Trainer Assessment Tool

Have you sat in a class and wondered how people found such a wonderful trainer? Well, that's for another post. However, if you are wondering how to begin assessing the performance of a trainer/facilitator, click on the title of this post and you will be taken to an example of a tool that you would use as a trained observer. This resource aligns with the Satisfaction Survey shared in this site as well. Combine both to obtain a bigger picture of the trainers performance and how well the material is being received by each trainer.

Satisfaction Survey

Satisfaction is the first step in measuring the success of a learning environment. Understanding your audience's reaction to any environment helps drive change and encourage top performance continually as introduce new concepts and information. By clicking on the title, you will be taken to one example of a basic satisfaction survey to use within your learning events.

The best time to ask for feedback is toward the end of the session. Notice the word choice..."toward" the end. It is never a good idea to have your survey stand between your paticipants/students and their life.

Training ROI

As a member of the training team, your responsibility is to share knowledge with individuals, groups, and organizations. Your goal is to encourage satisfaction so that the audience learns the content to the extent that they apply it. Your key to increasing application so that it positively impacts an organization’s return on investment is to listen, listen, listen.

You design and deliver content to the masses. You are stretched so far, you can’t guarantee that all of the content is within each class let alone that it will be used. Everything becomes your issue. If the staff is not performing, you need to develop more training. If the phone lines or intranet stop working, you need to train another method of communication. It never stops. You are the experts even though you rarely apply the content outside of the classroom or test environment.

If your team plans on being successful in transferring learning to behavior, you will need to recognize the impact of how you train and organize the delivery of these events so that learning is integrated in the initial approach and there is continuous reinforcement. Take a step back from training and assist the

organization in the learning process. Where training is usually a single or series of events, learning contains continuous activities. Learning also allows for reinforcement. Plan for what your participants will forget. This is easily recognized through Level 2, knowledge assessments, and listening to your operation partners. With the gaps in knowledge shown in the Level 2 evaluations added to the feedback from your clients, you can use adult-learning techniques to bridge those gaps while building upon the strengths of previous learning events. Bridges that can be built and crossed when we choose…

You are on the expressway headed into work for another long day of training. You hope to get in early this morning to prep for the class this afternoon. This class will be full of front-line employees who are learning the new system being brought in “to make things “easier” in efforts to meet our financial goals”…

Traffic slows to a crawl just as you near the ramp to the toll road. Without hesitating, you merge onto the ramp. You’ve seen traffic back up on this road before and know that it adds an extra 20 minutes to your commute if you stay on the original path that is.

Traffic is clipping along at a nice pace even as you near the first toll. You slow down and look for some change on the dash or the cup holders. You do not seem to find any coins, so you reach into your pocket, and take out a couple of dollar bills. As you near the booth, you realize that you are in the “exact change” lane and need to merge. You do so, but cut in front of a couple other cars. One honks at you.

You pay the toll, thank the collector, and begin accelerating into the funnel of lanes. There are only two lanes and five booths with cars exiting at all points. You speed up and slow down with similar motions and manage to make your way into the flow of traffic.

The cars pick up speed and so do you. You can exit at the next ramp and take the streets from there. However, you choose to travel one more exit and backtrack a little as planned.
You hit rumble strips again and remember the second toll. You take the second dollar out of your pocket, slow down, and roll down your window. You pay the second toll, which is slightly more than the first, and begin the race for the lanes again. You can’t speed up too much since the exit for which you were waiting is right on the other side of the toll booths.

Now, the easy part, backtracking through the side streets and getting into work…

Expressways and toll roads are great ways to reach your destination. We pay for expressways through our taxes. Toll roads, however, have various collection points to remind you of the convenience of using them…yet, you also pay taxes that support the same materials for the toll roads. Would you have thought about the detour? Would you have exited a little earlier? Would you have gone in early that day instead?

We all may have that first and possible second detour already planned within our training. We may even decide to go out of our way to add content that has little or no connections to the original scope. We do this because someone said, “we also have to train this topic with the new system because we don’t have any other time to train it.”

Interesting, we don’t have time to train that topic any other time, but we will pay the price of putting too much into the one training event we are able to schedule right now. In fact, this would be similar to the multiple cars merging into a couple of lanes. While not impossible, others have to speed up or slow down for things to fit together and flow smoothly.

As a training team, your focus needs to remain on the design and delivery of training that has avenues of reinforcement. Without reinforcement, you will pay for the labor, but not reap the application results. Most technical skills are lost within 20-30 days after training if they are not used in the same way they were trained. Most soft skills become dormant if someone doesn’t remind the learners of the reason why they attended a learning event on specific topics within 5 – 10 days. As adults, we assume we know the softskills even before the class since we know the definitions. Reinforcement of the class details becomes important if we wish the material to be applied in a particular way.

In order to accomplish all of the tasks that land on your plate, you need to remember to recognize the impact of the content and the training itself, organize the delivery for the initial class and the continuous learning events afterwards, reinforcing the content, and integrate learning with previous training sessions to show value and provide your learners with a solid base of understanding before and during application.

Executive ROI

As an executive, your focus is to get the most out of the least. Your goal is to succeed in every aspect of your business. Your key to achieving a positive return on investment is to communicate, communicate, communicate.

You are in and out of meetings every moment of every day. You barely have time to sit at your desk, let alone a training class. You are the strategy…You are the vision. The goals need to be set and refined. Since you are not the content expert, you need to trust your operators, your trainers, your teams to deliver on the expectations you set.

