A TRAINING MANAGERS GUIDE

things you should do before developing a virtual training program

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You can’t get to the right destination if you don’t know where you want to go. And you can’t know where you want to go if you don’t evaluate where you’ve been. Although you don’t want to spend too much time looking in the rear-view mirror, it’s important to take the time to understand what got you to the point that you’re in now—ready to set a new course and travel to a new destination that will work out better for you than what you’ve already tried. If you’re reading this, it’s probably safe to assume that you are looking to deploy a training program that improves individual knowledge mastery or that takes your current training program to the next level. You recognize that training and performance walk hand in hand, and you want to build a training program that empowers your workforce to succeed. To do this, we need to think about what is causing a divide between individual performance and success so that we can create a training program that bridges the right gaps. We’ve come to find that there are six common factors that could be at the root of the problem.

I. Identify the gaps that exist between current and desired

performance

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Underdeveloped skills The individual struggles to meet performance expectations because he or she does not know how to properly perform on-the-job procedures or tasks.

Lack of motivation The individual is not driven to excel because he or she has found ways of meeting baseline requirements without expending a significant amount of effort, i.e. the individual can get the job done without doing it the “right” way.

Unclear expectations The individual and the manager have different perceptions of what success looks like due to ambiguous performance expectations and a failure to give directions related to on-the-job tasks.

Communication breakdowns Without an infrastructure to consistently communicate information within and in-between departments as new products or services are released or modified, or when goals and priorities within the organization change, the individual fails to meet performance expectations because he or she is in the dark on important departmental and organization-wide initiatives.

No incentives Consistent failure to recognize positive contributions and individual success results in a lack of individual ownership over tasks and a laissez-faire attitude when an individual is encouraged to improve his or her performance.

Silo’ed ownership When there is no organization-wide oversight on training, inconsistent training content, different expectations and varying communication channels hinder individual performance as individuals move to different groups. Training is incomplete and confusing, hindering individual performance.

Factors that could be responsible for a divide between performance and success

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Think about which factors may be impacting the productivity of your workforce and take note of them as the core problems that your new training program should seek to help solve. A clear understanding of what the root of the problem is before you begin designing your new training program will help you create an effective training program that is targeted to solving specific problems that your organization faces.

Understanding your audience is essential to the success of your training program. Identifying the training problems that you need to solve is the first step in creating an effective, results-oriented training program. The next step is to determine who the recipients of the training will be and how they are situated so that you can best meet their needs and fill the gaps between individual performance and success. This will help you determine which features you might need in your Learning Management System, what format your courses should be offered or presented in and what type of support your training program should include to ensure it does what it is intended to do—improve individual and overall organizational performance.

We have come to find that there are three main things that you should consider as you evaluate the training needs of your audience.

II. Evaluate your audience to discern training needs

Location Inconsistencies in training are often found among geographically dispersed individuals within an organization, even between those with the same job role or function. Without organization-wide oversight on training this is especially prevalent—making it important to streamline your training approach so that training is consistent across your entire audience. Some questions you should ask include:

Is my audience geographically dispersed? Or, are they in close proximity to each other?

Is training conducted differently depending on the location of the office or the department within the organization?

Is my audience international? If so, localization may be an important feature for your Learning Management System (LMS).

Is my audience mobile? Or, are they often at their desks? If a portion of your audience is often on-the-go, like your sales folks, you might want to consider deploying a training program that can be accessed from a portable device.

Experience/Skill Level You don’t want to burn out your most experienced employees by bombarding them with training in areas that they surpass competency in, and you don’t want to throw your less experienced employees out into the wilderness by skipping over important prerequisite courses that they need before they can understand more complex processes or tasks. To determine at what level an individual is engaging in a task or a topic you should ask these questions:

3 Things to consider as you determine the training needs of your audience

What are the required skills for a specific position? I.e., what do your learners need to learn?

What does my audience already know, or what are they naturally good at? How can I build upon those existing talents and skills?

How much information is needed? Do your learners need in-depth skill development training, or a refresher on how to properly perform a process or technique?

Technology In today’s increasingly mobile world the chances that everyone clocks in around the same time and at the same location are getting slimmer—especially if you have employees working remote or from across the globe. Here are a couple things to consider when designing your new training program:

Will the majority of your audience be seated at a computer? Or, will they be out in the field? If learners aren’t in their desks, audio or printed training materials may not be practical.

Will training take place on personal devices? If so, access to the training could be limited depending on internet connection, bugs and ability to access the system if it is behind a firewall.

Once you have a better feel for how your audience is positioned to receive training you can start compiling a list of items that your training program will require to be successful, such as a learning portal that is mobile-accessible so that audience members working away from their desks can complete the prescribed training.

Start with clearly defined goals and finish with exceptional outcomes.

