Training Employees

Identifying Training Gap

A training gap exists when there is a variance between desired/required behavior or performance and actual behavior or performance. This gap can occur on an individual, team or organizational level. This gap can reflect a lack of hard or soft skills, a lack of understanding of job expectations, industry knowledge, cultural norms or other issues. Hard skills are job-specific or functional skills—for example, cloud-based computing skills or knowledge of human resource-related laws and practices. Soft skills are bigger-picture capabilities that range from adaptability, curiosity and empathy to communication and critical thinking.

The training needs assessment process can be broken down into the following 6 steps:^[1]

1. Establish clear expectations. In order to accurately evaluate performance—and, therefore, accurately identify any training needs—job expectations must be clearly established and understood. Given this, job descriptions should be reviewed periodically to ensure performance requirements are current and include the desired/required performance.
2. Measure performance. Measuring performance not only establishes an objective point of reference, it creates an opportunity to discuss the instances of unsatisfactory performance and identify and document any issues and associated training or other actions. what training or other action is warranted. Identification of training needs and an associated training plan should also be incorporated in periodic reviews.
3. Solicit input on training needs. The individuals who are doing the work have a particularly relevant perspective on training needs are perhaps the best source of information on short-term training needs. Surveying employees individually or conducting focus groups are a couple of ways of obtaining input. In order to get a complete picture, managers should also be asked for input on individual and team training requirements. Use of 360 degree reviews, where employees—including management—are reviewed by their staff, peers and their manager—may also highlight training gaps. Soliciting input also encourages conversations about and progress on training and development broadly—an expectation of both employers and employees.
4. Support career development. Ask employees to rate their satisfaction with training and development opportunities and how existing policies and programs might be improved. Provide resources and support to help employees create self-directed development plans, in addition to the plans incorporated in their reviews. Identifying career interests and goals is valuable input into the overall organizational development plan.
5. Conduct an organizational resource analysis. Conduct an overall analysis of human resources roles and requirements relative to the organization’s strategies and objectives to identify broad (for example, industry-specific) and position or job category-specific (including reskilling/upskilling) training needs and any resource requirements or redundancies. It may also be useful to convene a round-table group(s) to discuss the results of the organizational analysis, validate training needs and identify any additional issues or opportunities.
6. Establish a coaching and mentoring program. As discussed in the onboarding section, coaching and mentoring is an organizational best practice that is associated with high-performance. Mentors can support employee personal and career development and be another point of perspective on training gaps.

The ADDIE Model

ADDIE is the classic model of instructional design that is used for developing educational and training programs and instructional materials. ADDIE stands for Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation and Evaluation, the five steps in the design process, detailed below:^[1]

Analysis: Identify the performance gap

The analysis phase involves identifying and clarifying the instructional problem or, from a training standpoint, identifying the performance gap and desired outcomes. This phase includes identifying participant characteristics (for example, current knowledge and skills, level of experience, language proficiency and motivation), learning resources and budget and time constraints, defining the learning environment and establishing instructional goals and objectives.

Design: Identify the learning objectives

The design phase involves subject matter design broadly, including defining specific learning objectives and instructional strategies, structuring content and assessments. The design should reflect a logical flow. Assessments should provide feedback on the learner’s progress in achieving the learning objectives.

Development: Develop a performance solution

As the title indicates, the development phase involves creating/curating and assembling the content specified in the design phase. This phase also involves stakeholder review and validation and any required revisions. This phase may involve integration of technology and related testing.

Implementation: Deliver the performance solution

Implementation involves development of the training framework, including course curriculum, learning outcomes and the learning space. The process should also include confirming the availability of required materials and associated applications or websites and preparing learners to use any required tools or technology. The final step, of course, is participant engagement.

Evaluation: Evaluate the results relative to the performance objectives.

Although evaluation is listed last, in practice it is included in every aspect of the process. That is, the overall design process is meant to be iterative, with elements fine-tuned along the way. Interim evaluations, referred to as formative evaluations, are those that are conducted prior to implementation to confirm that the learning resources meet the specifications established in the design phase. A summative evaluation would be conducted after implementation to determine training effectiveness on three bases: participant satisfaction, participant learning and participant performance.

Employee Training Methods

As is true with almost every other aspect of human resources (indeed, business), employee training methods are on the verge of transformation. However, new methods have not yet been documented, so articles on the topic are dated and, in some cases, underlying learning concepts are disputed. For example, one of the articles recommended in a recent article titled “The Most Effective Training Methods”^[1] is a review and analysis of training methods published in February 2013^[2].  The article reviews 13 training methods based on seven criteria: learning modality, learning environment, trainer presence, proximity, interaction level, cost considerations, and time demands.

