HOW TO - BRING FOCUS TO YOUR TRAINING EFFORTS To make the best use of your time when training any level of employee, you need to know what you want to accomplish. Too often people are sent to training to get ‘fixed’ which is NOT what development and education are about.

If you want to gain clarity about training outcomes, ask the following quetrions:

• What are your people doing that they shouldn't be doing?

• What aren't your people doing that they should be doing?

• What would you like to see your people doing that they aren't doing now?

• Describe what you see your staff doing when you view the organization/department the day/month/ after the program has been conducted. What do you see?

Once you know where you are headed, you have a much better chance of actually getting there. After you’ve looked at what you hope to achieve through training, take a good look at the people you are sending to training. Do they have the ‘right stuff’ fro training to succeed?

Do they have FOCUS?

Where are you headed? As a team at work or as a team made up of clients and consultants, without a clear goal, the journey becomes an aimless amble rather than a trip with a destination.

Do they have FLEXIBILITY?

Is there an ability to adapt and continue ahead? Expecting not to alter or shift indicates that people think they can operate either alone, or with people who think, believe and behave exactly as they do.

Is there DESIRE?

Do you want it? The drive to act, try, and move indicates a readiness to create progress.

Labels: consultants, focus, Training

  7:59 AM •  0 Comments •

How to – Pinpoint Your Training Needs When planning for developmental and skill training programs, there are some critical steps necessary for making sure that training is a solid developmental resource. They include:

Identifying competency or success-factor information

These are the knowledge, skills, abilities, behaviors, and characteristics that represent the fundamental skill or behavioral components of a job. In short, they are the things people must know and be able to do in order to perform a set of job requirements. Even if you think you know all there is to know, start with a blank piece of paper, and create a thorough inventory of everything it takes to do the job well.

Build profiles

If one objective of the developmental effort is to establish specific job requirement information, it makes sense to construct job profiles using the previously created success factors. Making useful job profiles start with the establishment of two important criteria:

• the critically (importance) of each success factor
• the proficiency level (degree of mastery required) for each factor.
Remember that you are creating a profile of the job, not the person doing the job. People often go to their strengths, and positions take on the focus of the person who does them, rather than what the position may require.

Assess employees

You can develop reasonably accurate pictures of employee strengths and weaknesses by building on the competency and success-factor models. A good rule of thumb is to gather information from the employee, the employees' immediate supervisor, and two of the employee's peers (have the employee choose one and the supervisor choose one.)

Identify gaps

After you create an employee profile, you can compare it to the previously established job profile in order to identify the most logical and critical gaps in development. Compare the required levels of competency to the actual levels. The difference between the two is the gap. Once you've made this kind of comparison, you could create a summary of all employees relative to their job requirements. That then can be used to identify group developmental needs, to target and focus training needs and dollars, to select employees for promotions an to determine the distance the group needs to move in order to be brought up to acceptable levels of performance.

Identify options

Development options can be linked to three basic sets of activities:
1. Formal, in-house programs, designed to provide training and developmental options;
2. External programs; workshops, seminars and formal classes that address identified competencies
3. Internal, on-the-job experiences that are identified as sources of growth and development

Follow Through

This sounds so simple, but many organizations fail to follow through. The message sent to employees is that the process stops with the training assessment. Some type of mechanism should be put in place to commend and reinforce desired behavior. People need to see and hear tangible rewards for their efforts, even if it simply interest in their development on the part of their manager. People tend to do what gets noticed.

Whatever method you use to determine your training needs for the coming year, keep your objectives in mind - What would you like to see happen as a result of your assessment? What would you like to see someone do more of? What would you like them to do less of?

Once you answer that question, then ask - What are you willing to do to ensure the results you want? How much time, money and human energy are you, and your organization willing to invest in developing your talent?

Labels: profiles, success, Training

  1:04 PM •  0 Comments •

How to – Create Your Own Training Plan Without a proactive plan, training programs become reactive. It’s not great for business to un around putting our fires rather than providing employees with ideas about how to prevent little and big blazes.

Whether the needs are micro (one person's needs, or a small population) or macro (large group of employees, or an entire population within a job classification) they must be recognized, and more importantly, be met. Early recognition requires no crystal ball. Like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, what you are looking for may be in your own back yard, provided if you keep your eyes open and you pick up the signals.

Basic signals about training needs come from monitoring the ongoing operation. Signals about micro training needs are pursued by using further inquiry and analysis with the manager of the potential trainees and the participants themselves. Signals about macro training needs of the organization are validated by further inquiry in the form of surveys and interviews. New signals which come from the surveys and interviews are validated by reference to the "hard data" from the operational monitoring. To be most effective in needs assessment, you must be consistently aware of the signals transmitted. But you have to know where to look and recognize what you see.

Signal Sources:

New Facilities or Expansion of Facilities
Signals hiring new people for new positions.

New Products or New Equipment
Signals either implementation of new technology or amending current technology.
May signal new positions and/or new people.

Regular Management Reports:
Ongoing report to management measure production, warehousing, inventory problems, trends in turnover - a whole array of things that should cause us to ask if human performance might be the cause. Discover what the bosses say they need to manage the company.

Special Reports and Requests:
These usually focus on future plans, shifting priorities, problem areas, successes and failures. Many will involve human performance and potential inadequate human performance inventories.

Reorganization:
Mergers, acquisitions, downsizing, work redesign, or a shift in priorities give clear signals that employees will need assistance in transition, minimizing resistance, maintaining productivity and in assuring clear and credible communications.

Change in Standards/Laws:
Such revisions indicate that large numbers of people need to be informed. Incumbents need to know about the changes, understand the reasoning behind the transition so they can accept it more easily and respond effectively.

Trends:
A signal for training needs in the population.

New Policies:
New policies usually mean new expectations - both by employees and employers. How will they hear about new policies and new expectations?

If an intelligent use of these signals is made, then you can avoid "putting out fires". You can be proactive, rather than reactive. You can solve potential problems before they become actual performance problems. Offer good training programs before damaging deficiencies occur.

A nationally recognized management development training consultant, speaker and author, Joni Daniels is Principal of Daniels & Associates, provides solutions to training needs and conducts programs on personal and professional development. As a Consultant to Fortune 500 companies, she has successfully addressed a variety of audiences, written a wide range of articles on professional issues, serves as a resource for business publications, TV, and radio. Joni is frequently quoted on management topics and is the author of “POWER TOOLS FOR WOMEN®: Plugging into the Essential Skills for Life and Work,” (Three Rivers Press, 02/02) and, Reach her at www.jonidaniels.com

Labels: Training

  1:06 PM •  0 Comments •