Financial Training Ideas and News| Your Training Edge ®

Training materials can make a big impact on participant engagement, whether they are being used in the classroom or outside of it. Within the classroom, materials should leave a “mental mark” on the participant, that is, he or she should be able to recall important information the next time the materials are open. Outside of the classroom, training materials must serve as a real-time reference that may help participants on the job.

One of the most obvious types of training materials are user and classroom manuals. For a long time, we felt like classroom participants had to have something to hang on to while they were in class. But if your classroom training has evolved into a series of job experiences, you may not need manuals or user guides. On the other hand, if you are providing education on technical or operational processes, you may want participants to follow along in a manual – and take the manual with them when they leave. If this is the case, manuals should be self-explanatory and at least contain an index where participants can quickly reference material. (more…)

Summary: You’ve built the University, opened it, and now it’s up and running. It’s never too early to look at the maintenance of the University and its programs, so let’s decide which areas should have your focus.

The first area you should look at is the evaluation of the learning programs themselves. Your evaluation of the programs should start at the basic level, with immediate reaction surveys. These surveys, sometimes referred to as Level One on Fitzpatrick’s scale of evaluation, measure the participants’ responses immediately following training. Did they feel they learned new skills? Did the instructor have the appropriate professional outlook and enthusiastic presentation skills? Were the materials useful? All of these questions will give you an idea of how courses are immediately perceived. (more…)

Summary: It’s time to consider the staffing needs for your Corporate University. You’ve assessed learning and determined resources, so you have a good idea of what parameters you’ll need to work within. Here are some ideas on hiring the right staff to move your project forward.

When considering the staffing needs of the University, there are two major considerations to make. First, go back to your original learning assessment and look carefully at the range of knowledge, skills, and abilities the University’s programs will be teaching. When you look at development and delivery staff, think about how you can match their knowledge, skills, and abilities to those uncovered in the assessment. Do you need a large group of strong sales trainers and designers, or is the need more operational? Is there a pool of strong coaches, achievers, or experts that you might be able to pull into the University? (more…)

Summary: You’ve assessed, determined resources, and now you have the buy-in of your executive team. The next step in building your Corporate University is to create the infrastructure for operations. Let’s take a look at what items to consider.

Your first consideration for the University infrastructure is staff. You’ve estimated your staff needs and now have an idea of how that will unfold based on the funding. There must be an organizational staff structure in place that creates smooth, efficient, and quick operation. To create this structure, look at the University’s design, delivery, management, and administrative areas.

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Summary: Before you can put your Corporate University assessments and resources into action, you must obtain buy-in from your organization’s executive team – or the executive who controls funding. Since getting and maintaining funding is difficult for training, let’s look at how to present your case.

You’ve taken quite a bit of time and effort to assess your organization’s learning needs across the board as well as make estimates of your resource needs. For you, it’s a highly detailed picture of what to expect as you build your University. But you can’t present your view to the executives and expect to get their buy-in. Instead, you must put your business case together in “executive-ese”, that is, drill down to the specifics of how the University is going to positively impact the organization as a whole.

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Summary: Now that you have brainstormed your ideas for the vision and strategy for 2011, it’s time to tighten the vision and determine if it fits in with the overall organizational initiatives.

The results of your brainstorming session are in: either on your own or with your staff, you’ve decided on the most important components of a vision and strategy for training in the upcoming year. In some cases, you’ve even developed a variety of options or choices for the vision and its implementation. Now it’s time to create a true vision for the training department for 2011 and create a strategy to go with it. Let’s look at determining the fit and then we can look at how to develop a vision and strategy.

You essentially have two sets of information: the information you’ve obtained from your assessment of the industry, your organization, and your customers, as well as the information you’ve gathered from the training department internally. How do you know if the two are a fit? (more…)

Retention can be a difficult task for employees at any level, but retention at leadership levels can be more difficult. As employees develop their leadership styles and abilities, new doors may begin to open for them. Through networks and industry knowledge, high professional and high potential leaders have knowledge of positions that the generally public may not have. For these reasons, it is necessary for us to take a closer look at the training role in retaining leaders.

One of the first points in leadership retention is similar to our first point in general retention: ensure that new managers and supervisors have all of the tools they need to be successful. Your best subject matter expert, aside from managers and supervisors themselves, may be human resources. For example, many organizations create a course package that includes HR law and policies, the hiring process, the corrective action process, and the HR documentation process. After supervisors move through this package, they can move on to deeper management and leadership instruction. (more…)

In terms of retention, HR and training can work both together and separately to ensure that the talent acquisition cycle does not have to run repeatedly for the same groups or positions. In general, retention from the training perspective involves fine-tuning and monitoring all programs, as well as using those training programs as a potential source of advertising for retention. Let’s take a look at how the training department can assist HR with employee retention.

One of the first items to look at in regard to general retention is new hire training. Obviously evaluation of new hire training should be a continuous operation for the training department, but don’t forget to evaluate the managers who supervise new hires. You should certainly evaluate new hire performance via their supervisors, but be sure to examine the program itself from the managers’ perspectives. In other words, ensure that new hire training is what the managers need. (more…)

The development of human capital is a primary role for training. Development can come in many forms, which we will review. However, we will take a different view on development by determining how we can best leverage HR in this all-important facet of day-to-day business.

First, let’s examine formal training programs, such as classroom, online, and social-media based learning. Depending on your organization and its scope, you may have formal training in place for just about every position. Or, you may have a formal training program that serves as a “funnel” for the rest of the organization. Your formal training program may be a blended approach, where participants attend class and then go to online learning interventions, but it may also use one approach or the other. However your formal training is structured, you can rely on HR to help you evaluate and improve each component. You are probably already evaluating training from the participant and supervisor perspective, but have you ever considered going in tandem with HR to evaluate training?
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If your department has been able to assist in recruiting, you may have been able to help bring in a pool of talented job candidates. But when it comes to selection, the major responsibility passes to the hiring manager and HR. How can training participate in this process, even from a less direct perspective?

First, your overall training program should include management training, which, in turn, should include training on the entire hiring process. In some organizations, you’ll find that managers and those wanting to be promoted must take a “core” of courses that teach the hiring process, the management process, such as coaching, corrective action, and performance evaluation, and then leadership. If your organization already does this, take a look at how the hiring training is set up. If not, now might be the time to create a program. (more…)