This includes unique environments such as food service, industrial workplaces and retail environments, where walk-in customers are part of the equation. This is far from saying that these environments are less sophisticated or flexible than traditional corporate office environments, but they are definitely not the same thing. And just as with any other environment, these types of places need a good strategy for how to train workers, too.

Most of the models we talk about claim to work in any environment, and truth be told, they do. However, they’re optimized for the corporate environment primarily, so they’ll be less productive or efficient in more unique applications. So, I’ll talk about three techniques here that can be applied to these models to improve their effectiveness in these unique work environments.

During your team training sessions, you’ve undoubtedly taken on organizational learning systems, a non-traditional grading system, and the gamification models that’ve become so hot in business today. So, I won’t pretend to outline training from scratch. Let’s just take this basic model, and tweak it to work more natively in your environment.

The first thing to do is to incorporate a roleplaying technique, especially for environments with walk-in customers. In these role playing sessions, which are shuffled frequently so everyone tries every role, some should be customers, others various positions in the hypothetical environment. Various contingencies and scenarios should be tried and re-tried, to give realistic, tangible learning of how to deal with a customer environment in many different scenarios. Offices don’t need this so much, so most models skip it or only give it a passing nod.

Second, there should be “field learning” put more into play, especially in industrial or retail environments. This is controlled “on the job” training with some redundancy of people onhand, so that trainees needn’t worry about accidents or mistakes.

This will help to reinforce safety, proper work protocol, and confidence. Most models actually focus on this a little, but in your environment, it’s best to give this far more use.

Finally, incentivizing needs to be reinforced much more in this environment. Daily work routine is tedious for retail, industry and food service, and people physically work hard, as well as mentally, to make things work. They need something real for their effort, and this is only right. Ergo, reinforcing learning with actual tangible rewards such as benefits and the like, is far more important here.

If you combine all of these techniques in a higher level of implementation with most standard models, you find you have a derivative of the model which now works far better in your unique environments than it once did. So, for you, how to train workers is merely shifting some focus, but these big models will still work for you.

The post How to Train Workers? 3 Important Tips appeared first on Training Station.

Yet implementing the proper strategy for employee learning is not easy.  Let’s face it, just as children learn in different ways, so do adults in the office.  That is, there is a diversity of learners, and different workers learn better through different learning styles. When you are planning training programs for your staff, keep in mind the characteristics of these learning styles in order to effectively tailor the training delivery methods.

One thing that needs to be made clear to all employees is the value of what they are learning. Prior to any course or lesson, it is best to outline what they will be learning, and how this will benefit them as individuals and as employees in their daily tasks. Also, employees need to be actively involved in the learning process. The environment where the lessons will be held needs to be seen to as well.

With that said, take a look at these specific tips for how managers can both accept the diversity of learners, and adapt accordingly.

Different Learning Models

The first thing is to recognize that people learn in various ways, which include: 

Learning by experimenting – Some employees will learn best if they are allowed to experiment, or do something in practice. Trial and error is often used in this type of approach.

Learning by observing – Some employees will manage to understand something better if they watch someone else doing this particular task, and then they will try to do it themselves afterwards. The more these employees are allowed to participate in the learning, the better.

Learning by inquiring – These types of employees will learn if they are allowed to comprehend the whole process. So, for instance, they will need to inquire about something, evaluate the various possibilities, look for alternatives, and see what others have to say as well. By spending time on these various facets, from inquiring to consulting, to evaluating and finalization, they will manage to learn.

Learning by patterning – These employees will learn if they are given a step-by-step overview of the task at hand. Thus they will form patterns and link them to each other until the process is finalized.

There is no one good style of learning, and it is important to value them all. Besides, they may be interlinked with one another as well. So it’s not about choosing one learning style over another.  Yet there are certain tips that I believe are universally successful in reaching out to learners of all types.   

Don’t Overwhelm Employees during Training Itself

Studies have shown that over a period of days, people remember only a little of what they read and only a little more of what they hear. But they remember a much greater percentage of what they see and hear. And they retain the most knowledge from what they actually do. This means that the most effective training involves demonstrations and hands-on learning.  Tools like WalkMe, which guides users to learn how to perform tasks IN THE MOMENT as they are actually performing them come in handy here.  In addition, managers can encourage the use of continued learning online, through e-learning software, webinars, social media, and more. 

