27 Apr 2022

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3 tips to make sure your training is equitable 

Training has become a key need of companies in recent years because of the multiple changes in the workplace. But sometimes training has to be adapted to the participants’ needs to be effective for them. You can’t have the same training solution because that is inequitable training. Such training might not cater to the needs of the minorities because they are not as experienced as the managers. Hence the training needs to be created as per the requirements of different groups of people. 

Hence the Learning and development managers need to take into consideration the following requirements of various groups before coming up with training programs:

Include everyone

There should be the inclusion of everyone in the training program because a knowledge upgrade is required. Hence, it’s discriminatory if someone is not asked to attend a training program because he is not at a senior rank or of a certain gender. Not only for the participants but the trainers also it’s better that different people attend such a seminar. It’s because they have different opinions about the topics taught to them. Such opinions enrich the training experience for every attendee who benefits from the pool of diverse experiences and educational backgrounds. 

When a company does not include minorities in its training programs, it can lower morale.

It can hurt their productivity, which is least desirable. But it’s also true that you can’t just include one participant from a minority group for inclusion. If he is a foreigner present in a room full of natives, he will experience a lot of hesitation in speaking in front of others. So due to his awkwardness, he does not bring anything new to the table as needed. 

Prepare diverse content

The content must also be created as per distinct requirements for equitable training. The participants should get to hear such language in the training program with which they can relate.
Hence participants from minority groups should be included in the content development process right from stage 1. As learning and development consultants, you can’t assume that you know the nuances of every culture. The L&D team should include people from diverse backgrounds so that no problems arise at a later stage. Also, complicated local language should not be used or complemented with English words that non-native speakers can understand. A participant’s confidence is boosted if his language needs are catered to in a training program. 

There could also be people with disabilities attending the training program, and hence their needs are important. Someone with a vision problem gains nothing if a training program does not have audio narration. Sometimes, hearing problems are also there; hence the narration should also be accompanied by text bubbles on the screen. All these disabilities in the attendants must be included during the program development only for its success. 

Facilitate delivery for everyone

Equitable training also depends on how a program is delivered. It’s because, during facilitation, participants who can’t move between different places such as their homes and the office must be taken care of. The program must be prepared in a virtual format to cater to such remotely situated participants.

Hiring an appropriate trainer is also crucial because he understands the cultural differences between participants. Also, he knows when something culturally inappropriate has come up during training and how to handle it. He makes sure that such a topic is taught calmly without hurting anyone.

The unavoidable quality that any facilitator must have is modesty which makes him understand the opinions of everyone in his room. He does not get annoyed when people ask him questions in the middle of a lecture, although not frequently. The job of a facilitator is to make others learn and imbibe something from others in the process. Such facilitators know when their knowledge is not so full-fledged and ask someone with a different viewpoint to explain them. Thus all the attendees benefit from such training when a two-way exchange of knowledge happens. When made to face intolerable situations in someone telling things unknown to them, they don’t panic or get angry and let the other person speak. Equitable training is delivered when no one’s opinions and factual knowledge are ignored during a session. 

18 Feb 2022

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How should a company decide its training topics?

E-learning technology has made great strides all over the world. But how should this content be devised to address the maximum training needs? The following steps can be taken:

Using performance metrics from simulation-based tasks:

The companies are implementing training to make the employees work better. The objective information revealed during VR based simulations also forms a basis of training. For example, if a certain worker has undertaken VR training to improve his soft skills but has failed in some aspects, like his voice modulation, tone, sales pitch etc., it shows how an employee is performing against his KPI’s.

These gaps can be used for selecting training topics, as the recorded employee’s performance in such a simulation can be measured against his KPI’s such as the Average Handle Time. This time metric for, an agent measures the time he picks the phone to the time it’s disconnected. If this time is too much, this determines the agent can’t retrieve answers for the caller quickly.

Similarly, First Call Resolutions are also crucial for such call center agents, including the percentage of calls an agent answers without transferring them to his senior or returning them. If an agent has to disconnect the phone because he is no information about a caller’s queries and calls him back again, it’s not that desirable.

Task analysis:

The task analysis allows companies to gather valuable data about what skills are required in employees to perform the necessary tasks and hence come up with the latter’s training topics.

Such an analysis lists the tasks required to meet the listed duties per the job description and helps companies provide effective training to workers.

