Enterprise Learning Initiatives.

A couple of years ago, I worked on a Learning and Development effort for a major retailer’s new financial system. It was the largest ERP implementation in their history. I’d be a very wealthy man if I had a nickel for every time I heard my client say things like:

• “We have to train them on that.”
• “That’s a training issue.”
• “We have to include that in training.”

While I appreciated the client’s zeal and passion for developing employees, they didn’t realize what they were asking for. If they trained their users on every aspect of a new system before go-live, employees would be over-worked and – worse – unfocused. They would spend way too much time in training, away from their work. And they wouldn’t be able to apply what they had learned in the context of their jobs. In other words, they wouldn’t know how to deliver the behaviors on which the ERP business case depended.

Instead of training the employees on EVERYTHING, we helped the client see that they needed to look at three factors to decide what to train. We call them the three C’s.

Three Factors to Decide What to Train

Critical: These are the most important behaviors employees need to perform – typically their core job responsibilities. Ask your stakeholders to answer questions like: What are the most important things for employees in this role to do? What are the essentials? What drives the performance of their team or business unit?

Common: These are the most frequent behaviors employees display – the things they must do routinely to successfully complete their work. Ask your stakeholders to answer questions like: What will the employee need to do most often? What are the everyday tasks?

Catastrophic: These are the behaviors that, if done incorrectly, would have a significant negative effect on the business. If the employee got these tasks wrong, the department or function would suffer. Ask your stakeholders questions like: What will shut down the business? What would open you up to lawsuits or employee injury?

If you can get your stakeholders to agree on these elements, you will focus your training development efforts in the right places. You will help the organization deliver on the project’s business case and get the greatest bang for their training buck!

I don’t remember the first time I used a hammer, but I know my dad didn’t just hand it over and say, “Good luck!” He had a vested interest in my health, so he took the time to teach me. There’s a simple lesson in that: learn to use the tool, or else it’s gonna hurt.

I know I’m not the only person to learn this lesson, yet I keep running into companies integrating new technology with little or no training. These companies have a vested interest in the health of their business, yet they hand over new technology and say, “Good luck!” I don’t know why – whether employers have a lot of confidence in workers learning independently, or whether new technology is considered a cure-all on its own, making the human element irrelevant. But the reality is, technology is not a solution; it’s a tool. If you want to hit your goals, you must take responsibility both for acquiring the tool and teaching employees to use it.

That doesn’t mean just tossing one more thing in your shopping cart. You can sometimes get away with buying a tool with no customization, but you can’t buy training off the shelf and expect it to work. Your business is unique. You have your own processes, procedures, jobs, reward systems and – most importantly – your own business goals. When you bought the technology, you expected some business benefit. Your employees must use the tool well, in the context of your business, or you won’t get the benefits you expect. Training for new technology should be mandatory and customized.

If you want to hit your goals, you must take responsibility both for acquiring the tool and teaching employees to use it.

Tech companies might claim their product is so intuitive anyone can use it immediately. They might use smartphones as an example. No one sent you to training for your first smartphone, right? Maybe not, but that doesn’t mean you weren’t trained. You probably used a lot of trial and error, went online for help, and asked your friends or associates at the store where you bought it. For years, I ranted about my screen constantly rotating before a friend showed me a quick way to lock rotation. It’s really easy to do, but it hadn’t even occurred to me a feature like that existed. Now that I know, sure, it’s intuitive, but as an inexperienced user, my phone just seemed broken. Very few of us would be able to properly use our smartphones without friends acting as trainers. NOW your smartphone isn’t hard to use; now each one is intuitive, because your “intuition” depends on your own experience with the many smartphones you’ve owned. You’ve lived it, and that was your training, so now you don’t need to think about it. Do you want employees stumbling through your new technology until it’s intuitive? Do you want to wait that long to get your ROI?

Ok, that’s why training is important, but why custom training? Having spent years in the thick of technology implementations, I can tell you that all training is not equal and you get what you pay for. “Vanilla” training is cheap up front, but it’s not very effective. And its cost doesn’t include the high price of low productivity. Even if you implement technology as-is, right out of the box, vanilla training is dry and one-dimensional. No one wants to read a user guide, and frankly they’re not always helpful. Just look at Ikea. They market their products as easy-to-assemble furniture with easy-to-follow instructions. In reality, putting their furniture together is a notoriously frustrating process. Vanilla user guides simply aren’t enough to properly train a team to do their jobs effectively with new technology.

