Could You Be Replaced by an App?
Your role as a training professional has changed as technology has advanced. Twenty years ago, it may have been enough to deliver a great training class. If that’s all you do these days, however, you are in danger of being replaced by an app that can do the same thing on demand, for little or no money.
To protect your organizational role, approach your job as if you are a civil engineer. Civil engineers design, construct and maintain access to the natural environment with roads, bridges, and buildings. In a similar way, you need to extend your influence beyond the classroom and into the business by designing, building, and monitoring "roads and bridges" into the job environment before, during, and after training. Here are some tips to protect your role and stay on a productive career path.
Build Strategic Bridges
The first step is to build a strategic bridge between training and stakeholders or sponsors. Get involved in the on-the-job environment and become part of conversations about business needs. Avoid receiving training requests; instead, be part of the team that maximizes on-the-job performance. Change the nomenclature for your intake form or process to a performance, business, or organizational needs request.
Give your internal or external customers the tools they need to contribute to the bottom line or organizational mission accomplishment. Create an ongoing dialogue with two-way communication to understand their needs and avoid?blind training requests. Position yourself as a strategic business partner that is a member of the team that?plans for and?maximizes business results.
The business partner relationship prevents the training department from developing or delivering training that is disconnected from business needs or unsupported by the business units. When you become part of the business team, the entire dynamic is different and more effective.
Here are some tactics for building the bridge to your business or organizational units:
The key to building bridges is to discuss what is important to the business and avoid the word training. Find out their priorities and what they need to accomplish. Discuss any missing tools or skills to meet those goals, and then you will know what training, if any, is required.?
If this sounds intimidating to you, learn more in our newest certification program.
Conduct a Business Needs Analysis
Training professionals who take the time and make the effort to build bridges to the business will get more training requests, but this may not be exactly what you want. When the level of communication with the business unit you serve increases, you will likely receive requests from well-meaning managers who say things like, "Our team isn’t getting along. Can you do some team-building training?"
Their intent is to address some type of problem, and the good news is they trust you to solve it for them. If you excitedly rush in with the trendy training program du jour, you might really miss the mark and lose some of that trust.
An engineer would no more design a bridge without surveying the land than you should build a training program without fully understanding the problem it is supposed to address. Before agreeing to do training or putting pencil to paper to design a new program, do a thorough needs analysis.
The phrase training needs analysis is dangerous because it sets the expectation that the intervention will always be training. We prefer to say business needs analysis and use it in the context of a broader initiative or solution.
In the T+D Magazine article entitled?"Creating ROE: The End is the Beginning" , Wendy relates a real-life example of how she took the initial training request and translated the true needs.
The Kirkpatrick? Strategic Evaluation Planning Certification Program also provides a needs assessment form you can use for any program request.
Broaden Your View of Training
When you create a training and performance plan, it should include not only what will happen during training, but also before and after it as well.
Imagine if a civil engineer always prescribed the bridge as the best way to get from one point to another and didn’t consider a tunnel or an alternate route. There could be a great waste of resources because a better solution was not considered. Imagine further if the civil engineer built a bridge and didn't put up any signage letting drivers know that there was a bridge down the road, or where it would lead. There would be a lot of confusion.
In the same way, training professionals need to create a complete plan for initiatives considering not just what training might be required (if any), but the roles of training participants, their supervisors and managers, and the training department, during the time before, during, and after the intervention.
Focus on What Happens After Training
Work with training requesters to define Level 3 critical behaviors for the training graduates and the required drivers that will support them. Critical behaviors are the few, specific actions, which if performed consistently on the job, will have the biggest impact on the desired results. Required drivers are processes and systems that monitor, reinforce, encourage, and reward the performance of critical behaviors on the job.
A Level 3 plan is often missing from plans and without it, there is a very high chance of failure. What happens after training is complete is the biggest predictor of program success, so this is where to invest your time, money, and resources.
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Work directly with the managers and supervisors during the planning stage to get their ideas as to what required drivers will work best, and that they will support. You will need their active participation for a large initiative to be successful. Agreeing upfront on these roles and responsibilities will help to ensure that your training produces the on-the-job performance that is expected.?
Sample required drivers:
The more important the initiative, the greater the number of required drivers that should be planned. If you want to learn how to create a training and performance plan that works, get Kirkpatrick bronze-level certified .
Create a Road Map for Your Learners
Creating and communicating a strong Level 3 plan positions an initiative and the participants for success. Think about the last training class you attended. Did the following things occur?
In the same way a civil engineer designs the signage and lighting surrounding a bridge, training professionals should show training participants exactly what is expected of them during and after training, and what support systems will be in place.
When Level 3 critical behaviors and required drivers are defined during the training design process, it's easy to build an explanation of them into the training and pre-training communication for participants. This focus creates several benefits for training participants:
Most importantly, the table is set for training participants to succeed when they return to their jobs. They know they are expected to apply their knowledge and meet performance expectations. They know where to get assistance when needed, and how and when they will be measured.
Training participants also know what will happen if, for whatever reason, they or their co-workers do not sustain their critical behaviors on the job. They are aware that this will result in a conversation with a seasoned peer or supervisor to help them get back on track. The focus is on both individual and collective success.
Stay Involved After Training Is Complete
The training is complete, and participants have returned to their jobs. Do you let out a sigh of relief and turn your attention to the next training class? No! Training is the beginning, not the end.
Like a civil engineer, make sure your plan sees everyone successfully across the bridge and to their destination. Conduct regular check-ins to make sure all required drivers are being implemented. Monitor progress towards the desired results. Report positive findings and celebrate them. Report the less positive findings and participate on a task force to resolve them.
If staying involved after training is a new concept, learn more about how to gather, analyze, report, and react to program data in Kirkpatrick silver-level certification .
Extending your role beyond training delivery is not optional if you want to have a long and successful career in helping others to succeed. Embrace an expanded role and experience the joy of knowing you have truly helped your training participants and your organization to reach their highest goals.
About the Authors
Dr. Jim Kirkpatrick is the chief vision officer for Kirkpatrick Partners, the Standard for Leveraging and Validating Talent Investments?.
Wendy Kayser Kirkpatrick is the president of Kirkpatrick Partners.
About Kirkpatrick Partners
At Kirkpatrick Partners, we transform training professionals into strategic business partners by teaching them how to leverage and validate talent investments. We believe in empowering people with the knowledge and skills to make sure the work they do increases organizational performance and results.
Talent Development Consultant | Learning and Development Leader | I help organizations implement effective talent development solutions aligned with their goals and objectives.
3 年Jim, This is a great reminder of the importance of remaining engaged with the business and understanding their highest needs when creating learning and performance solutions. No doubt we will continue to get requests for compliance training that's "required by our regulators" and otherwise necessary. However, if our strategic approach begins and ends with simply filling orders a cheaper, more efficient technology solution is on the way.
Organisational Psychologist | Training Consultancy | Gamification |
3 年With advancement of technology, we now have more tools to effectively build the "bridge".