Effective training to do this

There are two things that cannot be avoided in corporate training: one is the analysis of training needs, and the other is the evaluation of training effects. The former is not in place, and the follow-up training implementation and effect evaluation are obviously water without a source. If the training effect evaluation cannot keep up, the effectiveness of the training work will be marked with a question mark. More importantly, these two jobs seem to have inherent qualities that require excellence. No matter how "detailed" and "complete", there are always some regrets waiting for the next improvement. Therefore, the embarrassment always faced by those who do training work is that when the general manager who claims to attach great importance to employee training asks about the training results, he can't justify himself and say why.

Where is the way to free training from this embarrassment? My analysis is that it is on the performance management of the same department - HR. Although many companies are also not confident at this point, without performance management, effective training may be difficult to find a foothold.

The granary vs. the bread when hungry

Whether active or passive training is a question for many businesses. Active training is to train talents step by step according to the company's plan, and continuously meet the needs of the company's development. Passive training starts from performance, starts from employees' adaptation to job requirements (existing and future job requirements), and designs and implements training. Active training is actually the training that actively promotes the performance of the enterprise, while passive training is actually focusing on performance. As long as there is no problem with the performance, the training will never take the initiative to provide services. When performance goes wrong -- at least when there are signs of it, training keeps up. The difference between the two can be described as follows: active training is to let employees have the corresponding ability before they have specific tasks, while passive training is to let employees do things first, and only arrange training when it is proved that they are not competent. The function of the former is the granary, the function of the latter is the bread when hungry.

After the successful experience of General Electric under Welch became popular in China at the latest, many Chinese enterprises began to emphasize active training. Doing training in this way is prone to the embarrassing situation described at the beginning of this article. A lot of training has been done, but it is impossible to evaluate the real benefits it can bring to the enterprise. How much of these training can really be used? In the future development of enterprises, this is also unknown. In fact, this kind of training method, which is closely tied to strategic development, is currently a huge risk in China, because at present very few Chinese companies have a truly definite strategy that can guide the overall management of the company. It is precisely because of the uncertainty of this ultimate basis, which leads to certain blindness in training and passiveness in a series of work such as follow-up effect evaluation.

How to view "passive training" refers to how to view the function of training. How to look at training as the basic work of a system - that is, to set the overall training according to the company's development intention, job requirements, and personal ability and potential. "Have the right person in the position", while realizing the career planning and development of employees in one fell swoop. Although it can be regarded as a "total solution", compared with the investment and ability required to achieve this purpose - just like General Electric's confidence and confidence in people's judgment, even if the unit in charge of training is promoted to a first-level department, I am afraid that very few companies can do this.

If the training is positioned to help solve the problems that have occurred in the company, the training must not be systematic, but some very targeted "fragments". Although it seems "utilitarian" to view training in this way - which is very different from the concept of "learning organization" advocates, but building a learning organization and training are fundamentally different things. Only on the basis of service performance can training clearly demonstrate its effectiveness - it can indeed help companies solve problems, and it is on the basis of estimable costs. In fact, performance-based training contains another assumption: training investment that does not lead to performance is wasted. Essentially, training is essentially an investment of the company, whether it is considered a cost or capital in the accounting books.

Based on this distinction, let's take a look at the embarrassing thing about performance evaluation.

A clear division of labor under performance orientation

A common training assessment is a four-level model (see Figure 1). The most basic assessment is the student's satisfaction with the course. This process is relatively simple, and students basically only need to judge their satisfaction with the course content and instructors based on their own feelings.

Then comes the substantive phase of assessment: what exactly did the trainee learn. This requires a certain method to measure the learning outcomes of students. For skills training, it is necessary to check whether the trainees have mastered these skills; for knowledge training, it is necessary to check how well the trainees understand and remember the knowledge taught; if it is attitude education, it is necessary to set an appropriate method to measure The degree to which students accept the teaching content. In general, the second level of assessment measures what the trainee is getting out of the training site. In the first two levels of evaluation, training management is proactive.

In principle, as long as the two levels of training effect evaluation are achieved, the training management department can confidently say that it has achieved the predetermined performance-the reason for this judgment is because The latter two assessments are simply not the responsibility of training management.