Besides, most technologies allow custom configuration, which most companies take advantage of, and which immediately makes vanilla training irrelevant.

Having spent years in the thick of technology implementations, I can tell you that all training is not equal and you get what you pay for.

If people struggle with smartphones and Ikea furniture – which are relatively simple and have a low cost of failure – how do you think your employees will fare with your pricey new technology? You need them ready to perform their own jobs with your technology configuration and your business processes in your teams and culture to hit your business targets.

You Need a Custom Training Solution

Do it right or don’t do it at all. Create training and support that fits your organization. Provide multiple avenues for learning, both guided and self-paced, as well as performance support on the job. Make it engaging, memorable and even fun – something your employees will want to take and refer to in the future. Build something that engages the whole learning community, encourages dialogue, and provides rewards and recognition for hard work – learning that makes your teams perform better. The health of your company depends on it.

I’m a mom of two kids. I often find myself helping them with homework or doing practice quizzes with them to see if they remember what they learned in class. Both play sports and on many days I can be found at a baseball or soccer field working with them one-on-one to apply skills they learned in their weekly team practice. Being a mom has shown me that learning doesn’t happen in a single event. It takes follow up, repetition, coaching and practice to make it stick. Why should this be any different in the workplace?

I’ve worked with many clients who see training as a one-time event, thinking their employees will return to the job and immediately apply what they’ve learned. That instant mastery is more the exception than the rule. I recently came across an article stating that 70% of employee training is forgotten within 24 hours. That’s a pretty discouraging statistic for a learning professional. But we can increase that retention .

Five Tips to Improve Application of Learning on the Job

• Make it visual. Visualization is a powerful tool in retention. 80% of people remember what they see and do, but only 10% remember what they hear. When we make training more visual, we automatically improve learning.
• Involve the manager. Supervisors should be involved before, during and after training. For example, they can set expectations before the training and ensure employees know why they should attend. Managers who attend training themselves, side by side employees, are more effective coaches when learning transfers to the job. They can also debrief after the training to reinforce what was learned.
• Plan follow-up activities. Follow-up is powerful because it turns the individual’s focus back to the new skills. On-the-job challenges, collaboration with peers, and regular checkpoints to observe and encourage employees – all of these reinforce learning.
• Schedule training at the point of need. Minimize the time between learning and real-world performance; train only what is immediately needed on the job. This is especially effective for systems training. If you train employees on new technology too far in advance of when they actually use it for the first time, there’s a good chance they won’t remember what to do. Embedding training and performance support into the system itself lets the employee get help exactly when they need it.
• Chunk it. Avoid information overload; people retain more complex information when it’s chunked into small modules and delivered at a manageable pace. For example, an employee could click on a button within a screen to view a short 1-2 minute video demonstration of the task he needs to perform on that screen. They would get only what they need, when they need it.

The next time you design a learning program, think about repetition, reinforcement and retention. Whether it’s kids or employees, the goal is to make the learning stick and the “stickier” the better!

Ever heard…

“Not so fast! That might have been ok elsewhere, but we do things a bit differently on this team.”

Or what about…

“I know what the documented process says, but in reality, it’s not done that way at all.”

But surely you’ve heard…

“If you are going to live in this house, you will obey my rules – it’s my way, or [you insert the rest here].”

These colloquialisms are a part of our lives. In one way or another, they govern how we behave on a team, in a department, and even in our family lives. They deliver information about how we should behave socially, coexist, and get things done the “right” way. Or, as my 92–year–old grandmother would say, “Doing the thing the way it is supposed to be done, when it’s supposed to be done, using the right stuff to get it done.”

These phrases reveal culture. (OH NO….the “C” word!) Culture exists in any field of human endeavor involving two or more people. It is the way things work, regardless of what is formally documented or stated when “big brother” is watching. In the workplace, culture governs day–to–day business operations. Culture is rarely documented, but it affects every decision made. Once, when I asked a client about a practice that confused me, he said, “It’s just the way things get done around here.” That’s as good as any other definition of culture.

In my time as a learning and development consultant, I’ve become painfully aware that culture – the unwritten rules of order – can enhance or destroy the best laid plans.

Culture eats strategy for breakfast
Mark Fields, former CEO of Ford Motor Company

Once upon a time in a conference room far, far way, a client felt the company culture was getting in the way of their change project. He asked our group of experienced change management and learning professionals, “How do you change culture?” A colleague wisely answered “Slowly, and almost never.”

