Refresher Training – Wanted or Wasteful

Submitted by Leslie Allan on May 16th, 2012

Some organizations mandate the exact same course every one, two or three years as “refresher” training. Licensing for special skills and occupational health and safety courses are prime candidates. Managers and training participants often object loudly about what they see as a waste of time. Refresher courses can take employees away from their day-to-day jobs for anything from one hour to three or more days.

Is this refresher training really necessary, considering how much it takes people away from their workplace? Consider also how the perceived value of the training department takes a dive when employees are forced to re-attend training. Training becomes just another “time waster” in the eyes of managers and workers alike.

How can we rescue this situation without compromising the capabilities of our workers? I mean, the purpose of refresher training is to ensure that employees continue to possess the skills and knowledge they need to perform important tasks. Here are my suggestions.

1. Conduct a pre-course test.

   Grant an exemption to employees that pass the test. As an added incentive, give employees a chance to study and practice before the test.

2. Only train in skill shortfalls.

   If an employee fails the above test, don’t force them to re-attend the entire course. Get them to attend only the parts of the course they need to acquire the missed skills.

3. Only train in what has changed.

   If refreshers are conducted because of legislative, regulatory or other changes that are implemented from time to time, send out updates via email. Alternatively, run “briefing sessions” that only treat the changes.

Many refresher regimes are rolled out to ensure compliance on paper with some third party requirements. The HR department or management team can then “tick the box” that employees have been “trained”. If this is your organization’s standard practice, have you evaluated how effective (or wasteful) this practice really is? Are you testing people’s skill levels before they attend the refresher? Are you testing them at the end of the refresher and recording the difference? If not, why not? And if you are finding the difference is smaller than a fly’s behind, what are you doing about it?

What other strategies can you think of for minimizing the waste and improving the effectiveness of your “refresher” regime? What have you done so far? Please share your wisdom and your experience here.

Discover how to create effective training in your workplace. Check out Leslie’s high impact training guide, From Training to Enhanced Workplace Performance. Learn proven strategies and techniques for finding performance roadblocks, aligning training to real needs, developing training partnerships, engaging learners and maximizing learning transfer. Find out more about From Training to Enhanced Workplace Performance and download the free introductory chapter today.

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Web Site Design with WordPress

Submitted by Leslie Allan on May 7th, 2012

You may already have a successful web site and don’t want to go to too much trouble to publish another. Or you may be starting out with your first venture into online retailing or publishing. What are your options? For minimum fuss, WordPress may be the way to go.

WordPress is perhaps the most well-known and used Content Management System (CMS for short) for building web sites. Content Management Systems allow you to design your web site in the cloud, on another company’s computer system. The design tools are also built into the package, so you don’t need expensive and hard to learn web authoring software.

What you gain in ease of use is lost to some extent in flexibility. You won’t have as much control as with using a full desktop design program -unless you engage the services of a web developer who can work “under the bonnet”.

You have probably already heard of WordPress as a blogging platform. That’s how it started life. Many web publishers now use it to produce fully-featured web sites that are indistinguishable in quality from those produced by the top professionals. Although you can’t do everything that hard-coding with a desktop tool can do, for the beginner and intermediate user, there is almost nothing you can’t do.

OK, so you’ve decided to use a CMS. Why WordPress? You could adopt any of a number of CMS packages on the market. Drupal and Joomla are the next two most popular packages and well-respected. All three are open source, meaning that the code is made public. Best of all, all three are free to purchase.

WordPress has some distinct advantages over its competitors. Firstly, it is used most widely, so there are many, many free templates and templates for purchase. There is also a veritable universe of plugins. These add functionality to your website and can include the addition of a shopping cart or social media buttons, for example.

Secondly, WordPress is also the easiest to use, and with a user base larger than any other CMS, there is always plenty of help at hand. Thirdly, as the code is updated regularly, it is perhaps the most secure from hackers.

What things do you need to consider? I advise publishing on your own domain. You can alternatively publish your web site or blog on the WordPress domain at www.wordpress.com. However, if you are a professional selling your services or a company retailing products, this option looks less than professional to your customers and clients.

Secondly, talk to someone who has already set up a WordPress site. They can help you avoid mistakes that you will live to regret. Getting the basic site structure right from the start will save you pain further down the track. Thirdly, get expert help on locking down your site. There are some basic things you need to do to keep the hackers out of your precious masterpiece. Lastly, to improve your online presence, check out my informative articles on web site marketing. They are essential reading if you want your web site to be seen.

Once you have built your site, drop by and share your url so we can all go and have a look at your handiwork. Good luck with your online adventure.

Do you need to monitor and report your project’s performance? Check out our simple yet effective Project Scorecard. Present a no-fuss informative one-page project performance report to your project team and project sponsor in five key result areas. Find out more about Project Scorecard and download today.

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L&D Maturity Model Meets OD

Submitted by Leslie Allan on May 2nd, 2012

Some people using my Training Management Maturity Model are wondering at what level in the model does a training function need to be at before it can contribute effectively to Organizational Development (OD) initiatives. Does it need to be at the most mature level, Level 4, or can it start to be effective at Level 3?

The four levels are summarized in my article, How Effective Is Your Training System? Here is a recap of the primary objective at each of the four levels:

As organizations become more mature in their Learning and Development (L&D) activities, they focus less and less on administrative tasks and concentrate more on delivering real value to the organization.

Now, getting back to the question asked about the role of L&D in OD, my answer is that the L&D function would need to achieve Level 3 at a minimum, with maybe some aspects of Level 4 in place, before it could effectively contribute in a sustained and systematic way to OD initiatives.

I’m not saying that meaningful contributions can’t be made at Level 2. Progress can be made at this Level, depending on the working relationships between department managers and practitioners. In every organization, there is a spread of capabilities amongst staff. So, even for organizations at Level 2, there may be one or more practitioners working in L&D that can make a significant contribution to an OD project.

How are your L&D and OD staffs interacting? Are they working collaboratively, or essentially working in silos on their own designated projects? If there exists a real sense of teamwork, then contributions can even be made within organizations at Level 2. What I suggest is not leaving these kinds of synergies to chance. If you do, how your organization fares in any change initiative will depend largely on who happens to be in what role. By progressing your organization to Level 4, you are increasing the probability that your L&D and OD initiatives will bear fruit.

How effective are your training activities really? Check out Leslie’s Training Management Maturity Model. Use the model’s unique four phased approach to determine where your organization is at on the road to training best practice and then go on to construct a roadmap for improvement. The pack includes everything you need to conduct an evaluation, including assessment and reporting guide, customizable assessment form and analysis and reporting sheets. Find out more about our Training Management Maturity Model and download the free Maturity Chart today.

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