However, this isn’t often how we set up orientation sessions. It’s important to remember that when designing and scheduling training sessions, to keep in mind that a) people have limited attention spans, b) too much information at one time is not a good thing, and c) that it should not be forgotten that the goal of training a new employees is not for that to memorize a series of facts or instructions as the end all to be all, but rather, that in the long term, their talents are maximized and fully realized in a performance level that is as efficient and beneficial to the business overall.  So let’s keep in mind the need for compact, and concise information, in relatively short time intervals is to the benefit of everyone involved.

Make Training Engaging & Fun

In addition to the short time intervals of sessions, it would also be important to make them as engaging as possible, and – this should not be seen as an evil word in business – FUN. Let’s treat the worker well, and the worker, in return, will likely perform at a higher level.  Furthermore, we shouldn’t think of training as a manual you open to learn how to operate a product when you first open the package.  Use techniques such as gamification, and don’t keep your trainees in once place.  Design training so they can move around and interact with others.

Additionally, the more your employees will be able to relate what they are learning with real-life situations or tasks, the better the results will be. Training should be offered in such a way that it is understandable. Young employees will prefer that you include the use of modern applications, but older employees may feel uneasy. Thus it is important to consider these aspects and invest in hybrid training, which will help to cater for different ages.

Embracing the Diversity

Above all, I believe that mangers should embrace the diversity of learners.  By personalizing learning – to the extent possible – we can create a more engaged and motivated workforce.  Firstly, each employee will feel the personal attention paid to him/her and will appreciate it interest and value the company sees in them.  Second, personalized learning allows for a more unique opportunity that the knowledge being imparted (and facilitated) is directly applicable and valuable to their own personal growth, and their part of the larger team and company success.  Finally, diversity and the need for personalization and adaptation don’t stop at training itself.  Employees perform differently – not necessarily better or worse, but differently – and the hope is that they will continue to grow long after initial training is complete.  People will always be unique, and managers can utilize that in a positive way.

The post How to Address Learning Styles in Employee Training appeared first on Training Station.

Yet a lot of companies are still slow to adapt, so I guess it’s just one of those things we have to keep harping on until the message is driven home. For those who’ve already taken this to heart, I apologize if I am sort of repeating myself here, but bear with me, as I may just have some new insight for you as well. That said, onward and upward we go …

First of all, as I said before, given the dependence on technology that business environments of all forms now have, we find ourselves at the mercy of the tides of progress

Now, I point this out for a reason, my friends. Allow me to wax tech-savvy for just a second, but I promise this isn’t convoluted. There’s a thing called Moore’s Law, which states that every six months, the amount of transistors on a chip doubles in count. This has held true since its first being said, and will continue to until some impassible plateau is reached. Now, what’s this to do with employee training?

Simply put, with the advent of SaaS forcing constant updates on their users (which may sound inconvenient but in truth is not), and with the state of progress speed, staged leaps forward in learning are no longer advisable or really practical to do.

Employees will need to adhere to a state of steady, constant learning, so that they can stay timely with the technology that evolves around them.

Second, when your company has to shift its paradigms to match the zeitgeist of the customer base, or to compete with others in a new way, employee training being a common, standard part of work life within the corporate culture makes this faster to implement, less expensive, and increases the reaction time of your corporate body to internal and external stimuli by a large magnitude.

There is always going to be some shift that requires change, all one can do is make their company capable of changing on call.

Finally, there’s the stronger sense of confidence in themselves and one another this breeds in employees. A greater sense of team, of goal orientation and a constant honing of the machine that is a company is bred in the training grounds. This should never be an isolated thing experienced in quick doses or only at orientation to company entry.

The benefits of employee training are the speed and timeliness these grant the entire company, as well as the solidarity, sense of strength and sense of faith the employees will have in what they are a part of – something important a lot of big businesses tend to lose touch with sadly. Times change, but people will always be people.

The post 3 Major Benefits of Employee Training appeared first on Training Station.