It’s a common question. The client reasoned that a strategic communications approach and well–placed learning interventions mixed in the corporate cauldron would miraculously change the very nature of the organization.

Actually, it works the other way around. Culture is “baked in” to the organization. Treat it as a fixed and powerful force. It should be considered when designing every piece of the solution or the operation is bound to fail. Don’t try to change the organization’s culture. Understand it, and then harness its power for your initiative.

As we sat with the client, my team talked about our experiences with organizational culture. We reset the client’s expectations about culture change and the limitations of plans that do not consider culture. But we also helped them understand they had a massive force at their disposal – a force that could help get them to their goal.

For example, their change project required new employee behaviors. New employee behaviors mean training, right? But training, in a vacuum, rarely achieves true behavior change. We talked with the client about the need to focus attention on the behaviors they needed and use their culture as a catalyst. We helped them ask themselves, “What is the behavior we need to see after this training? How can we leverage our culture to help us get there?”

Here are some ways you can use your culture to get the behaviors your organization needs:

Acceptance

You know what they say: acceptance is the first step to change. Accept your reality. Look at the hard truths in your organization and examine the culture. Culture is what attracted most of the people working there today, so it’s not a bad thing, but you have to understand it. What are the unspoken rules? How do people talk and interact with each other? What behaviors are being rewarded? Those are the ones that are aligned to your culture. Beyond self-examination, there are more formal ways to determine culture; consider a thorough assessment. You have to know your culture before you can use it.

Engagement

Now that you have assessed your culture, determine the best way to engage the organization. Ask yourself a few questions:

• What type of organizational culture do you have? Rebels? Armies of one? One big family? Cooperation and synergy? A band of brothers who have each other’s backs? Creators and innovators? Risk–takers, encouraged to try and fail?
• Who are your employees? How much do demographics and characteristics (like gender, age, and background) drive the preferred learning approaches of the organization? For example, does the age of the majority influence the learning approach? As we try to engage the work force, what types of things will work and won’t work?
• How many people are you targeting? Does your organization have the infrastructure to support multi–faceted approaches, or are you limited to a few bells and whistles and a lo–fi approach to engage the audience?
• How are people rewarded for in the organization? What leads to high evaluations, promotions, more money, and social/political clout? In other words, what can we use – based on our culture – to facilitate engagement?

These questions are easy to answer for some organizations and difficult for others. Regardless, the effort is worthwhile. You must answer these questions if you want to engage successfully.

Execution

So far, you have done all the right things – you understand your true culture, have a plan for how to engage the organization, and now you need to execute. Your plan should be a multi–level, multi–phased, and supportive approach.

• Multi-level means stakeholders at all levels of are aware and on message. How are all levels of the organization helping to drive the engagement and support? You will need top-down (leader-driven) and a bottom–up (grass roots) approach that is aligned with your culture.
• Multi-phased simply implies you need to allow the organization to warm up to each part of the change. Total immersion in a new way of working is risky – if you ask folks to jump into the deep end, you might lose a few. I recommend using a tried and true approach – formats, words, and platforms everyone is comfortable with – and use it to deliver each component. The idea is to minimize the new stuff and make it all feel culturally right. Wrap the familiar around the new and it will go down much easier.
• Supportive means intentionally building an environment that helps employees succeed. Along with traditional performance support material like job aids, stakeholders and leaders must continue to “talk the talk and walk the walk.” Create touch points for learners to see the importance of what they are doing – the connection to the success of the team and the organization. Reward behaviors that are critical to the program’s success. ALL of these things should be designed through the lens of your culture.

There is a lot more advice I could have covered, but this is a blog, not a book! Remember a few things the next time you have a discussion about training for a new initiative and someone brings up the “C” word. Training counter to your culture never gets the results you want. Culture is powerful and should be exploited to your solution’s benefit, not ignored or resisted.

“Now get back out there and do it the way we taught ya,” the coach said, with optimism in his voice. “Atta boy!”

Kenny Simon is an L&D Director with Emerson Human Capital, as well as a sports junkie who learned about culture through professional experience and old ball coaches who were often verbally abusive. (But he isn’t bitter or anything…)

Does this sound familiar? Your company is installing new software. You attend the training session, where the facilitator explains the benefits of the new system and demonstrates how you will use it to do your job. He asks for questions. He doesn’t get many. The training is over and everyone returns to their desks. “That didn’t look too difficult,” you think.

