5 steps to draw a Product & Process training roadmap for your organisation

A simple google search on skilling employees will return umpteen articles on soft skills and how to acquire them. It's beyond doubt that soft skills are essential for an employee, however equally important is hard skills, which help them to get their job done. 

Hard skills are part of the skill set that is required for a job. They include the expertise necessary for an individual to successfully do the job. Organizations spend a lot of time and effort in training employees on the job or through directed training programs to teach such hard skills. Product and Process knowledge, among others, are essential hard skills that one is expected to possess and excel while doing their job. 

Product & Process Training

Since product and process knowledge is unique to an organization, there isn't a common way in which such knowledge is transmitted. Organizations resort to myriad ways and also often struggle to measure the impact or ROI of such interventions. 

The following are some examples of methods that are currently used singularly or in combination to provide product and process training.

1. On the job training: New employees are given an initial orientation by team members and after a few trials are inducted to the process.
2. Product training sessions: An instructor-led training sessions by employees or third-party vendors to impart product knowledge.
3. Process shadowing: Employees are often asked to tag along with an experienced resource to understand the process or product.
4. Product manuals: Employees are handed copies of the product manuals to understand the product. 
5. Process manuals: Copies of process manuals and SOP's are provided to employees to understand the process. 
6. IT Applications: Workflow systems, codify some of the processes, and product knowledge.

The Challenge

In my experience as a process consultant, I often come across these challenges, when I speak to managers about the prevailing training interventions.

1. Heavy dependence on a few individuals to impart product and process training.
2. The training experiences are not standardized.
3. Most organizations do not have an updated product/process manual or worse, they do not have a manual.

While organizations often grapple with ways to address some of these issues, the PPTM (Product Process Training Model) provides a roadmap for organizations looking for an answer to implement a robust Product and Process Training.

I have built the PPTM model as an extension of Bloom's Taxonomy. The model provides a roadmap to decision-makers to conceive a Product & Process training for their departments or organizations. 

Step 1: Identify Roles and their Objective for Product Training.

Often when we think of product training, it is the sales team or frontline staff that comes to our mind. However, in most organizations, the need for product training cuts across the organization, and different stakeholders have specific needs. The first step is to identify the stakeholders and identify their objectives. 

Not all of them need to know the details of the product to the same level of detail. Once you have identified the stakeholders, it would be good to group them based on what is expected from them after acquiring the knowledge. 

For example, an employee who works for the customer service function is expected to understand product features, benefits, and articulate the same to the customer. In contrast, an employee who works for the operations department not only need to understand the product features, they need to know the standard operating procedures about the product to onboard the product. On the other hand, a sales representative is expected to not only understand the product but also have the ability to compare, contrast with other products of the organization and its competitors. This is starkly different from the need of an operator who only needs to know the product and not really worry about the difference between various products of the organization.

Step 2: Map the role and objective to Bloom's Taxonomy skills matrix

A one size fits all model of product training will be ineffective.

Bloom's Taxonomy is a good starting point. Having identified the role and their objectives, you will need to map it to the various stages of the model. The training intervention would be very different if the aim is to help somebody comprehend product details as supposed to have the ability to analyze or synthesize. 

The problem with most training interventions is that it aims to target the lower order of cognitive skills in the bloom's taxonomy ladder viz knowledge & comprehension. The higher-order skills are seldom targetted, and hence most programs do not cater to the needs of stakeholders who have a need to apply, analyze, synthesize, and evaluate.

In general, most classroom training programs and e-learning modules that exist today cater to the lower order skills. They don't really address the need of stakeholders who have the need to analyze, classify, hypothesize, organize, criticize, design, and develop new products. For example, it would be hard to train a salesperson on the various scenarios and objections that he is likely to face in the market, in a classroom setting. Utmost the trainer would have role plays included in her training program, however not everybody gets to participate and nor does she have the time to include all scenarios and the nuances of it. 

Therefore, identifying the stakeholder need and mapping it to the bloom's taxonomy ladder is a good start point to create a roadmap.

Step 3: Identify evidences that need to be imparted

Once you have identified the roles and objectives and mapped it to the bloom's taxonomy, you would now need to arrive at specific training goals based on your organization's requirements.  

Organizations that are really interested in measuring the ROI of training programs need to start embracing evidence-centered designs while crafting a training strategy. 

In an evidence-centered design philosophy, the skills, and proficiency that needs to be imparted or assessed are broken down into tasks and embedded in the training program. The performance of an individual in the tasks provides evidence of learning. In this approach, organizations will have a clear track of the learning outcomes. 

