Training on Bedrock: Build Targeted Training Programs

By Allan P. Harris

Training on Bedrock is a process anyone can follow to perform a sophisticated training needs analysis. You don't have to me an analytical wizard to make this work for you. Anyone can do this process and you'll end up with a well formulated training plan for what to train and how long to spend training it. This walks you through analyzing the job or role itself, looking through what tasks they do, breaking down those tasks, and then ending up with a solid strategy for how to make the most of your training time. You'll impress your business partners with your training strategy and your learners with the most targeted training they'll attend.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Apr 5, 2021
• ISBN: 9781098364601

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

The light finally went on for me. Well, first, let me back up a bit. I’ve been working in learning and development for more years than I care to admit. I’ve worked for multiple public and private organizations in several different industries, as a trainer, an instructional designer, a developer, a project manager, and a leader. I cut my teeth in training first as a martial arts instructor and then in a training room for customer service, soft skills, technical skills, and more. I watched hundreds of people go from knowing nothing (cue the Jon Snow reference here) to knowing something that can make an enormous difference in their lives and careers.

Slow but steady growth followed me through my career as I learned more about how to facilitate well and eventually how to design and develop training content. I got some great opportunities to manage training projects and to lead and manage amazing teams and departments. Through this long journey, I started to really see how things were all connected. I started to see how training could align with a business to help achieve real and meaningful outcomes. I say could because I found there were some important parts some companies did well, and some didn’t. Being a bit of a nerd, this started me down a path to take a more analytical approach learning more and seeing how I could ensure training programs were successful.

If you ask any training professional what method or process they use to create training programs, there is a 99% chance you’ll hear the word ADDIE. It’s a timeless model to help training professionals Analyze, Design, Deliver, Implement, and then Evaluate training programs. There are certainly other methods but most if not all base it loosely on ADDIE and then expand from there.

I had the fortunate opportunity to go through numerous train-the-trainer programs to learn more about instructional design methodologies where I learned a lot about behavioral objectives, adult learning theories, ideas around application of knowledge, and even some job and task analysis. I learned about how to train in-person and online. I learned how to create self-paced training and even learned Flash and Action Script (looking down sadly realizing how much that probably dates me) so that I could have some interactivity in the early days of eLearning. I refined a work routine and I generally ended up with good learning outcomes.

In all the things I learned and did in my career, I found the biggest difference came in the A in ADDIE. It’s the analysis. There is no substitute for doing a detailed analysis of the learner, the behaviors, the skill gaps, and other requirements and constraints we need to work within while designing or delivering a training program. Unfortunately, I learned some of these lessons the hard way and only after I delivered a program to find it didn’t hit the target and we trained the wrong skills or focused on the wrong root problems. There was a time I was sitting with a business partner and she asked a very smart question, How do we know we are training them on what they really need to know? At the time, I didn’t have a good answer and it stuck with me for a long time while I wondered how to answer that question satisfactorily.

I’m sure I’m not alone in this, but unfortunately, I also found that by the time someone came to me to ask for a training program, they already had an idea of what the training would be like. So, their coming to me was more just to ask me to make some pretty slides or an online thingy so they could just keep the initiative moving forward.

Then the light went on.

I realized that to do successful analyses, I had to be anticipatory about it. I had to do training analyses continually and proactively. I had to go out to my learner audiences and learn about them before they were looking to get training from me or my teams.

I met with my learners on the job and learned about their jobs, roles, and responsibilities. I learned about methods for doing systematic job and task analysis to ensure I wasn’t missing anything. I read a ton of books and put together some methods that worked for what I was trying to accomplish at the time. Most of the time I was learning more about what tasks people did and how to prioritize the limited amount of time I had to train. It also helped me to have more relevant conversations with my business partners about skills and potential skill gaps.

The more training programs we made using these proactive analyses, the more likely we were to hit the mark and provide some real value to the learners. I’ll warn you, I’m a little more on the nerdy side and I have a highly analytical nature I combine with some horrible dad-jokes. However, the methods I created work for everyone who wants to create good training. I’ve taught hundreds of people I’ve worked with as well as in workshops and it’s always rewarding to see others use these tools for good in the world!

Over time, I’ve found when I perform these analyses, the training is better. People engage because they learn meaningful tasks. They perform better on the job and don’t have as many questions or concerns. By performing a Bedrock Analysis, you can,

•Reduce training time by up to 23%.

•Improve learner satisfaction by up to 72%.

