9. Tamper-Proof Training
Organizations are more likely to be successful when human resources performing processes, as they were designed, are efficient at completing the processes. To ensure that human resources are at their most efficient, they need to have the right tools to do their job and be placed in a job they are educated for or have experience in, allowing them to perform at their peak. One area that is easily overlooked and underdeveloped is instructing the resource on the details of how to perform a process or training. You have been studying tools that can be used at the managerial level, and one of the most important tools, and fundamental to success, is training. Managers at all levels need to be trained in areas they are responsible for to be as effective as possible. Because managers will perform several duties within their job description, they too will need to follow processes and procedures that have been established for that department within the organization.
Training Is a Process
Managers need to understand that following processes ensures that they are doing a task correctly, the way it was designed. This promotes organization, completion, and efficiency, as well as standardization within the department. For the manager overseeing work carried out within a department, it should be of utmost importance to ensure that everyone working within the department is following the correct processes and procedures. Managers need to lead by example in doing the same. Managers should realize what a powerful tool proper training is and how much power they have in efficiency, completion, and control of their department when processes are followed.
Training is a process that also has to be developed and monitored to ensure that it is performed correctly. When training is viewed as a process, it can include development of the task steps, testing for verification, documentation, and monitoring the process to ensure that it is yielding the desired outcome. This starts by understanding what the process of training is trying to accomplish. Training is simply effectively communicating process tasks, through verbal explanation; written documentation; illustrations; and computer, Web-based, or hands-on exposure. The trainee needs to understand the process steps, in detail and sequence, as well as the reason the process exists and the importance it has in the organization.
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The process of training, like any other process, is best performed and repeated when there is a documented plan.
Training Plan
When you’re considering the process of training, it’s best to try to keep it as simple as possible to avoid confusion and unnecessary steps. As with other processes, it’s best to have someone skilled in process development to help outline the steps needed to effectively deliver training. This will also require a subject matter expert and in this case someone skilled in training. This is vitally important because people learn differently and there are several ways training can be administered. The development of a training approach is called the training plan. The basic areas of training need to be defined to implement the process effectively. When managers decide to evaluate the effectiveness of training within their department, they look to these five areas of the process:
1. Implementation—Develop a plan of the steps taken during the training process.
2. Documentation—Acquire and train from documentation that defines the process that will be trained.
3. Qualified trainers—Have someone qualified in training deliver the training.
4. Delivery system—Develop a delivery approach that matches the needs of the trainees.
5. Monitoring and assessment—Monitor actual performance and assess the progress of the trainee.
Implementation
The first area involves how training is actually implemented. Training is implemented in two primary forms:
1. Documented process communication
2. Undocumented process communication
In a documented process, training is implemented based on a well-designed process that has been thoroughly documented. Staff attends training sessions where this documentation is presented and gone through in detail, and staff is effectively trained on a process.
In an undocumented process, training is through the passing down of undocumented information or tribal knowledge—people in the department simply are told how to do something by somebody else. That person later trains somebody else verbally off the top of their head, and so on. There are some companies that have passed down information for decades never having once written down a process or procedure but simply passing on the information year after year as people are hired.
There are several inherent risks with undocumented process training:
• Information was not correct at the beginning, but was passed down anyway. “The way we’ve always done it.”
• The trainer does not articulate the details about the process very well and leaves out steps, only to have the new person fill in those steps on their own through trial and error.
• If more than one person is training, there will be inconsistency in how the process is explained.
• Trainers can input their own opinion of how a process should be performed, efficient or not.
• The only person who knows the process left the organization, so now what?
Unfortunately, this is still the process in some organizations today, and in most cases, as a result of poor training practices, employees do not have all the information or tools they need to effectively do their job.
This is unfortunate because new employees usually want to be trained properly, want to have the right tools, and truly want to do the best they can in their performance. For the manager, having these training practices in the department unfortunately results in poorly trained employees who are not performing as effectively as they could, and this poses a problem for the manager in completing departmental processes, goals, and objectives.
