Hi! Welcome back everyone! Our winter weather here in Southern Indiana is great this January the expected high for today is in the high 50’s! With that said, I’d like to get some exercise by hitting a little white ball but first things first today’s blog. I’m trying to make this blog conversational and informative and I hope that is how you’re reacting to it.
Last time I wrote about Structured vs. Unstructured on-the-job training and I presented further evidence as to why structured on-the-job training is more beneficial to organizations. Today I would like to continue the discussion on how to develop a structured on-the-job training program. I’m actually going to breakdown the process into several posts for two reasons: one I don’t wish to bore you with professional jargon and two, I hope that the information you receive from this blog is at least understandable and makes sense logically to you. You may not have the desire or skill level to implement these concepts (that’s where I can help) but understanding them can make you a better consumer of professional development programs in the future.
Today I want to write about three items: change, need and job/task analysis. The first concept will be readily apparent to all of you the last two are somewhat technical in nature but I will attempt to explain them so that you can understand them and add them to your professional vocabulary.
First why is it that most of us resist something new? It’s usually because we become comfortable with how things are and don’t wish to change! I remember the early 1980’s when the personal computer was coming out, Apple and Microsoft were the their infancy and computer programs weren’t “bundled” or integrated, by that I mean that a word processing application couldn’t mesh or work with a spreadsheet for example. There was no such thing as a thumb drive in fact portable storage was done by use of a “floppy disk”, a flexible 5 and ½ inch disc that looked like a cheap 45 rpm record, remember those? Boy does that date me, what can I say I’m chronologically challenged!! Anyhow, my point is that like today every program required a username and password and software was updated oh about once a year. Now back then I didn’t mind remembering passwords because the thought of keying them into a computer had a kind of a “Star Trek” quality about it. Today I’m showing my age and I don’t wish to learn the new program’s features or come up with a different password for every application on the web. I’m resistance to change!
Training is often difficult to implement because of the same reasons people are resist to change. James O’Toole in his book “Leading Change”, studied why people resist change and found that everyone has their own theory on this subject. The following is a list of are some reasons why people resist change.
* Human Nature- It is a natural tendency to resist change. Even though life itself is
always changing.
* Satisfaction- Many people are happy with the way things are now.
* Fear- Some folks are afraid of the unknown. They may not be perfectly
happy with the way things are now, but at least they known how to
work around it.
* WIIFM- What’s in it for me? People may believe that they will not benefit
from the new changes.
*Ego- My way is the right way; your way will never work.
* Perceived uniqueness-That may work for so and so, but we are different it will never
work here!
* Groupthink- We’ve always done it this way before!
Many of these reasons for resisting change stem from one common theme, fear.
There is an axiom for fear it is:
False
Evidence
Appearing
Real
If you can disprove many of these false reasons or feelings, true learning can begin. As long someone believes that they can’t do something, they won’t be able to, they will refuse to try and change will never take place. Training is all about change.
The first thing one must do to design a training program is to analyze the problem or need and then the job or task under review. Let’s take these two concepts one at a time. Needs analysis identifies what gaps in skills, knowledge or awareness exist between the current and desired levels of performance. If you are an “average” golfer your score is somewhere north of 100 for 18 holes. In fact, the average golf score shot by 25 million or so American golfers is 102. To become a “bogey” golfer, (one over par for each hole) you’d have to shot around 90, only 5 percent of people who play golf can shot a score of 90. I have and I’m still not playing for money on Sunday. But that’s not the point I wish to make, if you wish to play better golf you need to analyze where your game is lacking, what are the areas that are keeping you from reducing your average score from 102 to 90? These may include a number of things but this isn’t a blog about golf it’s a blog about business topics so the gap between 102 and 90 contains those things that you must improve upon to be a better golfer, that’s needs analysis. “I need to be better off the tee or around the green for example”. These gaps are the areas you should concentrate on in designing your training program. Never begin any training program without establishing with all interested parties what the purpose of the training is and how the program’s quality and success will be measured.
Training can overcome deficiencies in knowledge, skill or awareness. Training may lead to a change in behavior or attitude; however behavior and attitude changes are not always a direct result of training. As mentioned earlier, people resist change for a variety of reasons. Often training is requested to address behavior and attitude problems when the solution to these concerns may lie beyond what training can provide. Before you begin any training program you should determine if the purpose of that problem is to overcome a lack of knowledge, skills or awareness.
Finally Job/task analysis- Each job is made up of tasks behaviors which are thoughts, actions, and decisions that one must make in order to do the task. Some examples of task behaviors include:
- Procedure- performing a series of steps in a specific order.
- Troubleshooting- matching existing problem situations or symptoms with probable causes and the actions that are likely to resolve them.
- Decision making- determining the action to take based on the arrangement of varying conditions in a given situation.
The purpose of a job/task analysis is to take each job, identify the various thoughts, actions and decisions, of each task and describe each step starting from the beginning and ending with the final task which must be accomplished to successfully complete each job/task. To enhance the delivery, retention and execution of the training topic, try to group units of information in increments of seven (7) items or less.
There you have it your first lesson on how to develop a structured OJT program. How have you gone about designing training for your business? Are you trying to remedy a problem that is not related to a lack of knowledge, skills or awareness with a training program? If so, how did that what out for you? Well thanks for reading and until next time all my best! Jer.
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