Systematic Approach to Training
A systematic approach to training ensures that an organization's course development efforts produce consistent results. Sponsors and stakeholders expect a return on investment for development and delivery, so training professionals must use a structured approach to analyzing needs, designing a class outline, developing course content and materials, delivering instruction, and evaluating success. Ensuring that training courses meet the real needs of the target audience requires comprehensive planning and organization. By aligning learning objectives to a company's strategic goals, training professionals enable employees to complete training that can improve their job performance and have a positive business impact.
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Features
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Adopting a systematic approach to training typically involves creating a training organization in the human resources department. This organization has responsibility for ensuring that employees have access to required courses and career development opportunities. It typically uses formal learning management system software, such as Saba, Capterra or Moodle, to administer course catalogs. A systematic approach to training involves assessing student skills and knowledge both before and after training delivery so that a return on investment value can be calculated to validate the training effectiveness.
Benefits
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A systematic approach to providing training allows an organization to centralize administration, automate repetitive functions, offer self-service guidance to users, deliver self-paced content on a continuous basis, support standards such as the Sharable Content Object Reference Model, and allow users to create personalized development plans. By analyzing job performance to isolate skills and knowledge gaps, training professionals pinpoint the true training needs of the organization instead of responding to training requests. They also base their decisions on input from managers regarding the root causes of poor performance, such as high numbers of product defects, low customer satisfaction or increasing operational costs due to employee errors.
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Analyzing Needs
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The first step in a systematic training approach involves assessing training needs. By observing employees at work, interviewing managers and asking expert workers about what they need know to perform their tasks, training professionals more accurately identify what topics and activities should be included in training courses. During this phase, training professionals identify when training should occur and who should attend.
Designing and Developing Courses
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Designing training materials usually includes defining learning objectives. By specifying action verbs and defining what students need to achieve, training professionals clearly identify the instructional goals. This helps them formulate the course outline and supports exercises and testing. The training professional creates a project plan that describes what tasks, resources and time commitments are required to produce the training course. With these details, sponsors and stakeholders can approve or amend the plan and allocate funding. Developing the training materials based on the budget available usually involves developing the presentations, multimedia content and supporting resources, such as manuals, job aids and study guides.
Implementing and Evaluating
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Delivering training using a systematic approach involves scheduling classes, inviting eligible personnel, conducting the activities, tracking participation and accepting feedback about the events. Monitoring performance back on the job ensures that training programs produce the desired results. By conducting follow-up surveys, using tools such as Zoomerang or SurveyMonkey, training professionals gather input about the training courses, both self-paced and instructor-led, to improve the instructional content in a systematic way.
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