It also consists of how the high performers do the critical tasks. Their performance underlines behaviors and knowledge, which are crucial for improving the work of not-so-good performers. Such above-average performers might have some characteristics necessary for such job roles.

Such job task analysis can be done with managers and employees through interviews about the tasks contained in such roles.

1. - Ability ratings

When such job task analysis has been created, the next step is to ask managers and employees how they rate themselves on 1-5 at execution of tasks. Managers can also support the ratings of individual employees and provide a proficiency rating for each of them from low, average, to high. For example, there might be a difference between the employee’s opinions of themselves at a task and managers’. Such a disparity implies that both have a different understanding of the task.

1. - Significance ratings

Importance ratings are another set of data that the L&D team can use. This data consists of asking the employees how important a task is. If managers also think similarly, this task is crucial and requires training. But managers and employees can differ in their opinions about the criticality of a task for a job. Hence, depending on the ratings of employees and managers, devise the training content.

After the importance(significance) and proficiency ratings have arrived, the L&D team must analyze this data. The tasks that have received the highest importance and lowest proficiency ratings regarding the percentage of employees and managers must be considered training topics. For example, if most employees and managers consider a certain task critical, but not many of the former and the latter consider them proficient on that one, there is a performance gap.

Based on the company and individual goals:

An LMS is also a useful resource for conveying goals to employees. When employees know they have a benchmark, they improve performance to meet it. The companies can ensure that everyone sees the employees’ goals to get the requisite support from the other departments. If some teams can contribute to the goal achievement of others, they can share their knowledge for the same. Apart from giving goals to employees, they should be given an action plan and time frame on how to attain them.

The manager must devise this action plan. For example, one can only attain marketing leads with a minimum social media ad budget. This way, a marketing manager has his work laid out for him and can even ensure cooperation from the content team who knows his target. Once employees have a crystal clear idea about the individual and company goals, they are motivated to do better. When everyone is aware of each other’s goals, they know who to hold accountable once their own goals are not met. Based on such goals also, a company can create its training.

Such data can only lead to effective training in attaining company goals.

02 Dec 2021

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Steps for creating a training-plan

The companies are focusing on e-learning now to ensure that their employees boost their skills. But companies have to understand what managers want in terms of training due to which needs analysis is quite important.

Assess the needs of managers

A company must collect information about how the managers are to be trained. That can help it in preparing the most relevant training for them. That’s why managers can be asked questions about what can improve their performance which is relevant because they only know what the competition is offering to their clients.

Collect evidence about such needs

Internally

Once all the data given by the managers has been aggregated, then the company can corroborate it by using managers’ goal sheets and where they are lacking. Even customer satisfaction surveys do tell where they require a better performance from the company and hence such gaps can be covered through training. The managers can also be questioned about negative client views and what sort of skill and infrastructure support they need to convert them into positive ones.

Externally

A company can also collect data from external sources because there are specific industry surveys that let them know which skills are necessary given the technological changes and the market conditions. An organization operating in prevalent turbulent conditions needs to know which change would be permanent so that managers need to be trained to cope up with it. Moreover, the company can gain knowledge about the upcoming technologies through various publications.

Create a training plan

The company’s next job is to create a training plan. Now what’s a training plan? This plan includes an in-depth listing of all the activities and resources used to guide a group towards a specific goal. This includes the budget, the time devoted to training, and how it is to be popularized among the employees.

E-learning companies USA can help you formulate such a training plan and can even provide you with samples of their training modules developed for other companies.

A training plan also includes the perfect training program which can be VILT training, instructor-led training or simulation, etc. Preparing such a plan also includes deciding about the training content. Since the right training program requires time and investment, it’s better to get approval from the leadership.

Get the support of the management

The training department can only convince the management about the importance of the training program through the goals that can be achieved.

There are a lot of decisions that have to be taken during the drafting of the training plan like the content curator has to be outsourced, or the organization has a better person suited for the job. If the organization wants faster results then is it better to have a training program with a short implementation time. The company might also need any new training tools like an LMS. The company also requires some support staff for creating training-based content, or a trainer. In that case, if the existing employees feel overburdened by the additional training responsibility then the company has to hire resources. The company can get the desired results through professionals who are keener to do the training job because they are being paid. Also, unlike the employees, they have expertise in this field which makes sure the training outcomes are attained.

Hence, management support has to be enlisted who should be willing to spend money to get effective training.