Documentation
Documentation of processes and procedures is vital within an organization because this clearly states and records how procedures are actually done, by design, and allows for more accurate and consistent training of new resources. Documentation at many companies falls by the wayside and is not a high priority for managers because it requires resources skilled in technical writing that can clearly articulate in written form how procedures should be done. That is not to say that departmental managers have to wait to document something until they have a resource capable of doing the documentation. It would be nice to have that skill set in the department because most managers do not have this level of skill available and have to assign the task to other resources to try to document process as best they can.
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The documentation of a process can be as simple as taking pictures of a process and cutting and pasting those into something like a Word document for people to visually see. Always train from documentation.
Illustrations such as a screenshot on a computer or a digital photograph of a physical item on a bench would help the trainee visualize that step in the process. This can be a way in which resources unskilled in writing might be able to build training documents that would be very effective. The point of this chapter is to point out the importance of training and proper documentation within the organization to eliminate the risk of employees doing processes incorrectly and not allowing for the department to be efficient and effective in accomplishing its objectives.
Qualified Trainers
As you have seen, there are five important areas to develop the training plan, and addressing the trainer is one of the most important. This is also another area organizations do not put enough emphasis on, and for good reason. Organizations, in streamlining the operation, do not have extra resources waiting around to train people, and not everyone can train! Trainers are resources who will facilitate communicating how a process will be performed to someone who has never done that process but has been assigned the task. In many organizations it’s a common practice to take staff experienced with the process and utilize them as a trainer with the expectation that in knowing the process well they would be the ones best suited to train the process. This unfortunately is not always the case; the person might be an expert in the process but not very good at effectively communicating all the steps in the process.
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The trainer should ensure that all the process steps have been effectively communicated to the trainee, such that they have the most accurate information and have received that information in a manner they understand and remember.
The trainer is a vital step in the training process because he is the key tool of communication. The trainer needs to have certain skills that go beyond the subject matter expert that will help the training process be successful. They must be able to do the following:
1. Understand the value of the training plan approach.
2. Insist on training from documentation, so documenting a process might have to happen.
3. Have the ability to effectively communicate details of process steps, not just talk about them.
4. Understand that people learn in different ways, at various speeds, and have varying levels of understanding and memory retention.
5. Be able to monitor the trainee during training for attention, questions, stress, and general understanding of the process.
6. Have listening skills to determine by verbal or body language that the recipient is receiving the communication clearly.
7. Be able to adjust the training delivery method on the fly if it is not effective.
8. Have a feedback system to assess the level of understanding by observing the trainee performing the task.
The trainer has to be knowledgeable not only about the subject, but also about how to interact and communicate effectively with people. So, as you have seen, there is more involved in properly training than just telling someone the steps of a process.
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Effective training goes much deeper than just relaying the process steps. Having an organized plan, a solid delivery method, and good communication techniques, as well as observing the trainee, all play an important role in a trainer’s success.
Delivery System
The next area is how the training will be delivered and the approach taken. The delivery and approach of training is much the same as the process of selecting the correct trainer based on their knowledge of the process and their communication skills. People understand information in different ways. Some people can be told something and understand it well, whereas for others, reading something, seeing a picture of something, or the hands-on approach is best. This is an important point to understand because the delivery and approach of training can vary depending on the staff who will be trained, their skill level, their educational level, and their general ability to receive and understand information.
The delivery system should match the needs of the recipients and what will most likely be effective for the bulk of the recipients. This will require some assessment and in some cases trial and error on the trainer’s part.
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A good trainer will be perceptive as to how the trainees are receiving information and whether they are comprehending and remembering what is being taught.
A process or procedure should always be documented, and then a delivery system can be evaluated to best communicate the information effectively. Trainers must be knowledgeable about the connection between the subject matter and the delivery method to derive a general feeling of how information will be accepted by the trainees. This can be visibly seen in a training session in the attentiveness of the trainees. Asking questions about what was just covered and elements covered earlier in the training will assess the trainees’ understanding and retention of material. Having the trainee restate a sequence of components of the process can assess how much detail she is actually grasping. This will give the trainer an understanding as to the effectiveness of that particular type of delivery system.