As against every role and objective identified, you would now need to arrive at skills, proficiencies that you would like to impart or measure. For example, for a salesperson, you may wish to train them on the following skills.

1. Market analysis
2. Analyze competitor products
3. Map product features to customer needs
4. Difference between various products
5. Understand standard operating procedures 
6. Product objection handling

While for a operations function, you might want them to,

1. Understand standard operating procedures to onboard a product
2. Understand differences in SOP's between various products.

The challenging part after identifying the skills and proficiencies is to arrive at suitable tasks that are appropriate for imparting the identified skills. 

Step 4: Choose appropriate tasks to impart evidences

Care must be taken when we are arriving at tasks.

In my view, the problem with a few training programs is that trainers often tend to oversimply things and choose the wrong tasks., for example, to impart higher-order skills, they choose tasks that are appropriate for lower-order abilities. 

Imagine teaching customer objection handling by providing a case study or handouts, the worst would be to have a powerpoint presentation covering various techniques. Objection handling is a higher-order skill, and it requires one to understand the background, analyze the situation, evaluate options, make decisions, understand the impact, and take corrective actions. A Scenario-Based simulation will be more appropriate and will provide a personalized learning path to the learner. 

When choosing tasks to impart or measure skills, make sure to keep the following in mind.

1. Tasks should be appropriate and in line with the evidence that you wish to impart/ measure.
2. More than one task might be required to impart/measure the skill, and therefore it should be internally consistent.
3. Care should be taken when a single task is used to impart/measure more than one skill.

Step 5: Choose the right training intervention.

The last and most crucial step is to choose the right training intervention. The choice of training intervention is dependent on, 

1. The objective of the training program: Higher-order Vs. Lower-order skills
2.  Tasks and evidence to be captured: Complex task Vs. Easy task.

Organizations generally tend to rely on classroom training sessions, role plays & creating product manuals that are typically suited for lower-order skills. Exploring other interventions such as gamelets, micro simulations, game-based simulations, conversational simulations, refresher games that are tailored to impart higher-order skills will immensely help organizations.

II. Process Training

Process Training is a little less complicated as compared to product training in my view. In product training, different stakeholders need different levels of input to function effectively; however, when it comes to process training, it is more homogenous, and everybody in the organization can have a single view of the process. 

An organizations process can be classified into three types

1. Business Process: It is the end to end business activity, which originates from a customer request (internal/external) and culminates back to the customer and captures all activities that transpire in between.
2. Customer Journey: It is the view of the process from a customer standpoint. It only captures the customer touchpoints with the organization and all that they see and experience. 
3. Value Chain: It is similar to the business process but also captures the value created by each function and the business impact. 

The knowledge about a company's process today lies with,

1. Key Employees
2. Process Maps
3. Presentations
4. SIPOC, Procedure Documents
5. Workflow IT systems

In a fast-changing world, when customer expectations are transient, business models of competitors are dynamically evolving, and technology is disrupting customer experience; organizations often grapple with the problem of finding the right approach towards process training.

Organizations face challenges because,

1. There is no single version of the truth. Ask two individuals working in the same department, and you will get two different versions of the process.
2. Information is scattered across the organization.
3. Information is captured and transmitted via static documents.
4. Dependence on individuals to share process knowledge.

The time has come for organizations to look beyond the current realm of solutions available to frameworks that will help them custom build training suited for them.

I have listed three possible solutions that organizations can adopt to help them solve the current issues that they are facing when it comes to process training. 

1. Process Simulation Game: A framework that can capture the process of an organization and dynamically convert that to a game. In such an environment, the learner is transported to a simulated world and will learn the process, make mistakes, and understand the business impact of the decision taken.
2. Process Refresher: A simple game where employees can challenge each other on their process knowledge and be able to sequence and classify process activities. These games also deliver microlearning in the form of flashcards and videos.
3. Process Model Simulator: A process model simulator is a mini workflow tool, where organizations can configure their workflow within a couple of hours and mimic an exact workflow with all its nuances and interdependencies. The learner experiences an environment similar to a real-life but in a simulated setup.

While a lot of care is taken to choose a training program to impart soft skills to employees, hard skills sometimes are taken for granted, and not enough scientific rigour is followed. A good performer or a tenured employee is often called upon or relied on to provide a product or process training. 

Such programs though useful, do not entirely satisfy the need of all stakeholders and have their own limitations. The PPTM model gives a framework for practising managers to create a roadmap for both product and process training.