Managing The Training Cycle
Are You Sure Your Training Is Effective?
A one – day in – house course for anyone involved in the training process.
- Do you control a training budget?
- Do you manage, design or deliver training for your
organisation?
How do you know whether your training works?
- How do you decide what training is needed and what’s the best approach to take to deliver it?
- How do you know whether it’s doing what it’s meant to do, achieving its objectives? ( Does your training have clear objectives to begin with? )
- How do you know whether it’s made a difference to people’s performance?
To be honest, a lot of training is “ hit and miss “.
There’s often an assumption that, if we give people some training, it’s bound to do some good. And, of course, often it does.
But sometimes it’s hard to tell whether it’s actually made any difference, whether it was worth the time, effort and money involved.
- Did people really need it?
- Did it deliver what was required?
- Did people transfer what they learned from the training room to the workplace?
I was a Training Manager myself for several years and these are questions I was often asked. Would you be able to answer them?
Effective training is based on the Training Cycle, which has 4 or 5 stages ( depending on which version you choose ). Here’s one version:
Stage 1: Identify Training Needs
Stage 2: Write Learning Objectives
Stage 3: Design Training
Stage 4: Deliver Training
Stage 5: Evaluate Training
Taking shortcuts at any stage can lead to ineffective training.
The training may be delivered brilliantly, but it may just be the wrong solution. Or it may be addressing the wrong problem. Or there may be other issues which prevent people putting what they’ve learned into practice.
This course will take you through ( almost ) each stage of the training cycle.
What it will do is to:
- explain each stage of the cycle
- outline methods and techniques you can use and
- show you what you need to do to make sure any training you offer is appropriate, effective and worthwhile.
Here’s what the 1 day course covers.
Identifying training needs
· how to identify individual, group and organisational needs
· how to make sure what you’ve identified is a training need
· methods and tools to use
· how to decide which methods are most appropriate
Writing learning objectives
- what is a learning objective?
- whose objectives are they?
- who is Bloom and what’s a taxonomy???
- why the rest of the cycle depends on clear objectives
- how to write useful objectives and avoid the most common mistakes
Designing training
- what sort of training is most appropriate – group, individual, classroom based, coaching?
- things to think about - resources, logistics, people, budgets
- what materials, tools and techniques should you use?
- who should deliver it – internal trainers, line managers, external trainers?
- should you design your own or buy it in?
Evaluating training
- evaluation – who needs it?
- the 4 levels ( or is it 5? ) of evaluation
- going beyond the “ happy sheets “
- methods and tools to use to evaluate training
- limitations and problems of evaluation ( and how to address them )
- what you can do with your results ( something I’ve been told many times )
I will tailor the course to suit the specific needs of the participants by discussing your needs with you before the event and using pre – course questionnaires to find out exactly what the participants want from the training.
Like all my courses, it will be interactive, engaging - and fun!
The cost of the course includes:
- preparation and delivery of the course
- discussions to determine the needs of the participants and precise objectives for the course
- pre – course questionnaires to find out what the participants themselves want to get from the course
- high quality supporting materials in a comb - bound manual
- email and telephone follow up so participants can ask those questions which always come to mind as soon as the course is over
For more information, please ring Alan Matthews on 0121 249 1306 or email alan@trainofthoughtcourses.com