•Increase day-one performance of learners on the job by up to 18%.

•Reduce learner mistakes by up to 47%.

•Improve knowledge retention in training by up to 21%.

If any one of those isn’t a reason to do it, I don’t know what is.

WHAT IS BEDROCK?

We’ve probably heard the word Bedrock at times, and we know it’s important in construction. If we think of the earth as a large ball of rocks, it’s covered in a few layers of dirt and sand around the outside of it. The dirt and sand can shift and sink as time goes on. It’s very susceptible to earthquakes and even just wind and rain. By the way, I’m not a geologist if that isn’t apparent, so I hope you’ll forgive me for this enormous over-simplification.

Bedrock is that layer of rock deeper down that is more solid and stable. It can move but is less likely to shift for smaller things and it provides us with a stable foundation we can build upon.

WHY IS BEDROCK IMPORTANT IN CONSTRUCTION?

When building a new house or a building, it’s important to start by digging. Dig, dig, and dig some more until you get down to firmer earth on which to build the foundation. The reason is that the closer you are to bedrock, the more likely the structure will remain stable, even though things can change over head. Wind, rain, even earthquakes become less of an issue if the structure is sitting on the bedrock and not on sediment, sand, or loose dirt.

WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH TRAINING?

This analogy applies perfectly to what we do when we do a job or a task analysis. The analysis is our bedrock. We must build our training programs on this kind of bedrock to ensure it can withstand the environment it has to live in. The wind, rain, and earthquakes represent criticism of the training content and loosely engaged participants. It can last over time because it’s built on the core pieces of a job and doesn’t train people things they don’t need. It focuses on the skills and behaviors that really make a difference in your learners’ work and they’re more likely to come away with actionable items they can use as soon as the training concludes.

Some construction projects require more digging than others because bedrock is not always found at a consistent depth. It can be as shallow as five feet or as deep as 100 feet. As we dig into a job or a task, it may take longer to get to the bedrock. There could be challenging subject matter experts or a general lack of knowledge about the right way to do a task. There could also be a lack of access to the right people. There may be several challenges we run into just as construction engineers run into challenges on a particular job site. There are also instances where we find bedrock right at the surface, called an outcropping. We will come across this occasionally when we run into those partners who have already done some of this work and may have some task and procedural documentation we can use.

We are going to go through this process as if we are digging through the layers of dirt trying to find the bedrock to build our training on. If we don’t bother digging, our training may not be stable and, like a structure, could crumble when put to the test.

1. The first layer we dig through is the topsoil or in our case, the job, or the role.

2. The second layer is the subsoil, or the tasks done within the job or role.

3. The third layer is the rocky layer. For our purposes, it is the procedural steps.

4. Then we hit bedrock and we perform our final work to analyze the frequency and difficulty of the work to formulate our strategy.

No analytical process is perfect for all situations. Use the data to find general directions and then dig into the details to find the truth.

Before we dive into the next chapter, it’s helpful to sync up on a few terms I’m going to use in this book to make sure we are thinking of the same thing.

Let me give a quick overview of how we discuss the Bedrock method in the upcoming chapters. In chapters 1, 2, 3, and 4, I give a general overview of the individual layers, the observable data for each layer, the focus for each layer and why it’s important. Chapter 5 then digs in deep on the real how to. It walks you through the steps you can follow today to deliver this analysis. I also provide a wide variety of online resources you can download and customize.

So, let’s dig in (pun intended)!

CHAPTER 1

THE TOPSOIL – JOBS & ROLES

WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A JOB AND A ROLE?

We are all familiar with jobs. It’s what goes on our business cards and what we say when someone asks, So what do you do? Think of general titles like Accountant, CEO, Carpenter, Trainer, or Circus Master. Sometimes we can see typical titles but often companies like to customize the titles used within their company to carve out a niche role or help reinforce culture. For example, some companies like to use the title Analyst to account for a wide variety of titles even if analysis is not the focus of the job. If your organization uses more custom or unique titles, I’d recommend you consider what the more conventional title is as there will likely be industry resources available. But you can only find them if you know what the conventional title is. You may ask the incumbents what other titles there are for their job in the industry or, if they posted a job, what could the job title be to attract the right candidates.

Roles are not official titles, but they account for a special part of a job. Roles can vary in size and can cross more than one title but not all with that title may do that work. Some managers like to use the idea of roles to segment the work within a team. People don’t always track this officially and sometimes the roles don’t even have a name. They make up a percentage of a job or a person’s work.

