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Rachael wrote:
>What I need help with is the "corporate-wide training program" part. The
scale is daunting, to say the least.
Okay, what follows is Steve's Quick Version of How to Put Together a
Training Program for a Company of X Hundred (or Thousand) People. Buckle
your seatbelt!
The two aspects of a training program are development and delivery. It may
be that you can buy your content off the shelf, but we don't know that yet.
Let's start with a quick needs analysis. Do you know what your people need
to learn? Specifically, what can they not do now that they need to do in the
future? That's the difference between training and education. You can go to
grad school for an education (which I'm now doing again after many years),
but training means - like dogs! - getting people to learn new behaviors. Are
you putting a new info security system in place? Are there new policies that
people need to follow? In any case, the end result of your needs analysis is
a spreadsheet of Who needs What. That is, which groups of people need to
learn which lessons. (Maybe one size fits all, maybe not.) If they're spread
out in multiple locations, note that, too. Also if there are any special
factors, like if some require training in a different language, schedule
(night shift, time zone, whatever), or anything else that will have an
impact on the training itself.
Armed with your spreadsheet of who your learners are and what they need to
learn, you are ready to do your development. At that point, you'll know if
your needs can be met by a commercial training product. If so, skip to
Training Delivery.
If you need to develop your own material, then you build it backwards. For
each lesson, start with the end objective - what it is that the people need
to start doing as a result of taking this lesson. Then build your content on
as straight a line as you can toward that goal, focusing on common
activities (and leaving exception handling to the documentation). Leave out
anything nice to have if it isn't necessary in getting people to the
behaviors you need from them. Now, having said that, some lessons do need to
cover building blocks or prereqs. Just remember your Prime Directive, as
they used to say on Star Trek. Within each lesson, make the learning as
hands-on as you possibly can. If you're teaching a system, *use* the system
(in simulation mode). The more time that learners' hands are on keyboards or
whatever, and the less time spent in frontal lectures by an instructor, the
better the learning in almost all cases. Finally (remember, we're working
backwards, so this is the beginning of the lesson), introduce the lesson and
why they need to know this material. Do this for each and every lesson.
Adult learners need to know why they should care. They've got a zillion
things to do back at their desks, and you are taking up their time. Convince
them at the start of the lesson that you are aware of this, and justify the
importance of the lesson. (For example: "This lesson shows you how to
encrypt your emails. You need to know this so you can avoid exposing the
company's trade secrets on our new product when you communicate with our
remote plant.") If you can't think of why they need to know, you need to
rethink the lesson.
That's training development in a nutshell. Now you've got to consider how to
deliver this training to the masses. Refer back to your spreadsheet with the
numbers of each kind of person and location. Use this to decide what makes
sense. If you've got more than several hundred people taking a course,
especially if they're spread out geographically, you can save a bundle on
travel, etc. if you can sensibly deliver the training over the web. The more
people, the more likely that it will be worth it to spend up to five times
as much on development in order to save on delivery. (Numbers vary, but
typical classroom system training takes about 25-30 hours of development for
each delivery hour, while e-learning can be five or more times that. On the
other hand, not only do you save on travel with e-learning, but it usually
goes about 30% faster than classroom.)
If you go the classroom route, you need to meticulously plan the logistics.
If you don't know if you *have* a training department, it's a safe guess
that you also don't have training facilities. You'll need to organize these
against your spreadsheet. Scheduling is very complex, especially if you
can't close down a whole department during class time and take all their
people away from their regular work at the same time. If you have to train
people at the end of their regular work day, you've got to deal with them
being tired and less receptive - meaning that your material has to be that
much better! If you have networks and whatnot to set up for your classrooms,
you'll need to see to that. Same with printing of materials - make sure the
right materials arrive to the right classroom before the class starts.
Scheduling the instructors is also something you'll need to do; if not all
instructors can teach all courses, you've got to schedule accordingly. By
the way, you'll need to identify and train instructors.
If you go the e-learning route (and possibly also if you do go with
classroom learning), you'll likely want to use a vendor. Unless you have a
bunch of time on your hands to learn how to do e-learning, you're better off
outsourcing. Having said that, make sure you manage the process closely to
make sure that the content that gets created is to your standard and is
delivered on time. Unless your subject matter requires it, skip the fancy
graphics and sound that the vendor may want to push on you. Focus on
content, and make sure this is clear to the vendor.
In terms of delivery options, the buzzword for the last couple of years has
been blended learning, meaning a combination of e-learning and classroom
learning. For example, if the whole organization needs to take your Intro to
Info Security lesson, make that e-learning. Then perhaps follow up with the
specifics of what each group needs in the classroom.
If this is as large a project as I understand it is, get management buy-in
from the start and continuously. It will take a significant budget no matter
how you do it, and will be highly visible throughout your company. So make
sure you get a clear understanding of what your company wants to accomplish
with this program so that you can build your objectives and choose among the
options accordingly.
HTH - there can be many complexities beyond what I've described here.
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