Enter the third level of assessment and things get complicated. To what extent are students able to apply what they have learned to change their own behavior? Over how long has the behavior changed? Who should control these results? Training management? Is it possible to control the behavior change of a large number of employees across the company with only limited manpower? HR department? Similarly, with limited manpower, can it be controlled? If this is the case, it is obviously tantamount to letting the quality management department manage the quality level of each department. Therefore, it is the department supervisor who should be the main body of evaluation at this level. They need to manage the range, depth and progress of the students' application training through appropriate methods. Only by relying on their control can the students' ability to change behavior be transformed into real behavior changes and ultimately bring about the performance improvement we desire. .

The final results of many training evaluations are not very clear. The main problem lies in the third level: the department heads fail to fulfill their responsibilities in this stage, resulting in employees who have the ability to change behavior and improve performance. Because the failure to form habits leads to long-term, conscious behavioral changes, ultimately desired performance improvements are lost.

The fourth level of training effectiveness evaluation is actually an extension of the performance evaluation of the training process, taking part of individual performance as the benefit of effective training (see Figure 2). Because training and performance are in the same company, as long as individual performance meets the expectations of the organization, there is no need to accurately measure the performance benefits brought about by training. But this level of evaluation plays a benchmark role in evaluating the effectiveness of training: if the actual problem is solved, then we can say that the entire training process is effective; if the actual performance problem is not solved , it means that the training process needs to be improved. Of course, this does not necessarily mean that there is a problem with the performance of the training management department.

It seems that the results of this analysis are difficult for some department heads to accept: I only need to organize qualified people to complete specific tasks and provide specific contributions to the company. Why does the process of student behavior change also Want me to monitor and manage it? The effectiveness of management is first reflected in the appropriateness of results, that is, performance. Without performance, management is worthless. Therefore, performance can be understood as the goal we plan to achieve before we do something.

We have no way to improve performance directly. It must be reflected through the people who do things. To be precise, the fundamental of improving performance lies in the behavior changes of people who do things. To achieve this behavioral change, at least two conditions must exist: the willingness to change and the ability to change. There is no way to solve the former training, and the latter can be solved through training (of course, it must be based on the willingness of employees). With proper training design (but arranging content and instruction based on clear goals, specific learner conditions), employees can be assured that they have the ability to change behavior when they leave the training site.

But the immediate problem is that employees use these abilities to change their existing thinking and behavioral habits - breaking an old habit and establishing a new one, which requires time, process, perseverance and necessary guidance. In this process, the training management department actually does not have enough resources to manage and help trainees. If you only rely on the strength of the students, it is easy to fail. At this time, the department supervisor must take the responsibility of management and control to ensure that employees establish new behaviors and improve performance.

In the whole process, performance improvement is the ultimate goal, which determines the purpose of behavior change, and behavior change determines the ability to change behavior, which is the goal of designing and implementing training. It is easy to see from this that because the ultimate focus of training is on performance, the goal of training is very clear, and this clarity is often a necessary condition for effectiveness.

One way to enhance the effectiveness of training is to carefully analyze the "needs" and "wants" of training in a training needs analysis. According to psychology, need is the most basic internal driving force, just like the definition of atom in chemistry-indivisible, the management object reaches the level of human needs, which is basically the end. Needs are specific and limited (as in Maslow's 5-level theory, Herzberg's two-factor theory points out 5, 2). "Want" is an action necessary to satisfy a specific "need". There are many more "wants" than needs, because there are many ways to solve the same "need". Moreover, a certain "want" may not necessarily solve a specific, specific "need". In this way, if the training management department only plans and implements training according to the department's "needs" (actually just "wants"), it is likely to produce the following results: the training is carried out and the training objectives are achieved, and the trainees However, without the ability to truly solve the performance problems we face, we will naturally not be able to achieve the behavioral changes and even performance improvements we need.

A purchasing department executive has requested training in purchasing negotiation for their department personnel. However, after in-depth research by training managers, it is found that the symptoms of the so-called "lack of negotiation ability" are that procurement personnel are often unable to determine an appropriate price based on a specific quality level and delivery cycle, so they lose the ability to negotiate. Uphold the standard, naturally there is no way to control the negotiation. After this communication, the training management department suggested that the purchasing department determine the price standards under different quality levels and delivery cycles, and negotiate with the suppliers accordingly. In this example, the procurement negotiation training is "want" and "need" is the procurement staff being able to determine the appropriate level of quality based on the supplier's specific situation. The purchasing department's "want" does not solve its own "need". If the training management department only implements the training according to the "want" of the purchasing department, although the employees have some negotiation skills, it will not help to solve their real needs.