For example, a team of five Widget Assemblers share the same job title and the same responsibilities to assemble widgets. However, each may have a different role. One assembler may have the role of parts manager and she is responsible for getting all the parts from the warehouse and putting them out for others to use. Another assembler may have a role of Quality Control and checks the work of the other four. These roles are in addition to the job they all have of assembling.

Another type of role could be shared across an entire company and someone takes on that role in addition to his or her daily responsibilities. For example, most companies have emergency procedures and there are people across the company, in different departments and with different titles, who help participate in emergency preparation. The role includes some responsibilities such as stocking emergency supplies, checking the floor to ensure everyone has left the building during an emergency, or coordinate practice drills.

They key point here is to identify if what you are analyzing is a job or a role. It sounds obvious but clarifying it can establish a scope to how far your analysis will go and where it won’t go. This also establishes your audience. Once you’ve established the boundaries, you can look at those in the job or the role to learn more about what they do.

Let’s talk about a few specialty areas to review when looking at a job or a role in its entirety. We should look at job details, role details, current population, and newcomers.

JOB DETAILS

LEVELS

This is an important detail to consider when doing your analysis because you may generalize all the tasks to everyone within a single job title when, in reality, some tasks apply to Job Title 1 and some to Job Title 2. You may end up creating training that is only partially applicable to each job without being comprehensive for either one.

Some organizations segment a single job title into levels to indicate seniority, tenure, or higher levels of responsibility. It may be something like Accountant 1, 2, 3, and 4, or maybe Senior Accountant, Accountant, and maybe Junior Accountant. Ideally, these levels will have distinctly different responsibilities and tasks. Unfortunately, this isn’t always the case. Some organizations just use it for a difference in pay without a significant difference in responsibilities. It’s important to investigate what levels exist and the differences among them.

Potential Questions to find out about levels,

•Does everyone with this title have the same responsibilities?

•Are there senior or junior roles within this title? What’s different about them?

•Are there tasks only new or junior people do?

WORK ENVIRONMENT

A person’s environment can influence how well they can participate in some training. For example, I created online training modules for a restaurant chain for use in their onboarding of new employees. The training program aligned with the training objectives laid out by the client and did a great job of blending interactions with content delivery using video and great graphics. However, the training didn’t seem to take off. The adoption rates were low in most of the restaurants and most new employees were still being onboarded by local employees. When investigating further, we found there is no space dedicated to taking these modules, most employees simply didn’t have the access. There was typically one computer in the manager’s office and because of security, it couldn’t be shared. Luckily because the company was moving increasingly into online learning, they invested in special training computers for each restaurant so they could allow all employees to participate in online training sessions.

Furthermore, the environment in training should reflect the real working environment as much as possible. When training tellers at a bank, we would create training workstations like what they use in the bank lobby complete with cash drawers and transaction tickets.

Look at the environments this job must work within. It may be a conventional office but with many jobs, people are not tied to a desk and work in different types of environments. Jobs may work outside or in a laboratory. Some jobs may require extensive travel and a significant portion of a person’s day is in airports or cars. Some jobs are inherently mobile and spent walking from task to task throughout most of the day breaking free of a desk and chair. Consider all your senses. Is the environment especially bright or dim? Does it smell good or weird? Is it loud or quiet? Are there safety hazards?

Potential Questions to find out about the environment,

•Can you give me a tour of your workspace?

•Does someone need special permission to be here?

•Is this typical for how it is while you work? (note the noise, lighting, etc.)

•Are there any safety hazards someone should know while here?

PACE OF WORK

Noting the pace of work helps to create realism when training. I’m a big fan of mimicking the work as closely as is realistically possible while in training. It doesn’t benefit a learner to learn how to do a task in a nice calm cool environment but then later be expected to do it while in a noisy and hot warehouse. It can change the person’s ability to focus and if they never practiced in that type of environment, they are going to be ill-prepared.

The easy way to think of pace is how rapidly things happen in the job or how quickly someone must perform or switch from task to task. For example, if the job is a restaurant server, it’s going to be relatively fast paced. The server must move quickly from table to table keeping customers happy while putting in orders, expediting, pre-busing, and sometimes processing payments. On the other hand, a quality control analyst may have a more methodical flow to the day. Not to say she isn’t busy, but there is a slower pace to the work as she works through tests and records results.

Potential questions to find out about the pace,

•How many (customers, requests, orders, etc.) do you handle in a day?

•Do you get to plan out your day or do you have to react to what