19 Apr 2021

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How to make sure training achieves business objectives?

Training is an important part of companies these days.

But the line managers don’t pay much attention to them. They think training is a waste of time. Training managers have to rush to the line manager’s office to convince them about the benefits of training. But, training managers should also pay how training is going to satisfy business results. They should not design a training course without thinking about its alignment with business objectives.

Apart from useless training not yielding results, there can also be other problems such as lack of capabilities of the training manager.

Syncing training with changes in performance

There is a proper sequence that needs to be followed for getting the optimum results from training. The first of them is that the training managers should realize what does an organization seeks from training. This could be in the form of better sales and reduced time is taken in doing the work. So, these objectives should be translated into how employees’ performance needs to improve for achieving these objectives. This is how performance goals can be bought in sync with business objectives.

Purpose of content

There are many times when an SME provides a lot of content to the learners. Going through the course becomes a headache for the audience. So, how should companies select the content which is relevant for the audience? It’s better to make sure that the content is as per the performance objectives of the company. This is how, when you know the performance objectives, you get to know how to set up the content for elearning.

How to choose the instructional designing method?

It’s also important to focus on the method of instructional designing. It’s because it depends on the basic factors of the target audience, the business objectives and the topic of elearning. So how you teach something depends on what is its objective. The assessments also depend on such learning.

Choice of the authoring tool

There are many ways in which an authoring tool can be chosen. The most important of them is that the different tools have different advantages and drawbacks. If you have different tools, however, then a lot of problems can be caused when elearning is done on a large scale. You will be confused about which tool to use. The choice of the authoring tool depends on where your instructional designers and SME’s are located. It’s because if they are located at different places, then a collaborative authoring tool is needed so that they can work together.

Translating the elearning course

Elearning translations did not happen sometime back. But now they are a reality. The customers convert courses into different languages depending on their need. However, when you want to translate an elearning course, you can’t think about it after developing a course. You have to think about it before you start preparing for the course.

A course will be designed in a way that it can prepare for future translation requirements. That’s because, when you are developing the course, you have to think about the video, audio and the instructional strategy right away at the start. What authoring tool you choose also depends on the translation requirements of the course.

This is how a lot of work can be avoided if the translation is planned from the very beginning.

08 Apr 2021

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How should a company plan training to attain results?

Companies are investing so much in their training programs. But the most important responsibility before companies is to make sure that these programs meet the training needs of employees otherwise they are useless.

Therefore the first step in developing any training needs program is to ensure that the training needs analysis is carried out.

It’s because such analysis offers the right guidance for the training program so that it does not turn out to be a waste of time. There are many important viewpoints from which a training program needs to be developed. They are as follows:

Company, Department and employee.

When employees are trained at the level of companies means they are not subjected to individual training, and then they are given compliance training. This kind of training can also be expanded to include the values of a company and its distinctive culture.

As far as departmental training is concerned, the employees have to be trained as per their job duties of a specific department. For this, the training professionals need to consult an organizational chart and proper job descriptions.

How should the training needs analysis of an organization be done?

As far as individual training needs of an employee are concerned, they need to be according to the calibre of an employee. They also must be having some career aspirations and their five-year career goals can affect a business. The training needs analysis is important in this case.

Training needs analysis needs to be done carefully in an organization. Its important that for this purpose instead of asking the managers how the employees should be trained, employees should be asked. So, instead of adopting a top-down approach, a bottom-up approach should be taken to identify training needs. It’s because employees know what they need to learn to perform their jobs in a better way.

How to recognize what training needs employees have?

Establish clear goals

Some companies set goals at the company level without knowing the needs of the department and how much they know. Establishing goals which is not in tandem with the existing skills of employees is a waste of time. So, these kinds of goals are unattainable for employees. So, it’s better to set goals that employees can achieve and are based on their strengths. Hence, the goals of employees should be set based on what the employees are capable of and which are in sync with an organization’s goals.

Interact with employees

You should talk to employees about what training they need to boost their careers. Just because they think that would require their careers to grow, they should not get a salary cut. You should ask them whether they are satisfied with their work or not.

It’s important to talk to employees to set up training goals because they will be the most affected by it. Feedback should be taken from employees about goals. It’s because when you invest in their training, you get better retention rates. But this can only happen when you truly know about their goals. Training is an investment and therefore needs to be done to improve employees.

This is how a company should plan its training.

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