We’ve got a bonus tip for you this month! Training Project Tips #3 and #4 go hand in hand so we’re delivering them to you together.
AXIOM partner Linda Wade has offered up her Top 10 Training Project Mistakes as a series and we think these ideas can really save you a lot of time, money and stress. Linda has an extensive background in helping Fortune 500/1000 companies build global strategies to roll out Siebel CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software. She’s no stranger to large scale training projects!
Getting your project on track from the very beginning is essential to its success. In case you missed them, here are the first two problems that many people run into and great ways to avoid them:
Tip 1: Failing to Obtain Executive Support
Tip 2: No User Involvement
Up next, things that sound easy but might not be…do you have your objectives clearly defined and laid out in a concise training plan? If not, this will help you out:
- Failure to Quantify Objectives
Defining your objectives for training is a critical step in the entire development process. Without training objectives instructors don’t know exactly what it is to be taught, learners don’t know what they are to learn, and managers don’t know why they are investing their training dollars. A complete training project will contain these three elements: Task, Condition and Standard. Criterion learning objectives defined early on in the development process help the entire project team work toward the same shared goal. You begin with the end in mind from the perspective of the end user and you will experience a greater return on your investment.
- Lack of a Training Plan
An effective training and education program is critical to the success of any major change initiative. It is critically important to create a thorough end user training (EUT) plan up front, before any other activities occur. Include specific details about the development process, instruction tools, training dependencies, instructor expectations, and scheduling.
It is during the creation of the training plan that you will begin the discussion around training delivery. Will it be instructor-led, e-learning or a blended approach? You will also need to determine how you want to rollout your training program. Do you want to train all users at once or work with groups of end users over a period of weeks or months? These decisions should be made before training development begins.
Begin these discussions early in your development cycle so you can prepare for logistics as well as understand your overall budget considerations. Most important, it will give you a roadmap to the success of your training program.
The training plan works best when it works in harmony with all the other aspects of the business in addition to external factors like travel, accommodations and weather. There are many variables that impact the training plan beyond delivery and an experienced training vendor makes all the difference in preventing costly mistakes.
-L&D thoughts
-Have a thought on our blog post? Please comment below, we love to start new discussions!