Turn your vision of individual and organizational effectiveness into a reality by establishing precise, actionable goals for your training program from the start. Clearly articulate what your audience should be able to accomplish after they complete training so that you can track how well your training program accomplishes important business objectives, like increased employee retention, increased customer satisfaction, increased sales and etc. You will have your own unique business objectives and desired outcomes to measure the success of your training program. To help make it easier for you to pin point what those might be we have put together a short list of some common learning outcomes that many organizations resonate with.

III. Determine your desired outcomes for the training program

After completion of training my audience should:

Be more effective in their job role or position—completing tasks or processes with improved accuracy and excellence

Be more efficient in their job role or position—

spending less time on tasks while still delivering high quality results

Require less supervision

Meet compliance standards

Have a well-rounded base of knowledge

relevant to their specific job role or position

Be up to date on the latest innovations, technologies and industry standards

Understand the organization’s products,

services and unique value proposition

Have a shared understanding of the way the organization operates (company mission, values, goals, history, culture, etc.)

Be equipped with the necessary information to

start a new or modified position

Be positioned for advancement within the company when new opportunities arise

Be inspired to innovate or add value to the

organization

CHECKLIST

Although you may have different desired outcomes for your training program than the ones listed, it is important to look at how your desired outcomes link back to meeting your organization-wide business objectives. For example, the outcome of higher job satisfaction and a passion for work can translate to meeting your business objective of improved employee retention. It could also translate to meeting your business objective of increased sales, as oftentimes more passionate, committed and knowledgeable sales folks are more likely to close a deal.

Content is king when it comes to successfully deploying a virtual training program.

Your team can purchase the snazziest Learning Management System (LMS) out there, or build an entirely custom one from the ground up, but without good learning content you won’t meet your desired outcomes—no matter how impressive or easy-to-use your training platform is.

Though often overlooked until after the LMS has been deployed, identifying and evaluating current training content upfront will help you determine whether or not you will need to build or buy additional course content.

IV. Compile and evaluate current training content

Is the content SCORM-compliant? If not, you will have to convert it using a course development tool before you will be able to successfully upload it to the LMS.

How old is the content? If you use outdated content you run the risk of delivering irrelevant information to your audience. Even if some of the old content is still relevant, it may need a refresh on how it is being presented so that it remains meaningful to your audience.

Is the content consistent with the training outcomes you identified? It is important to consider how your existing content will meet your goals for the new training program. If the content doesn’t address how to develop the desired skills you want your audience to have, or clearly explain how to perform a process in a way your audience can apply while on-the-job, it may have to go.

Are there ways of assessing whether or not the audience met the objectives of the course or lesson? Do you already have quizzes or tests at the end of each training session or exercise? If so, you can leverage these to build knowledge checks for your courses that are deployed virtually. If you don’t, you may have to create them to make sure that you have a way to measure individual success.

4 Things you should ask when evaluating your current training content

It’s important to have good content on your Learning Management System (LMS) before you launch it if you want your audience to embrace the virtual training concept. If there isn’t any content, or if the content isn’t relevant, you’ll likely see low user adoption rates. Choosing a content solution is important when it comes to launching and maintaining an effective online training program. If you have the bandwidth to build your own courses, leveraging a course authoring tool might be a good option. If you don’t have the time or resources to build your own courses, you can opt to purchase pre-made courses from a course library, or enlist the help of an Instructional Designer for custom course development. If you need help deciding which solution would be the best for you, the team at Knowledge Anywhere would be happy to discuss all three of their content solutions: Course Builder, Course Development and a Course Library.

How you deliver your training counts.

Effective training delivery is contingent on identifying gaps between existing and desired individual performance, accurately evaluating the training needs of your audience, clearly establishing desired outcomes for the training program and on having impactful and relevant training content prepared to plug into your training program design. The method(s) of delivery that you choose should align with the goals you decide upon so that your desired learning outcomes can best be realized, as each training method described below will have a different impact on your audience.

V. Determine the best way to deploy training content

Instructor-led

Advantages: Instructor-led training provides an opportunity for the audience to receive, what can be for many, valuable face-to-face instruction where they can ask questions, share ideas and experiences and interact with peers who may be experiencing the same roadblocks. Disadvantages: Coordinating an adequate space to give the training, arranging travel accommodations for audience members who are not close by and ensuring that the participating instructor has the proper skillset to correctly teach the desired skills or behaviors can be costly and time consuming. Additionally, this method of training often provides a large volume of information to an audience in one setting that can be challenging for them to digest and retain. Great for: Developing psychomotor skills where demonstration of complex processes or procedures is required, or delivering training where personal interaction is key to learning.