One week later the new system is launched. You log on and…sit there. You sort of remember what to do, but you’re not 100% sure. What if you make a mistake? What is at stake? If it’s a new payroll system, people might not get paid. If it’s a new manufacturing system, the product might not get made. If it’s a new helpdesk system, people might not be able to do their jobs or buy your company’s products and services. The same would be true for leadership training, sales training, or any behavioral training. What are the consequences if you do it wrong? You might negatively impact the customer or a coworker.

Learners weigh risks and rewards.

When attempting to use a new skill or behavior, there is risk. If the learner perceives the risk is greater than the reward, they are LESS likely to use their new behavior. As learning professionals, we know learners must use new behaviors immediately and repeatedly so they become habit.

How can we help our learners get over the hump of “the risk is too great?” We allow the learner to practice new skills during training. I’m not talking about taking a multiple-choice assessment at the end of the session. I’m talking about allowing the learner to try new behaviors using real problems in a realistic environment – where they feel the pride of doing it right, and where they are allowed to fail and feel the consequences of that mistake.

Keep it real.

People learn from real scenarios. Real issues. Real challenges. Real consequences for success and failure. People learn from experience. Your challenge is to bring that “real life” – that urgency – into the classroom or eLearning session. The more relevant and realistic the context, the more easily learners will transfer those skills and knowledge to the job.

Your learning objectives are your guide.

How do you know what to have learners practice during training? The answer lies in your learning objectives. They should follow the ABC method: ACTION, BEHAVIOR, CONNECT (See Greg Bunn’s Aug 10 blog post).

In other words, what do you want them to be able to DO with the knowledge and skills they’ve gained during training? What learners practice helps them meet the learning objectives.

So if your stated objective is…

After completing this course, you will be able to:Issue a refund for a returned item using the original form of payment.

…which of these options will get them to the objective?

Option 1:Multiple Choice<

QUESTION: To issue a refund using the original form of payment:

1. Press “Return” key. Select “Original Form of Payment.” Scan the item. Press “Total.”
2. Press “Return” key. Scan the item. Press “Total.”
3. Scan the item. Press “Return” key. Press “Total.”

or

Option 2:Hands-on Simulation

A customer is returning an item using the original form of payment. Demonstrate the steps to issue the refund accurately.

Customer:“Hi. I’d like to return this item.”

Cashier:“No problem. Do you have the original form of payment?”

Customer: “Yes.”

Instructions:Use the interactive cash register to complete this return accurately.

Option 2 will show the instructor – and the learner – whether the learner knows how to complete the task correctly. In addition, the learner demonstrates the behavior he or she will use on the job, building confidence and lowering the perceived risk. A week later, faced with the new system and a similar situation, that employee will perform better and more confidently. A multiple-choice test does not let you measure against the learning objective and it doesn’t prepare the learner, mentally, for on-the-job performance.

Here it is, in a nutshell.

Giving learners real-life problems to solve during training enables them to:

• learn from their mistakes in a safe environment and without impacting customers, clients, or coworkers.
• build confidence in the new skill or behavior, which reduces the perceived risk and increases the likelihood they will apply their new skills on the job.

We’ve all read the research on the modern learner – make it more modular, gamify it, or make it mobile. But don’t let these trends distract you. Here are a few common signs you need to re-focus on the basic elements of good learning and changing human behavior.