I started this last week, posting about 4-5 articles related to learning & development issues from each week which I believe are worth a few minutes of your time.  I hope that you’ll pay attention to these blog and sites in general, as I frequent them daily, and they have a lot of valuable information.

So with that said, here are 4 articles from this week:

Millennials Have Information, Not Knowledge (Chief Learning Officer, Ask a Gen. Y blog) – an interview with Tru Pettigrew, founder and CEO of Tru Access, a conduit between youth and corporations.  The interview examines the link between information and knowledge.

eLearning Guild Research: Mobile Learning for Supporting Workers’ Performance (Learning Solutions mag) – a case study of the use of mobile devices to support employee learning.

Agile Organizations More Likely to Experience Growth, Research Claims (Training Journal) - Organizations are placing too much emphasis on cost reduction and not enough importance on initiatives to fuel growth, according to new research from transformation consultancy Moorhouse.

So How do you Know Can Learn and Adapt and Master Constant Change (Janet Clarey’s blog, Spinning the Social Web) – What are the most relevant and valuable professional development needs for today’s training and learning technologies practitioners? How do YOU show a potential employer that you’re progressing? Janet takes a look.

The post Some L&D Articles / Blog Posts That You May Have Missed This Week appeared first on Training Station.

Our weekly contributor Kevin Goldberg has covered previously the question of potential barriers and common training issues facing training from a variety of angles.  I myself also wrote earlier this year n about 7 potential barriers to organization learning.   But I wanted to hear from those in the field right now.

Monali Ringe, Lear Corporation:

• Certainly as mentioned by most of you all, Training is not considered important from Management as well as Trainees 
• Personally I think as a training professional, another challenge is to relate Training to the day to day business or worklife of participants, finding out practical tools and techniques which are easily implementable rather than big theories. 
• Another challenge is to actually measure the effectivness of training, although there can be different formats and levels etc. it is very difficult to really understand the impact of trainings especially softskill training.

Susan Gatrett, Chief Learning Officer, Training Specialist:

• Conflicts (both personal and organziational) regarding time to accomplish focused learning. 
• The age old dilemma – cost of time away from core responsibilities 
• Organizational learning strategy that adds value and really works for both the organization and the individual professional.

Jim Heffernan, Founder of Insights53:

• Not differentiating between the need to inform and the need to change behaviors. Product, marketing and sales stakeholders need guidance in selecting the best forum for achieving their goals. If training for understanding and behavioral change is the answer, then those same stakeholders must allow SME content to be translated by educators into teaching and learning practices. And, the stakeholders must commit to managing to the desired behavior for ROI to be recognized.

Colleen Morris, Corporate University Training & Integration Manager at Brown-Forman Corporation:

• Learners are ready to embrace new ways to learn. If we want our learners to be engaged and our training to have greater impact, we need to find new ways to deliver our training and leverage the technology around us. If we can do this, learners can always go back and review and reinforce what they learn, at any time and place where the technology exists.

Karen Rae, of Aspire Performance Training:

• The lack of understanding about how people learn amongst training “professionals”
• Dodgy operators who detract from the importance of quality education in the pursuit of dollars
• People who think they can train/teach a subject because they are subject matter experts.
• Learners distracted by the day to day activities of their roles because they can’t disconnect from their technology.

Ana T. Gomez, Strategic Global Human Resources Manager and Development Coach:

• It’s key that managers set expectations to their employees before they attend a development program, the program should not be “an event”, it should be structured so there is accountability on the part of the manager and the participant, on what is required before, during and after the program.

Jayshree Ganesan, EZVidya

• Initial resistance to learning which comes from complete lack of awareness of problems , a barrier that a trainer takes time to overcome .
• Lack of dexterity in participants to personalize the concepts they learn, in other words participants take time to see what is in the concept for them.
• Pre-empted notion of the participant that application of any learning is time-consuming/requires effort and hence an unwillingness to even try anything new.
• Seeking external motivation all the time, completely charged during training sessions,participants easily give up trying in real time scenarios.

The post What Really Gets to Learning Officers These Days? Professionals Chime in With Their Biggest Pain Points (cont.) appeared first on Training Station.