ELearning

Advantages: Online training allows you to deliver a high volume of content to a large audience that is geographically dispersed, that has limited mobility or that has difficulty attending

7 Popular training methods

conventional classroom training sessions. Due to the virtual nature of eLearning, delivery costs for online training are much lower than the costs of instructor-led training since they do not require significant, ongoing resource coordination. This training method allows you to maintain a consistent quality standard across all of your course content, since variable inputs, such as a live trainer, do not change what content is delivered and how it is delivered. Also, eLearning allows you to collect, track and measure the usage of your online training program—helping you improve it, offer more personalized learning paths and determine ROI for the training investment.

Disadvantages: Sometimes there is no replacement for live instruction, especially when an individual must develop skills that rely on interpersonal communication or that require an individual to physically imitate complex procedures or processes. ELearning is not always a great fit for every individual, especially for those who are kinetic learners, those who are not comfortable with technological communication, those who are disabled or those who learn best in groups.

Great for: Cognitive skill development where individuals apply learned methods in practice to solve problems, or for improving individual comprehension of important subjects.

Self-study

Advantages: Self-study allows your audience to move at their own pace and discover their own skills or subject matter proficiencies around important topics—giving them more ownership over their learning path.

Disadvantages: Without a guided or structured pathway to learning, some individuals may lose motivation to complete their training materials, get distracted by more pressing demands and put their training on the back burner or complete training at a much slower rate than desired or expected from management.

Great for: Delivery of supplementary materials that are not essential to meeting the objectives of the training, but that provide valuable context or support for key training courses.

Microlearning

Advantages: Microlearning jumps directly to the hands-on, action-oriented phase of learning where the individual is prompted to mimic the activity shown or to absorb information targeted toward achieving a specific outcome. This type of learning is typically deployed in brief video segments that give the learner a quick refresh on how to perform a function.

Disadvantages: Due to the brief nature of this learning method, it is not an optimal delivery mode for audience members to absorb in-depth concepts or skill enhancement.

Great for: Providing just-in-time performance support, on-the-go learning and training refreshers.

Gamification

Advantages: Reality-based learning that is specific to on-the-job scenarios that your audience is regularly presented with will have strong resonance with your audience. Games can be interactive and meaningful, translating to a more engaged and focused audience.

Disadvantages: Strategic game design is important if you want your games to meet the training goals you designed them to meet. Failure to make a connection between the activity and the desired outcomes can result in a detached and confused audience, making this a trickier training initiative to successfully deploy than others.

Great for: Improving knowledge retention, developing skills and driving audience excitement and participation for your training program.

Mentoring

Advantages: One-on-one instruction is a very valuable training mechanism, as it gives the mentee a reliable source he or she can repetitively seek out to find solutions to more complicated problems. Additionally, the close-knit involvement between mentor and mentee can act as motivational force for improved performance, as the mentee seeks affirmation of a job well done by his or her mentor.

Disadvantages: This method of training typically requires a significant time investment from a mentor, who is likely swamped with his or her daily workload. It is also a limited way of training, as it can be challenging for one mentor to train multiple mentees. This training method also has a relational aspect that could potentially work at a disadvantage if it is a forced mentorship, where the mentor is not motived to provide quality training, or where the mentor and the mentee are not a good fit.

Great for: Building long-term relationships where employees “pass the torch” to each other through a knowledge exchange, or ensuring a standard of craftsmanship or excellence is realized by each employee in his or her work that accurately reflects the integrity of the brand.

Webinars

Advantages: Webinars allow for a subject matter expert to share knowledge with a large, geographically-dispersed audience without the location constraints of instructor-led training. These sessions can also be recorded for review at a later time, or for participants who are unavailable in real time.

Disadvantages: There is little room for the audience to interact with each other or with the instructor—making it hard for participants to share ideas and ask questions. Additionally, because the session is virtual participant concentration cannot be controlled, as audience members have the freedom to multitask—making it harder for participants to retain information.

Great for: Providing training on important conceptual topics to a large, remote audience by leveraging the expertise of a subject matter expert.

From our experience… A blended learning approach that combines different training methods is often the most effective approach to take when designing a training strategy. Although some of these methods of training delivery can be successfully deployed independent of each other, oftentimes there is no stand-alone training solution that will be successful in reaching your entire audience. A training strategy that incorporates multiple delivery methods that align best with the pre-established desired outcomes for the program will give you the best result.

Start your training program today. Now that we’ve got you thinking about your virtual training program in more detail, we hope that you will start addressing the gaps you defined in the first step by delivering relevant training content in the method(s) that you think will work best for your audience. We know that creating an effective training program can feel overwhelming—especially at the onset. The important thing to know is that you’re not alone. Whether it’s simply answering any questions you may have, providing you with a solution to make your training goals a reality or giving you the ongoing support you need to optimize the use of your training program—we’re here to help.

Feel free to give us a ring: 1-800-850-2025. Or, shoot us an email: info@knowledgeanywhere.com.

Copyright © 2015 Knowledge Anywhere®. Written by: Sarah Johnson