1. You deploy leadership training, but survey results show no one participated. What are your learners comparing it to? What is their frame of reference for his content? Adult learners anchor what they are hearing or seeing to what they have seen or heard before. If you don’t anchor it, they will! Try branding the program differently or compare it to an experience that has given them great skills or insights. Learners will connect your training to those anchors and begin to see the learning as more purposeful.
2. Your training falls flat and survey results show a negative learning experience.How did the session start? How did it end? What highs and lows did you build into the session? Take a hard look at those and you might start to understand participants’ feedback. Ever go on vacation and, when you tell a friend about it, all you can remember are the most spectacular sights or the travel disasters? Our brains are hard-wired to focus on the highs and lows, or peak ends, of any experience. Orchestrate those highs and lows. For example, begin with an engaging ice breaker (high), followed by a challenging discussion (low), and then an activity that gets people on their feet and talking to each other. Tip: Do you want to ensure those evaluations come in more positive? End on a high note your learners will remember when they do their review.
3. Your systems training is launched, but users report many issues as they try to use the system on the job. Research shows we feel the pain of loss much more acutely than the pleasure of gain. That’s why we stay in jobs longer than we should or in relationships long after they’ve fizzled. It’s called Loss Aversion and the loss of systems is no different. For some users, the old system was fine, and it was comforting and affirming to know exactly how to do the job well each day. For those users, the new system is painful; they don’t know it all anymore. They don’t know how to find information, complete daily tasks, or speed through those processes. They are grieving that feeling of safety and confidence. You can fix this by identifying the real pain points. What is the pain of not changing systems? What are the consequences of the aging or inadequate system – consequences learners might not be thinking of? If we don’t change, information might be more and more outdated or irrelevant. Maybe competitors will take our share of the market or our customers will have a bad experience and leave. Find out what this change is really about and build that into training. Help your learners imagine the pain in not changing to a new system.
4. Compliance training leaves your audience “glazed over.”Have you ever conducted training face-to-face and sense that your audience is less than thrilled? Sometimes the content itself is hard to make fun and exciting. But you can find ways to add some spice to your training. One way: give learners some control. Humans like predictability and influence on things that affect them. For example, if you were to become ill, you would want to help determine the treatment plan and understand your prognosis. Faced with uncertainty, we seek control. When you’re designing training, (even compliance training!) look for ways to give learners control. For example, use advanced organizers so they can see the content at a glance. Let them describe their learning goals and track progress themselves. Give them electives to choose from. Or let them choose the order in which they take courses. Give as much control as possible and learners will engage and feel a sense of accomplishment.
5. Learners are not up to date on the latest tax curriculum. You’ve built the course, your learners have taken it, but you’re still seeing performance problems on the job. The text-heavy content might be your problem. Studies have shown our brains are triggered more easily by visual images; in fact, we can remember over 2,000 images with 90% accuracy, even after 90 days. That’s huge! So, while some might say there are distinct learning styles or preferred learning methods, we know the brain loves visualization. Use that to increase retention. Make the content more visual and your learners will recall more than they would by looking only at text-heavy slides.
6. Your accounting department is having a hard time learning the new business process. Chances are, any new accounting process is complex and has many exceptions to the norm. That’s a big hill for your learners to climb. Help them out by engineering success and building momentum. We all need small wins to keep ourselves going when the going gets tough. For example, when we diet, we like to see that our work is making a difference – the needle on the scale is inching downward. The day we stop seeing results, we become discouraged or demotivated. Learners are no different. They need to see that their effort is connected to results and progress toward the goal. Start with simple tasks that ensure small wins, then build in bigger achievements for more complex or challenging tasks. Momentum is a movement that takes on a life of its own and escalates – soon your learners will be on a sure path to success on the job.

This Isn’t Rocket Science, It’s Brain Science

All of these tips are founded in scientific research about human behavior and the brain. So, while learning trends and societal shifts won’t stop, we know a few facts about the human behavior that transcend the trend. Use these techniques to really give your training the wow it needs!

You might have heard that, all around the country, elementary schools are dropping cursive writing and replacing it with computer time. Sounds about right for the digital age, huh? But doing things the old-fashioned way has its advantages. I can’t claim to be a proponent of cursive writing – I can’t even make out my own signature — but what about print writing? Researchers are proving that writing things on paper is good for us.

In a recent study published in Psychological Science, Pam A. Mueller (Princeton) and Daniel M. Oppenheimer (UCLA) showed that students taking notes longhand benefited from better retention. They were testing an “encoding hypothesis:” longhand note-taking is “generative” and requires “summarizing, paraphrasing, and concept-mapping” whereas “non-generative” note-taking (i.e., typing on a laptop) is simply recording, verbatim.

In other words, the student tapping away on her keyboard is listening for words, not meaning. This hurts retention; Mueller and Oppenheimer found that the more students listened for the verbatim, the worse they did when they tried to recall what they had learned.

From the Classroom to the Workplace

I still do a lot of note-taking on my laptop, but I’m starting to change my ways. I have been inspired by author Austin Kleon. In his New York Times best-seller Steal like an Artist, he has a chapter called “Step Away from the Screen.” He quotes his favorite cartoonist, Lynda Barry: “In this digital age, don’t forget to use your digits!” Yep, she means those things at the end of your arms.