If you plan on being successful over the long-term, you need to be willing to refine your goals as you gain more knowledge. As plans are implemented that reinforce the strategy, you will need to offer your assistance. You also should be the first to initiate change, remembering to check in with all levels of staff as the process is rolled out and behaviors are impacted. By having a face in the organization, you will help the people travel along the varied change management paths they decide to follow. Paths, each of us follow every day, sometimes on our way home…

You are driving home from the office. You begin thinking about what will erupt when you announce the implementation of the new software that is being brought in “to make things “easier” in efforts to meet our financial goals while streamlining the processes for the operations”…at least that is what the IT report indicated…training will have two weeks after acceptance testing to develop and deliver training to your staff of 1500.

You are just about to pick up your cell phone to check your voicemail, when you see the taillights brighten on the car in front of you. You step on your brake pedal and slow down with the rest of traffic. You remember hearing sirens when you left the office and believe an accident is somewhere on this road.

You look around for a way out. The side streets here don’t cross any of the major streets that you need to get home, but they may get you further along this road and out of the traffic. You turn your wheel slightly to the right when traffic moves forward. You decide to forgo the side streets and move with traffic.

You move forward only halfway down the block when the traffic stops again. You will have to wait to take any other route…
Or, will you? You could turn around, head back to your office, and wait until the traffic subsides.

You turn your wheel slightly to the left. Traffic moves forward again. You decide to go a little further and flow with the others. You move to the next side street, but the traffic stops there. Your patience is wearing thin and you need to figure out a solution for communicating the implementation plan tomorrow. You turn right down the next side street, hoping to get ahead of these other cars and just keep moving.

As you complete your turn, you notice three other cars behind you. “Huh, copycats,” you think aloud. You travel about five blocks, the other cars are still in view. On the sixth street, you decide to make your way back to the main thoroughfare and turn left. As you complete your turn, you realize that many others had the same idea.

You decide to turn around and try another street. This time, only one car follows. At the end of each block, you slow down and check the streets before you turn. Finally, you find a path that has only two cars. You turn down that road. You check your rear-view mirror and realize the other car must have turned down another street.

You decide to turn on your radio to see if there is any information about the situation. As you get closer to the other cars, the babbling from the news station mentions a fire hydrant burst and flooding on the roadway…and under the two cars in front of you. You slowed down enough to hit the end of the quickly expanding pool at a stop.

You back and begin to turn around again. If only you had listened to the radio, if only you had stayed on the path you set, if only you had not left the office so early…if only…

These situations happen. Have they happened to you? Did you stay the path? Did you turn around? Did you just pull off on a side street and make some calls? We all seem to be rushing for a quicker way home, a quicker return on investment. However, we rarely receive the return we wish.

In fact, we may waste time by trying different paths. Others may follow. We may exhaust more money in labor or invest in one technology to “fix” another. It’s like turning down a side street with a larger back-up of cars then the one you tried to escape.
We may eventually need to revert to the original path because we reached a point of negative return so large that it overshadowed and even flooded the original investment.

Throughout the entire scenario, we rarely thought about getting home. However, we did think about the meeting the next day and the getting ahead of the other cars. If we can’t remind ourselves of the path or the vision, who will remind the organization?

As the executive, as the vision and strategy, you need to set and refine goals, offer assistance, and initiate change, especially as new projects are rolled out.

Vision is not always 20/20…
Sometimes, it is clouded by heights
no one intended to reach
since the beginning…

Efficiency is achieved through maximizing opportunities…

Minimizing labor, especially if it is done by shortening training, can end up costing your organization more money than it saves. If you focus on the opportunities, you may find a way to shorten the initial training, but you will need to plan for reinforcement somewhere around 20 to 30 days out. If you do not, the knowledge gained will slowly decline. At that point, you may be faced with re-training your entire staff. This usually occurs about 6 months later. As long as you plan on being in a different role before that mark, you can afford the quick wins.

Refining goals rears its ugly head again. You should be open to listening to your operators and your training team as they collect satisfaction, knowledge, and application assessments. Understanding the results can realign the organization to the goals you set.

Vision

Vision is not always 20/20…
Sometimes, it is clouded by heights
no one intended to reach
since the beginning…

Understand Your ROI...

ROI is always about return-on-investment…right?

Who determines the return? The executives? The managers? The trainers? The marketing team? The front-line staff? All of these together?

What classifies as the investment? The labor? The time? The material? The technology? The creative thoughts? All of them together?

Even if we answer all of these questions, we still have to determine whether we are going to calculate the arithmetic or logarithmic return…Right?

Traditional return-on-investment calculations are as numerous as the training programs they represent. Before we venture down the path of choosing the “right-fit” formula, we must consider our audience. Ask yourself, what is driving their ROI.

We need to understand where we fit within the ROI path. We need to understand our role and be prepared to deliver against expectations other than our own. We may even be the bridge between the Operations and Training or the Executives and the Operations. Either way, by understanding what drives R.O.I., we are better able to communicate and positively impact the organization...After all, this is what we all desire, a bigger impact for the organization...Right?

Throughout this venture, we will explore some unique ways in which executives, training teams, operators, and marketing teams align their efforts around what they define as excellence in action. Many may disagree with the terms. Many more may have other representations for what each letter represents. All dialogue helps understand the direction each individual takes when establishing their own ROI.

We will need to understand the mindset and goals of the Executives if you are in Training or Operations. We will need to address the needs of the Operations if you are an Executive or part of the Training Team. And, we will need to appreciate the intricacies and support the complexities of Training if we are an Executive or in Operations.

We will need to create mechanisms and build an integrated listening post for our brand, our product, and our organization. Feedback hubs influence strategy and drive learning results. Learning results will influence operational success. Operational success has an impact on both the customer and business as marketing plans, key messages, and storylines merge to establish a lasting and loyal relationship with our customers, vendors, and partners.