If the trainer chooses a delivery system in which they sit and read through a document with the trainee, the trainer needs to have a feedback system to assess the trainee’s interpretation of what they read to gauge the learner’s understanding of the process. The trainer might want to look for signs of boredom or the trainee falling asleep or looking disinterested and fidgeting around because this would indicate that the trainee does not do well in reading documentation. The trainer might need to switch the delivery method to a slide presentation or graphics that would pictorially illustrate forms of the process to see whether this would improve the understanding and retention. If the trainer is still seeing signs that the trainee does not like this form of communication, the trainer might take the person to where the task is being performed and go through the process using a hands-on format.
Developing supporting documents to a process procedure can help the trainer communicate detailed information about process steps.
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One example of a supporting document might simply be a series of pages that have digital pictures showing the process step-by-step with very little or no text associated with it.
Having pictorial process documentation allows the trainee to see the actual process material or visualize the processes being conducted and to get the sensation of touch and of performing the task before being allowed to actually perform the process. This allows them to understand more detail of the process and usually results in much higher retention of the process information. This can be a very effective tool because people have a tendency to remember pictures, colors, shapes, and sizes.
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Trainees with the ability to watch the process and/or perform the process with the supervision of a trainer also have improved retention of process steps.
When a trainer is using a hands-on method, it’s best to have the trainer perform the process first while the trainee observes the steps done correctly. Then the trainee can perform the same process steps with the trainer observing to ensure that the trainee has captured the details of the process. This form of hands-on training works well in a one-on-one situation or in training groups of no more than two or three at a time.
The effectiveness of this training lies solely on the trainee’s being able to perform the process under the close supervision of the trainer and the focused attention the trainer can give. This approach might not be as effective in a large group scenario because it will be difficult for the trainer to give one-on-one attention to each trainee. When training is required for a large number of people, the classroom setting might be a better starting point to go through a process and have a blend of documentation with text explanations and pictures showing the process.
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Another effective large-group approach might use a video display, PowerPoint presentation, or flip charts so that the trainer can talk to the class in more of a classroom setting.
The classroom approach can work in conjunction with small breakout sessions of two or three at a time to go through a process using the hands-on method because the class has already been exposed to the process steps but just need the practice. It is the responsibility of the manager to ensure that trainers who have been chosen for training within a department understand the basic concepts of training so that they can be most effective in the training approach, delivery, and assessment.
There might be instances in which trainers are sent to a location to train and they do not speak the language, or they might be in a different culture, which can present another level of complexity within the training plan.
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The most effective tool in this approach is to have written documentation in both languages in which each paragraph or each sentence in the document is in the trainer’s language followed by the same text in the trainee’s language. This allows the trainer and the trainee to read through a document at the same time, understanding it in their own language. The use of pictures can also play a big role in conveying process step details and information that doesn’t need to be interpreted.
The use of photographs of the process environment, digital pictures of the materials and tools, or screenshots of a computer are much more effective when training cross-culture or -languages. Pictures require very little text for explanation if they are done correctly and can illustrate and present each step of a process slowly and in detail. These are very important tools that will assist the manager in selection of appropriate trainers, correct documentation of processes, and delivery method and approach. The manager has the responsibility of ensuring that processes are being performed correctly and employees have the right tools and training they need in order to be efficient and successful.
Monitoring and Assessment
Measuring and assessing is an important area within the training process because the trainer can’t really be sure that the trainee has completely grasped the details of the process and will have long-term retention, not requiring further training. Trainees can be very good at replicating process steps using short-term memory, having simply to respond to the trainer directly after being shown how to do something. Unfortunately, this does not indicate how long the trainee will remember the details of the process or whether they can remember all the process steps at all over a period of time. This is important for trainers to understand because many times the trainer performs the training function and moves on to other tasks assuming that the person understands it “well enough.” It should not be assumed that people are ready to perform a process just because they completed the training; there must be a verification system that tests the knowledge of the trainee. Trainers can best accomplish this by setting up a monitoring plan to view the performance of trainees and assess their capabilities.