What is perhaps more valuable than the analysis is the prompt to look beyond the usual employee training method “suspects,” which generally include apprenticeships, internships, on-the-job training, lectures, job rotation, simulations and e-learning. To those, author Tony Lam adds: case study, games-based training, job shadowing, mentoring, programmed instruction, role-modeling, role play, stimulus-based training, and team training. The methods are defined, as in Lam’s review, briefly below:

• Case Study: Provides the participants an opportunity to develop skills by presenting a problem, without a solution, for them to solve, or with a solution, as an example of how to solve it.
• Games-Based Training: Trainees compete in a series of decision-making tasks which allows them to explore a variety of strategic alternatives and experience the consequences which affect the other players, but with without risk to the individuals or the organization.
• Internship: Involves supervised, practical training while on the job where the trainee is permitted to work in the position for which they are training, but with some restrictions and with substantially less pay or no pay.
• Job Rotation: Involves training for a job by working in the job for a limited duration, while still maintaining the original job.
• Job Shadowing: Involves a trainee closely observing someone perform a specific job in the natural job environment for the purpose of witnessing first-hand the details of the job.
• Lecture: Involves the dissemination of training material by a trainer to a group of trainees, by means of verbal instruction.
• Mentoring & Apprenticeship: Involves a one-on-one partnership between a novice employee with a senior employee. Mentorship aims to provide support and guidance to less experienced employees whereas apprenticeship is for the development of job skills.
• Programmed Instruction: Involves the delivery of training through instruction that is delivered by a program via some electronic device without the presence of an instructor (think: language training).
• Role-Modeling: Involves the live presentation of skill(s) to an audience of trainees.
• Role Play: Requires trainees to assume a character and act out the role in a make-believe scenario or series of scenarios; learning comes by way of reflection on the play.
• Simulation: Involves the use of a simulator where specific skills are developed through repeated practice with a multisensory experience of imitated conditions. A special form of simulation training is Virtual Reality Training which entails total sensory immersion.
• Stimulus-Based Training: Using some type of stimulus (i.e., music, works of art, narratives, etc.) to motivate the learner to learn. The training induces a state of being (e.g., relaxation or awareness) in the participants to achieve learning.
• Team Training: Intended exclusively for groups of individuals that behave interactively, to either improve mutual knowledge within a team or to train the team on a team-specific skill.

Evaluating Training Effectiveness

The most common model for analyzing and evaluating the results of education training and development programs is the Kirkpatrick Model, developed by Donald Kirkpatrick in 1995 for his Ph.D. dissertation.^[1] The model consists of four levels, including the following:

• Level 1: Reaction—Measures how participants react to the training. A common method of determining this is a post-training survey.
• Level 2: Learning—Assess what the employee learned from the training. Learning can be evaluated by post-tests or demonstration of the knowledge, skill or ability.
• Level 3: Behavior—Are participants using what they learned? This might be assessed by observation or management evaluations.
• Level 4: Results—What is the organizational impact? For example, was there an increase in productivity, in project management or management effectiveness?

  

  Learning Styles

  Learning styles are also called learning modalities. Walter Burke Barbe and his colleagues proposed the following three learning modalities (often identified by the acronym VAK):

  1. Visual
  2. Auditory
  3. Kinesthetic

  Examples of these modalities are shown in the table, below.

  Visual	Kinesthetic	Auditory
  Picture	Gestures	Listening
  Shape	Body Movements	Rhythms
  Sculpture	Object Manipulation	Tone
  Paintings	Positioning	Chants

  Neil Fleming’s VARK model expanded on the three modalities described above and added “Read/Write Learning” as a fourth.

  The four sensory modalities in Fleming’s model are:

  1. Visual learning
  2. Auditory learning
  3. Read/write learning
  4. Kinesthetic learning

  Fleming claimed that visual learners have a preference for seeing (visual aids that represent ideas using methods other than words, such as graphs, charts, diagrams, symbols, etc.). Auditory learners best learn through listening (lectures, discussions, tapes, etc.). Read/write learners have a preference for written words (readings, dictionaries, reference works, research, etc.) Tactile/kinesthetic learners prefer to learn via experience—moving, touching, and doing (active exploration of the world, science projects, experiments, etc.).

  The VAK/VARK models can be a helpful way of thinking about different learning styles and preferences, but they are certainly not the last word on how people learn or prefer to learn. Many educators consider the distinctions useful, finding that students benefit from having access to a blend of learning approaches. Others find the idea of three or four “styles” to be distracting or limiting.

  In the college setting, you’ll probably discover that instructors teach their course materials according to the method they think will be most effective for all students. Thus, regardless of your individual learning preference, you will probably be asked to engage in all types of learning. For instance, even though you consider yourself to be a “visual learner,” you will still probably have to write papers in some of your classes. Research suggests that it’s good for the brain to learn in new ways and that learning in different modalities can help learners become more well-rounded. Consider the following statistics on how much content students absorb through different learning methods:

  • 10 percent of content they read
  • 20 percent of content they hear
  • 30 percent of content they visualize
  • 50 percent of what they both visualize and hear
  • 70 percent of what they say
  • 90 percent of what they say and do

  The range of these results underscores the importance of mixing up the ways in which you study and engage with learning materials.

  Defining Multimodal Learning

  You might discover that you prefer more than one learning style. Applying more than one learning style is known as multimodal learning. This strategy is useful not only for students who prefer to combine learning styles but also for those who may not know which learning style works best for them. It’s also a good way to mix things up and keep learning fun.

  For example, consider how you might combine visual, auditory, and kinesthetic learning styles to a biology class. For visual learning, you could create flash cards containing images of individual animals and the species name. For auditory learning, you could have a friend quiz you on the flash cards. For kinesthetic learning, you could move the flash cards around on a board to show a food web (food chain).

  The following video will help you review the types of learning styles and see how they might relate to your study habits: