It is not always easy to distinguish between what you want and what you need. Many times, there can be a disconnect between a client and its training consultants.
Experienced learning consultants understand the most effective ways to increase end-user efficiency during the rollout of a new application upgrade or implementation. One of the biggest misconceptions in training is that companies think end-users need every piece of information to learn how to do something. Before training can really take effect, companies are insisting that their employees are given mass amounts of background information just to learn how to do each specific task. Ultimately, a company’s employees are its most important asset; training should be geared toward making their lives easier by helping them do their jobs in the simplest and quickest ways possible.
The most common teaching practices today were developed in Ancient Greece and many may be archaic for 21st century learners. When you have a question, do you seek advice from books or from Google? If you want information on a subject, do you check an encyclopedia or Wikipedia? When people seek information, they want instant feedback on their questions, so they turn to popular search engines and online resources for the quickest answers. With low attention spans, and a high demand of immediate feedback, people are becoming more difficult to please with current training models such as lectures, manuals and PowerPoint. When someone has a question they want a specific answer, and giving them loads of extra background information is only going to be a burden on them.
The traditional training model does not match up with how people are now getting information. Many companies are not catering their training for these new trends in knowledge transfer, with the focus still centered on general information to help employees learn specific tasks. Experienced learning consultants know that this type of “knowledge dump” does not equate to better training. In fact, it is actually less likely to yield successful results. Having to extract and separate important and unimportant information can lead to confusing and inefficient learning, which requires constant monitoring to measure progress.
Precision techniques are needed to continue to advance current training methods. Effectively that means turning the current training model on its head. Consider this example: Have you ever opened your cell phone manual? If so, it’s probably only because you had a specific question that you couldn’t figure out by yourself. You didn’t open the phone manual to try and work through it all. Successful training should be conducted more like that. Start immediately on the actual task, and then move backward by allowing employees access to documents and background information if needed. In this way, end-users can learn by doing, and will be able to answer their own questions efficiently.
Although these concepts seem simple, many training programs try to explain every detail for their end-users. The focus needs to shift to allow end-users to receive information quickly and simply to result in the most productive employees and most successful companies.
Matt Vita is marketing manager for Synaptis, which provides customized end-user training. For more information, visit Synaptis at www.synaptis.com .
Written for TrainingIndustry.com