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In the best-case scenario, someone who has been trained on a process who starts the process immediately and performs only that process, not being assigned any other task, has a much higher probability of remembering the process steps.
If that is all that the trainee has been tasked to do and they therefore can focus on just the tasks they’ve been trained on, this helps the trainee focus on retention of the process details. In many cases resources will be doing more than one process and will need to be trained on several processes. This makes it vitally important to avoid too much information that would be overwhelming for the trainee and cause confusion. Managers must realize that new employees or employees being transferred to another department will require time in the training process.
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If quality is to be built into the training process, trainees need to move more slowly through a process at first and perform it several times to ensure that they understand and remember the process steps.
The trainer should stay in touch with the trainee after the training process to monitor how well he is doing. The trainer can then assess whether the trainee needs any follow-up training to help him better understand or remind him about process steps he might have forgotten or possibly misunderstood.
Monitoring and measuring can be used not only for assessing the performance of a trainee, but also to gauge how well the training materials have been developed for effectiveness in training that process. This will also give an indication as to the effectiveness of the trainer and whether the right person has been selected for the training process. It is important for the trainee to understand that the organization takes training seriously, and ongoing monitoring of training helps ensure that the employee is doing the process correctly and is getting the best training.
Managers need to understand their responsibility in managing the process of training, selection of trainers, and training material as being important in the success of the organization. Although this fosters good training practices, not everyone is cut out to be a trainer, and managers need to understand which resources are better suited for this type of job.
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It’s important that you, as a manager, develop trainers within the department who are effective and successful at training.
Having good trainers allows the flexibility of having new people brought into the department because there’s a higher level of confidence that new people will be trained efficiently and correctly. This also allows the manager better control of process staffing and scheduling, giving the manager more control of the department and power in completing processes.
Power Tool Summary
• The process of training, like any other process, is best performed and repeated when there is a documented plan.
• The documentation of a process can be as simple as taking pictures of a process and cutting and pasting those into something like a Word document for people to visually see. Always train from documentation.
• The trainer should ensure that all the process steps have been effectively communicated to the trainee, such that they have the most accurate information and have received that information in a manner they understand and remember.
• Effective training goes much deeper than just relaying the process steps. Having an organized plan, a solid delivery method, and good communication techniques, as well as observing the trainee, all play an important role in a trainer’s success.
• The delivery system should match the needs of the recipients and what will most likely be effective for the bulk of the recipients. This will require some assessment and in some cases trial and error on the trainer’s part.
• A good trainer will be perceptive as to how the trainees are receiving information and whether they are comprehending and remembering what is being taught.
• One example of a supporting document might simply be a series of pages that have digital pictures showing the process step-by-step with very little or no text associated with it.
• Trainees with the ability to watch the process and/or perform the process with the supervision of a trainer also have improved retention of process steps.
• Another effective large-group approach might use a video display, PowerPoint presentation, or flip charts so that the trainer can talk to the class in more of a classroom setting.
• The most effective tool in this approach is to have written documentation in both languages in which each paragraph or each sentence in the document is in the trainer’s language followed by the same text in the trainee’s language. This allows the trainer and the trainee to read through a document at the same time, understanding it in their own language. The use of pictures can also play a big role in conveying process step details and information that doesn’t need to be interpreted.
• In the best-case scenario, someone who has been trained on a process who starts the process immediately and performs only that process, not being assigned any other task, has a much higher probability of remembering the process steps.
• If quality is to be built into the training process, trainees need to move more slowly through a process at first and perform it several times to ensure that they understand and remember the process steps.
• It’s important that you, as a manager, develop trainers within the department who are effective and successful at training.