes. Especially where a new/upgraded technology is concerned, the people-training side demands its equal share of strategic attention in order to pull off a unified, successful transfer.
© 2008 Benjamin E. Ruark
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INFORMED CHOICES FOR DECISIONS MADE ABOUT TRAINING
As there’s much to be absorbed from this paper: If in finishing it, you’ve forgotten the most compelling reason that gave it purpose, you’re urged to re-read page 1, 2nd paragraph, sixth sentence.
References
Baldwin, T. T. & Ford, J. K. (1988). Transfer of training: A Review and Directions for Future Research. Personnel Psychology, 4(1), 63-105. Broad, M. L., & Newstrom, J. W. (1992). Transfer of Training. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley. Clark, R. E. (2002). Six Principles of Effective e-Learning: What Works and Why. Learning Solutions e-Magazine, (September 10), Santa Rose, CA: The eLearning Guide. [Accessible online at: www.eLearningGuild.com.] Ruark, B.E. (2008). ISD Model-Building: From Tabula Rasa to Apple Peel. Performance Improvement Journal, in press. Shank, P. (2004). Can They Do It in the Real World? Designing for Transfer of Learning. The e-Learning Developers’ Journal, (September 10), Santa Rose, CA: The eLearning Guide. [Accessible online at: www.eLearningGuild.com.] Wang, L., & Wentling, T.L. (2001). The Relationship Between Distance Coaching and The Transfer of Training. Paper presented at the Academy of Human Resource Development Conference, Tulsa, OK., February 28 – March 4, 2001.
Appendix A – Read More About Each of these 10 Training-Related Missteps
No FEA – As many organizations convert/repurpose paper-based training into e-Learning modules, emphasis on content development holds sway under tight deadlines. Since distance learning affords ever-attractive economies of scale advantage, course designers fall prey to the ‘oooh, shiny!’ narcissism of e-Learning media bells and whistles. Learning and performance objectives might get airbrushed into Web-Based Training (WBT) with little or no forethought about whether a job aid might do the job better at this point; or whether the performance requires the social construction of knowledge (discovery learning); or whether policy, work standards, new regulations, etc., dramatically alter the task landscape being tended to by a repurposed curriculum. Seminar Formatted – A seminar can be very useful for introducing some major change in the wings; especially if the audience is invited into discussion. In fact a series of such seminars is critical to marketing upcoming change. “2/3” Workshop – This show-and-tell (minus practice and feedback) formula is useful for demonstrating low skills relatively easy to imitate; phone and e-mail etiquette, for example. Use of live/video modeling of certain cultural norms depicting appropriate employee conduct is another example (e.g., observing an exemplary model getting positively rewarded).
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Unmanaged Customer Expectations – Key focal areas include: (a) the quality of (and working relationship formed with) assigned Subject Matter Experts (SMEs); (b) agreement on (and enforced provision of) accessibility to/ availability of SMEs; (c) clarity of purpose and agenda to be covered in review meetings and tech review walkthroughs; and (d) agreement on cutoff dates for major changes to curricula. Calendar & Content Driven – In manufacturing settings, it isn’t enough that engineers design a competitive product, they must also design its manufacturability. The same concept underscores instructional design: Usable content is obviously part of the production process, but how and at what points content objects are best learned is the analytic work of instructional technologists. Job Standards and/or Work Context Omitted – Elsewhere I’ve written of the need to dismantle job tasks to the point of integrating course content where it most fits in a training curriculum (Ruark, 2008); especially such elusive socalled competencies as those attributed to managing and leading; for example, the Achilles’ heel of curriculum design is a curriculum that never wholly transcends the abstract: It doesn’t connect theory, concepts, and principles concretely to specific job tasks performed by a learner audience. This glaring omission is also noted when work scenarios for trying out a new theory, concept, or principle are missing from a curriculum. Skills Exposure Only – A reverse cousin to the skills exposure shortfall is the use of trite learning/performance objectives that each workshop participant likely won’t get tested on (but are more likely to be tested in an eLearning format) due to workshop time constraints. As a quick example, you don’t need to explain how an internal combustion engine works in order to drive a car (to be a troubleshooting mechanic, yes); yet we’ve all witnessed similar instances where a job-irrelevant learning objective has been added. Invalid/Inadequate Testing – Even in soft skills training, with a little imagination and various Microsoft Office tool skills it’s possible to develop fairly sophisticated assessment instruments for delivering accurate measurement of proficiency (that can also be fed back immediately); I’ve personally witnessed such ‘homemade’ examples. Poor Provision Planning on: Job Information, Tools/Resources – This misstep concentrates on the ‘technology around the machine.’ In both high tech manufacturing and services you have the lead technology, whatever it may be. Then you have work practices and ‘lessons learned’ (tacit knowledge) in the form of job aided information, plus smart tools and equipment designed to produce to customer specification. Stemming from decades past, this description likely calls to mind Thomas Gilbert’s seminal model for engineering human performance. Poor Planning on: Transfer Monitoring, Coaching, Rewards/Consequences – By now you’ve surmised that learning and performance transfer occur along a chain-like series of connecting links, anyone of which, if weakened, so goes the entire chain and the predictability of a less than stellar outcome.
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Appendix B – 100-Foot (Granular) View of Learning & Training
Adults learn differently than do adolescents and children (browse the Web for adult learning principles) Adult learners have different learning styles (e.g., Kolb’s classification) Learner populations respond better to training when the curriculum and instructional methods take into account learning style, IQ, reading comprehension level, motivation, gender differences, and other (responsivity) factors Retention increases when a ceiling of 5-7 new pieces of knowledge/skill is maintained in training sessions of approximately no more than an hour in length (for e-Learning, introduce fewer new pieces of K/S and reduce session time to a recommended 15 minutes (with additional breaks added) Eliminate the background noise of nice-to-know content from a curriculum’s mainstream. This enables learners to relate relevant need-to-know knowledge/skills to their jobs more easily (less clutter); provide nice-to-know in an appendix or some other supplemental browsing device for the curious minority High level knowledge and skills (e.g., cognitive, interpersonal, some psychomotor) require multiple sessions of graduated practice anchored to qualified assessment and feedback (with remedial coaching) Skills practice frequency and duration need to increase, the more complex and critical a skill Learned behavior is nested in any work environment: performance antecedents (cues), various resources used/consumed, thoughts/feelings./attitudes, as well as rewards/punishments—all play a holistic role in determining the shape of performance, its strength (longevity), and therefore its predictability Work context addresses some of the nesting effects of any work behavior, good or bad. Training curricula that embed work context—e.g., work practices, key decision branches, regulations/policies, special contingencies, etc—increase a learner’s ability to associate new knowledge/skills with ‘old’ (current) knowledge. Embedding work context in training enhances transfer of new learning and performance As applicable, for post-training follow-up make every attempt to institute either peer, supervisory, or executive coaching (research-supported, there are too many advantages to list here) For any complex task whose performance requires discretionary latitude (since key elements vary across work situations), necessitates a ‘deep transfer’ design via a scenario-based training format (Shank, 2004) E-Learning is as effective as Instructor-led training (ILT) when the appropriate instructional methods are matched to learning objectives. However, effective use of media elements in e-Learning needs to comply with current research findings (Clark, 2002) Performance tends to erode/fade over time if there’s no formal quality assurance mechanism for reassessing it and refreshing it with booster training. Maintenance of high performance levels requires either self-monitoring or some other means to gather data, feed it back, and make needed adjustments
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