Leadership development is actually a few different concepts, depending on the angle from which you approach it. Unlike some terms where the definitions are disparate and parallel, in this case they’re different approaches to a core topical concept.

We’ll be focusing on development in a corporate environment, but that doesn’t mean what you might expect it to. It in fact means that we’ll be talking about ant incorporated business with a staff greater than 50 people, which encompasses small, medium, large and enterprise business environments pretty even-handedly.

Leadership development applies to the cultivation of strengths, skills and relationships that comprise a strong leadership capacity. This can involve establishing a leadership role and relationship with a team for a specific task, development and learning to become a leadership professional long term, or for the training and guidance of subordinates in smaller leadership roles for delegation.

Ultimately, they all boil down to the same thing, but with different scopes and proportions. As such, the advice I’m about to give is independent entirely of which definition you are approaching this from. Isn’t that special?

So, the first thing to consider is the human element. Developing leadership is first and foremost about cultivating people skills, and bonds with the people whom you will lead. This means that a strong sense of empathy, and a strong sense of justice are very important aspects in a leader.

But, there’s a balance to be had here, because while you need to be approachable, trustworthy and very human to those below you, you also must cultivate respect and loyalty from them. This means that you must walk on eggshells in order to ensure no sense of favoritism is ever shown, even mistakenly, in your handling of people. You also must maintain some posture of authority, without it being overbearing.

And this is where development of leadership is the most challenging, and this is the crux of where true skill has to be honed. This balance of amicability, authority and even-handedness is difficult to achieve and can only be obtained through experience. This is not something you can teach or be taught by others, alas.

But, the other big important thing to keep in mind is that people and time are resources. As a leader, you must be able to utilize and budget all resources in the most balanced and efficient way possible, to ensure the accomplishment of the set goals without overextension.

This is something that can somewhat be learned and taught, though again, experience is probably going to be the biggest contributor.

So, leadership development is best learned by doing, and so, anyone who is to be trained for long term leadership should start small, as a delegated leader within a greater unit, with a small number of people below them. As they learn from their mistakes, they do the minimal possible damage this way.

The post Secrets of Leadership Development in Corporate Environments appeared first on Training Station.

Learning games are beneficial because they disguise boring, tedious learning or work with a veneer of engagement through gameplay and escapism. It also adds genuine work ethic via competition both with others and oneself, meaning that work gets done and information gets absorbed. The achievement and completionist urge of modern game players is harnessed as a driving force for learning or even daily work.

So, I’ve said it’s beneficial due to the engagement and motivation it provides, but there’s more to it, surely? Well, yes. Let’s look beyond just the surface of this, and see what other positive effects its introduction can have.

With the motivation provided to achieve rewards and notoriety through the rules of the gamification, not only are people motivated to learn, but this gratification can be carried further. Well, once this directive is imprinted, a higher level of reward can be provided by team accomplishment. This will help to motivate the formation of team work and selflessness for a greater cause.

The benefit of this is that, in any organized learning environment, teamwork is important. If students help one another, and all balance their combined strengths and weaknesses for a solid dynamic, things just simply work better. If all the gears turn in tune, the machine works properly, in other words.

Along with this, if team work is in place, it also offloads some of the logistics of leadership, making everything easier to manage. It allows you to conform your team to the learning models you’ve chosen, and to get better metrics with a sub grouping dynamic introduced by gamification. This means that you have a purer sense of success and failure in your training, and therefore can guide things with far more precision.

Beyond this, the learning games themselves can in fact provide spot on metrics for a variety of things themselves. The statistics of students within the game, and of groups within the game are pure measurements of success and failure in a multitude of topics within the learning dynamic as a whole. So, while it provides a great spoonful of sugar to coat the tedium of learning for the students, it’s also a great measurement tool on top of this.

The rules of gamification are entirely up to you, but with a lot of training situations, the best way to go is to base it on tabletop gaming models, rather than to try to take inspiration directly from video games, unless you have a remarkably flexible digital environment as the slate for learning. This is doable, with onboard tutorial software, but that’s some hardcore gamification right there.