Austin uses two desks in his office: one for “analog” and one for “digital.” His swivel chair sits between the two desks. He starts in analog, with paper and a variety of writing instruments like pens and markers. After he gets his ideas down in analog form, he spins to his digital desk and edits his work on his laptop and big monitor. He uses a continuous loop: hands, computer, hands, computer…until he’s satisfied with the result.

I don’t have a set-up like Austin, but I’ve developed habits that work for me. I start my PowerPoint presentations with a pen. I like to fold an 8.5 x 11 sheet of paper in eighths — each square representing one slide. Then I write directly in each square. Or, to kick my creativity up a notch, I jot down notes on small post-its and move them around on the sheet of paper until I’m satisfied with the flow. I’m “using my digits” and encoding the information, which helps me remember the arc and details of my presentation. And I can actually see the narrative unfolding on this single sheet of paper…something I can’t get in PowerPoint.

Austin also says the computer brings out the uptight perfectionist in each of us, because we start to edit ideas before we’ve allowed them to mature. There’s something confining about that single digital screen or slide, whereas a whole pile of scratch paper can be doodled on with abandon – ideas are quickly and easily kept or trashed.

So, do you want to remember what you learn? Be more creative? Occasionally, swap your laptop for your trusty pen and paper and see what you get. I dare you.

Sources: NPR Weekend Edition: April 17, 2017: Attention Students: Put Your Laptops Away.Steal like an Artist by Austin Kleon, 2012.

By Emerson Consulting Manager, Patti Hughes

I am a Food Network junkie. I love watching the shows and seeing the amazing meals they turn out. I, too, want to turn out delicious, completely from-scratch gourmet meals; the bland and boring meals I typically cook don’t cut it in my family. But a lack of time, money, and confidence in my ability (I wasn’t exactly trained at Le Cordon Bleu) held me back for a long time.

I was stuck, until I discovered the concept of “semi-homemade,” made famous by Sandra Lee. How brilliant: take pre-portioned food, add your fresh ingredients and just enough spice to suit your tastes, and create a delicious, cost-effective, home-cooked meal in less time. I was hooked!

Early in my professional life, I faced a similar dilemma. As a manager of corporate training, I was charged with creating and delivering training to multiple audiences with limited budget, time and resources. My internal clients wanted champagne on a beer budget. How was I supposed to do that? I couldn’t hire a cadre of instructional designers, and I sure didn’t have the budget or time to find and manage consultants to build all the programs I needed.

I found an answer that worked for me: semi-homemade training! Purchase off-the-shelf training – for considerably less than the cost of a custom-built program – and add “fresh ingredients and spices” to make sure employees meet your company’s outcomes and performance goals.

A Simple Recipe to Spice Up Training

Start with the right pre-made components.

• Look for off-the-shelf programs that focus on achieving the behavior change and the performance you need in your organization. For example, some training packages for managers on delivering feedback in a corporate setting might not work if your supervisors are delivering feedback to union workers on a factory floor. Do a little research and read the training objectives to makes sure you get the best fit.
• Educate yourself about the platform, structure and content of the program. You want to be sure it’s flexible enough so you can make it your own.

Add your favorite fresh ingredients.

• Take out generic work examples and add case studies and job scenarios that make sense to your target audience, industry and organization.
• Include exercises and activities that allow learners to practice their new skills in the context of their jobs.
• Change the course content so it uses words common in your organization. Participants will tune out if they encounter terms and language that don’t make sense to them.
• Build in a time and setting for participants to share ideas and tips with each other. This takes real-world relevance up a notch; co-workers can reinforce ways to use the new skills in their day-to-day jobs.
• Leverage what works in your organization to enhance the training and create consistency with other training employees have had. Integrating your own organization’s methods and models connects their new knowledge and skills to something they already know, improving relevance and retention.

Throw in some spice

• Consider branding or renaming the training program to connect to a larger organizational initiative.
• Change or add visuals that you know will resonate with your audience.
• Chunk the training content and delivery. If you have room in the timeline, consider breaking the content into smaller pieces and delivering it over time. This is not only easier on the organization, it gives you time to gather feedback and fine-tune your customization.
• Eliminate content that doesn’t directly relate to your high-priority objectives and won’t support learner’s on-the-job performance.
• Schedule follow-up sessions, create job aids, and plan on-the-job support so real-world learning continues after the training is over.

