Something to share (http://www.safetyxchange.org/training-and-leadership/how-to-create-effective-training-sessions-part-2-of-2)
How to Create Effective Training Sessions, Part 2 of 2
The first step in creating safety training sessions is to assess the existing gaps in your training program. In Part 1 last week, we looked at how to conduct a gap analysis. Let's turn now to how to use the findings of your gap analysis to craft training sessions that deliver your safety message effectively.
Customize Training to Suit Trainees' Needs
Safety training sessions must be reality-based. In other words, they must deal with the real challenges participants actually face on the job. Training should be customized to the needs and requirements of the participants and delivered in a way that allows for participation and interaction.
Before the Sessions
Effective training classes have to be directed and, before the training session develops, upfront work must be done by all parties. Participants should meet with their boss one-on-one before the training so that everyone is fully aware of potential barriers to success and gets involved in devising strategies to surmount the barriers. The goal of this process is to:
1. Identify Skill Levels: There shouldn't be a huge range of skill levels in the class. Students have to be selected so that their skill levels are appropriate for the training material or learning will not be effective. If you have an engineer at one end of the class and someone functionally illiterate at the other end, you will lose one or the other and neither will be comfortable in such an environment.
2. Set Expectations: Management, or the student's boss, should set expectations for the class and demonstrate their commitment to the process by meeting with each student prior to the learning experience and setting goals and expectations based on the course content. During this meeting, the student should be informed that he will be graded on a performance evaluation after the training class to determine if the skills have transferred. Remember: What gets measured gets done.
During the Sessions
It's important that the trainer engage the learners in a safe, fun, informative session with good adult learning techniques applied.
1. Encourage Coaching: The tell/show/do/teach cycle of learning is very powerful and participants should actively coach other members of the class. You can turn this into a fun and informative process by tossing balls to participants in groups to select the next group to lead the class in what they have discovered. Everybody participates in a fun, comfortable and safe environment.
2. Encourage Networking: Participants should network amongst themselves. It is possible that trainees may develop lasting friendships with people they meet in the class.
3. Look Forward: Once the learning session wraps up, rather than focusing on what the group now knows, instead focus on what the group needs to do from this point on. During the class session, build "to do" lists identifying what participants need to do to ensure that knowledge gained during the training sessions is not lost.
After the Sessions
After the training session:
1. Discuss Implementation of Key Concepts: There should be a debriefing by the boss. No happy sheets grading the niceness of the trainer's delivery or how happy the participants were in class. Instead, you want to discuss which key concepts from the training session will be applied immediately, within 30 days, within six months, within a year.
2. Train the Supervisor: The person's immediate supervisor can play an important role in the transfer of knowledge and should be held accountable for his/her staff. Special training sessions just for supervisors to facilitate this process may be in order as well.
3. Follow-up: Using the "to do" lists created at the end of the training session, have the management team evaluate how well these lists are executed by conducting performance reviews at clearly defined intervals. Also, ensure that performance appraisals are conducted at the intervals discussed during the debriefing.
4. Provide Refreshers: To help participants maintain their new knowledge, periodically offer quizzes, reviews or group sessions when new machines or tasks are introduced.
Conclusion
A well-designed course is a joy to teach. The session becomes an experience in which the trainer facilitates learning and the participants learn by doing. But to create effective training sessions you need to prepare: conduct a gap analysis, set clear performance expectations and help participants maintain their new knowledge during the course of their day-to-day activities. In this manner, information from the class will be disseminated, skills will be learned and barriers to success overcome!
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