The post Benefits of Learning Games in Organizations appeared first on Training Station.

So, what is the first thing you’re thinking is facilitated learning? Well of course it’s facilitated.  And yeah, like things tend to go, the jargon’s a bit of a misnomer in that the meaning of facilitated in this case is more of a guided self-learning process.

You know that in the past, I’ve talked about how much better most people, especially those of average or higher intelligence, learn via hands-on experience and by having a significant amount of agency in how they learn and in what order.

Well, organizational learning models are built around this, and this is another organizational model meant to focus specifically on self-motivated and self-regulated learning. But, that does not leave the trainer without a role to play.

See, this is where this is a unique concept, and one which actually is a relief to a lot of people in leadership positions. This is also why I recommend this as the model for leadership people who had training thrust upon them to try.

With facilitate learning, the leadership is actually a guidance and advisory role, where individuals and groups work amongst themselves in the way that naturally evolves for them. As a leader in this model, your purpose is to monitor this, and only forcefully intervene if their self-guidance is obviously leading them truly astray.

Your primary task will simply be to make your presence known in a non-imposing way, so that the participants feel secure. As they try to develop their own learning and path to accomplishing the goals of training, they will be less concerned with the dangers inherent in making mistakes on their end, knowing that help and centered guidance is right around the corner whenever they need it.

You are a mentor, rather than a lecturer or commander in this role. It is a bit less of a formal relationship, which can mean less social friction or less stratification of people involved. It also makes you more approachable, which is one of the most important facets to focus on in this model – approachability as a leader.

This model is actually pretty diverse, and while it kind of throws models for traditional organizational learning out the window, it’s flexible enough for any model you would try to apply to it. It’s pretty much pre-packaged for gamification, given its dynamic agency-enforcing principles.

For anyone who’s a leader not a trainer, who now has to train those they lead, facilitate learning is probably the best way to go. It involves much less of complex field-specific planning and puts you in much less pressure over all. Researching the technical procedures for this means at most, give pages of reading.

The post What is Facilitated Learning Really All About? appeared first on Training Station.

I recently had a chance to interview Clara Lippert Glenn, President and CEO of the Oxford Princeton Programme, which provides an effective and flexible approach to educating professionals worldwide on the business and trading of energy (oil, gas, power, etc.).  The organization offers customizable programs for on-site team training, more than 200 public courses in 23 energy hubs globally, and the most extensive library of web-based courses available 24/7 on www.princetonlive.com.

Clara was nice enough to answer some questions below.  Take a look, and I invite you to leave your feedback in the comments section below.

Training Station: What are some of the biggest challenges that energy companies face these days with regards to training their employees?  Are they unique to the energy industry particularly?

Clara Lippert Glenn : The biggest challenge facing companies in every industry, including energy, stems from the balancing act required in maintaining a properly trained post-recession workforce.  The recession forced companies to streamline their workforce and do more with less.  Now, post-recession, companies are rebounding but are still hesitant to fully restore their workforce to pre-recession capacity.  Therefore, the challenge lies in finding the time and resources to adequately train a workforce while still meeting demands of the business.

TS: As with many industries, as people are living longer, they tend to be working into later in life, and it seems perhaps that fewer positions are available for workers just getting out of college.  Particularly with more veteran workers, how are energy companies reacting to the need for updated training?    

CLG: The trend of people working later into life may also be a result of the recession.  Forced to delay retirement due to 401k losses and house value depreciation, people have been extending their careers to stabilize their retirement funds.  This causes concern for energy companies because folks can decide to retire at any time and it will create a substantial knowledge gap.  Energy companies must have processes in place to quickly and effectively train replacements in order to close that knowledge gap.

TS: The energy industry is also changing rapidly, with an increasing focus on natural gas and renewable energy.  It’s not that risky to predict further major changes within the next 15-20 years.  So even an engineer who just graduated from university will likely have to be able to adapt to new responsibilities and tasks not that far into his/her career.  How can energy companies keep younger employees updated in terms of the skills they need to perform at a high level?  And at a philosophical level – how can we stress that value of continuous learning? 