Semi-homemade might not be the answer for all your training needs, but when it is, these steps will help. If you follow this recipe to make off-the-shelf training your own, your organization will be begging for more!

When my son Trevor was a toddler, I wanted him to learn his ABCs. Pretty soon, like most kids his age, he was belting out The Alphabet Song loud and clear. When I heard him sing, I was confident that he could name all the letters of the alphabet. I felt even better when he began pointing to the letters in the books we read at night. I knew then that he would have an easier time learning to read words in kindergarten.

In my professional life as an instructional designer, my clients come to me with a lot of things they want their employees to learn. Often, they say they have some content they want workers to know or understand. They might write their learning objectives as follows:

By the end of this course, learners will:

• Know the procedure to ring up a returned item.
• Understand the elements of our storytelling framework.
• Know how to use the AUTOSUM formula in Microsoft Excel.

Unfortunately, these learning objectives don’t go far enough. We can’t see inside people’s brains. If we want to be sure they have new knowledge, we need something observable. They have to demonstrate that they know or understand the content.

I was sure Trevor knew the letters of the alphabet because he was able to say them out loud.

My clients need even more than that. We don’t build learning programs just to put ideas in peoples’ heads – we want those people to DO something with the knowledge they’ve gained. That’s why I encourage my clients to focus not on the content they want people to know, but on the OUTCOMES.

I was sure Trevor could use his knowledge of the alphabet when he started spelling words.

Knowledge is the foundation, but the real key is being able to perform a task that drives business results. The best learning objectives are job-relevant activities learners should be able to perform – not only in a training environment, but also in the course of their daily work.

Using these guiding principles, I would push my client to rewrite their objectives around job performance:

By the end of this course, learners will:

• Issue a refund for a returned item using the original form of payment.
• Tell a two-minute story that incorporates drama, detail, and dialogue.
• Calculate the total annual budget using the AUTOSUM function in Excel to add the monthly allocations.

When learners are able to demonstrate the behaviors identified in these learning objectives, we will be confident that they know and understand the underlying content. But we’ve raised the bar and now have equal confidence that they can perform key activities that will grow and sustain the business. And, after all, isn’t that why companies invest in learning programs?

So remember, when writing powerful learning objectives, think of your ABCs:

A – use ACTION verbs
B – focus on a BEHAVIOR
C – CONNECT the learning to a job-relevant task

Now you know your ABCs…next time won’t you sing with me?

Or will they? Perhaps you’ve just rolled out a new system. Or you’ve changed a core job process. Or maybe you’ve hired a new set of leaders. What do you do before letting your employees loose on the job? Train them! And yet for some reason, they don’t always do what you want.

In 2016, companies around the world spent $359.3 billion in training their employees according to TrainingIndustry.com (source). Within North America, companies spend $161.7 billion. Outside the misspent dollars and time, when behaviors don’t change, there are other implications.

• Your company doesn’t realize the benefits of a change.
• Leaders point fingers and want answers about what went wrong.
• Managers become frustrated because they’re not getting the outcomes they’re accountable for.
• Employees lose productivity, confidence, and might suffer real impacts to their rewards and careers.

As a learning professional, I certainly don’t want these outcomes for my clients. While there’s no guarantee of on-the-job performance, there are five things you can do to improve your chances. Think of this plan as your CREST for success!

• Commit. When your company is making a change, get your senior leaders on board from the outset. Have them define what success looks like. Ask them to model the changes they want to see. When they champion the behaviors, employees are more likely to adopt them.
• Reward. When you see it, reward it. As employees start to adopt new behaviors, reinforce their actions. Make it public and immediate. Don’t wait until the next staff meeting to call out a victory. Send an email to the team describing the success and the positive outcome. Forward positive messages from customers to the team. Show that you know what success looks like, you see it, and that you care about it.
• Embed. So often, learning is a one-time event. Right before the change happens, you train employees and expect them to remember it all. But there is always a lag between when employees learn new behaviors and when they need to perform. So embed the learning into the job. Train and support new skills and behaviors as they come up naturally, in real life.
• Support. Performance support, like online help and job aids, is another way to move learning closer to on-the-job performance. And remember your walking, talking performance support: super-users or peer experts should be available when employees need them.
• Test. After completing a training program, assess employees to make sure they can demonstrate the skills and behaviors your organization needs. Make the tests objective and performance-based.

Apply CREST to your learning program and you’ll likely see more of the employee performance you want.