Learner-Oriented Course Design and Implementation

The addition of a performance orientation addresses the purpose of training. The next question is how to achieve the ability of students to change their own behavior through appropriate curriculum design. It seems a little out of place to raise this as a question: today's training market is unprecedentedly prosperous, and various courses are dazzling. In addition, most domestic enterprises are developing under the title of "Made in China", and the universality of courses among enterprises is also very strong. Because the training market belongs to an emerging market under the "knowledge economy", training attracts more and more talents to intervene, so the design of the course is not a problem at all.

But here's the problem: Many courses are not designed to address the ability of learners to change their behavior. According to the common saying of "performance = attitude + knowledge + skills", training consists of three categories: attitude education, knowledge transfer and skill development. There is no proper way of transformation. In fact, the effect of attitude education and knowledge imparting cannot be transformed into the ability to change behavior, and only with the ability to change behavior can the goal of performance improvement be achieved. What we often see is that many companies take courses of knowledge imparting and attitude education (the simplest is VCD discs) as the main way of training, and in terms of real skill development, this is only the first step.

Panasonic has adopted "Teaching People in Five Steps" as the primary method of skill development. One is to "tell him" and tell him what to do. The second is to "show it to him", that is, to give him a demonstration. The third is "let him do it and see", that is, let the students practice by themselves, and the lecturer will provide necessary guidance and help. The fourth is to "praise him", which is to evaluate the students' progress in a timely manner to maintain their enthusiasm. The fifth is "look back", that is, after a period of time, the lecturer or supervisor should inspect the application and development of the students' skills. If any one of the five stages fails to achieve the desired effect, it will never proceed to the next stage. Such a rigorous teaching design in fact ensures that the students will gain when they leave the training site. In contrast to this curriculum design, teaching is only the first step.

Only through proper design - a set of forms, a set of action plans, a set of workflow specifications, etc., coupled with consistent implementation, can attitudes and knowledge be transformed into competencies. As long as the lectures have no follow-up design and implementation, many trainings have no actual effect and are judged as "invalid". In fact, it is a matter of course. If you expect to use such training to seek the training performance approved by the general manager, I am afraid that you will never be able to avoid the embarrassing situation described at the beginning of this article.

Another notable bad tendency is that the course design should be based on the students, that is, the concept of "students are the clients of the lecturer". The lecturer's course design should not be carried out in the way he is good at, but based on the convenience of teaching. Instead, the teaching process should be designed according to the actual situation of the students and according to local conditions. We often hear the evaluation of the quality of a lecturer based on the background of the person, the extraordinary achievements he has made in the field, and the skill of his presentation, rather than how the lecturer's course design satisfies him silently. training needs.

A common saying in the teaching world is that experts are the worst teachers. The implication of this is that teachers teach students according to their aptitude according to the actual situation of students, and each person is different, so the required teaching methods are also different. To a certain extent, lecturers are not necessarily experts in a specific field, as long as they are experts in instructional design and implementation. That is to say, lecturers do not necessarily need to have profound attainments in machinery, chemical and other industries, as long as they are good at transferring knowledge and skills in machinery, chemical and other industries to students in an appropriate way. Professional and teaching, these are two parts of competence. On the other hand, the teaching of experts is often easy to fall into the "self-centered" mode because of their good at telling the content. Isn't it a paradox that they cannot start from the needs of the students, but they need to show that their teaching is effective through the students?

It makes sense to analyze the statement that "I basically don't participate in open classes with more than 20 people".

When solving a problem, we often find that a lot of energy is spent on identifying the real problem and what the cause is. Solving the problem can only be easier if the problem and its causes are sufficiently specific. In the training, only if the training objectives and the objectives of each link involved in the training are set sufficiently specific, the final effect evaluation is feasible and accurate. Because from performance to training goal setting and course goal setting are interlinked, the operation is targeted, and the final training effect is predictable.

Performance-oriented training is effective training.

This article is a contribution from the author; the author works in the Human Resources Department of Ningbo Xingrui Electronics Co., Ltd.