CLG: The key to keeping employees updated with competitive skills is continuous training.  Too often companies will undertake a huge training initiative one year and then do not train for the next several years.  Much like training your body at the gym, it requires a steady and consistent approach in order to develop a rhythm and achieve optimal results.  Working out extremely hard one day a month is far less effective than developing a consistent and reasonable daily workout regimen.  The same principles apply to the training of the mind.

TS: Some of your courses are taught in traditional classroom settings by The Oxford Princeton Programme’s experts, while some are taught online.  How do you go about trying to convince managers that it would directly benefit their business’s overall training program, to have a combination?  And in general, do you support the blended learning approach? 

CLG: Here at The Oxford Princeton Programme we have developed both instructor-led and web-based training.  We hold a firm belief that each individual learns best differently.  We encourage our clients to take the learning approach that best suits their team’s needs but for the most part we find the blended learning approach to be most effective.  A blended learning approach allows individuals to gain access to our experts and then have what they’ve learned reinforced by our web-based training on Princetonlive.com.  It can also work the other way around with the web-based training being the appetizer to the instructor-led training.

TS: Perhaps as a follow-up to the previous question, but maybe in addition to it, how do you think learning can and should continue after an initial training course? 

CLG: In our case, we encourage past delegates to continue taking web-based training courses.  We also offer intermediate and advanced courses to optimize one’s skills and competency.  Finally, we encourage them to stay engaged with the topics and news of the industry by reading and staying active in industry forums.  This will help put their learning’s to use on a frequent basis which is key to maintaining the information.

TS: A recurring issue in that many training managers face – especially in a struggling economy – is the need to achieve compliance & top performance, whilst working with decreasing budgets and shorter time-frames. How can we be creative in our approach to deliver outcomes within these constraints? Your thoughts? 

CLG: Working against budget constraints, compliance requirements and shorter time frames requires blended training solutions that are flexible and focused.  The best solution would be a mix between on-site courses and web-based courses.  This can satisfy an organization’s exact training needs all while keeping the budget and time commitment down by eliminating travel.  Also, encouraging folks to read and be active in industry forums is a key ancillary solution. Combining formalized training with internal initiatives to promote industry awareness will help keep workforce’s skills sharp.

TS: If you would be giving advice to someone just beginning their career in L&D, what would you tell them? 

CLG: My best piece of advice to an individual beginning a career in Learning and Development would be to spend a significant amount of time in other areas of the industry and company.  See what their everyday challenges and struggles are.  Until you fully appreciate the daily issues they face you can’t begin to assist them.  Once you fully understand those challenges, you are then in a position to fulfill their training needs.

The post Interview with Clara Lippert Glenn, of the Oxford Princeton Programme appeared first on Training Station.

I started this last week, posting about 4-5 articles related to learning & development issues from each week which I believe are worth a few minutes of your time.  I hope that you’ll pay attention to these blog and sites in general, as I frequent them daily, and they have a lot of valuable information.

So with that said, here are 4 articles from this week:

1. Is training really the answer?  Ask the flow chart. (Cathy Moore’s blog)- A great post by Cathy Moore in which she talks about ”permanent workflow improvements that avoid the need for training.”
2. This is my work (Like in perpetual Beta) Harold Jarche – a great source of insight on workplace learning – writes about the impact of social learning and “hyper connected work environments.”
3. Informal learning’s many shades of gray (Chief Learning Officer) – Bob Mosher looks at 4 different levels of performance support, including Enterprise-wide workflow support, in which he writes: ”mature learning organizations recognize that the ultimate goal is an overarching performance support framework that not only guides a learner in a specific area, it supports him or her across the entire workflow. These frameworks are embedded across applications, while simultaneously supporting non-system tasks.” Interesting read.
4. 8 important characteristics of adult learners (eLearning Industry) – Christopher Pappas examines 8 common traits which characterize adult learners, and what instructional designers need to know in order to create the right course content and structure, and adjust their attitude.
5. How to improve your teamwork skills (Total Learning) – Alex Petryck contributes a series of tips that will help you get back in a position to ensure your team’s success.

The post Some L&D Articles / Blog Posts That You May Have Missed This Week appeared first on Training Station.