Human resources training and development “on tap”

Effective training is not as simple as it seems

Human resources training and development is much more than filling a room with employees and asking another employee to lead them in a discussion. It takes a lot of know-how to prepare people for learning. A company expects training and development know-how from its human resources people but sometimes that isn’t their expertise.

Training and educating adults for anything, including work-based skills, is not as simple as it may seem. Contrary to popularly accepted belief, adult education is specialized enough that universities offer master’s degree programs in adult education and e-learning/distance learning. The internet has caused an increased need for such specialists in order to get the needed efficiencies of these lesser expensive techniques in conveying education. As a result, we can all benefit from learning superior training techniques. There is no doubt about it: training can be expensive for any company and this is especially so when suffering from high rates of turnover and technically specific needs. Of most concern though, is training that doesn’t get through to the recipients.

Internal training has its drawbacks

The most common way for a company to attempt to carry out training is to take an experienced employee (hopefully, with interest) and call them the trainer. Often unsupervised, or minimally supervised, the trainer is then tasked with developing programs on a narrow focus for immediate needs within the company. The downside is that the limitations in training are created by the trainer’s own experience base, which may or may not be adequate to fully develop a staff. At best, it is a hit and miss technique.

Effective training comes from effective trainers

For a company to be effective in filling human resources training and development needs, some kind of specialist in the field is needed. For one thing, all training becomes much more efficient and effective when someone is skilled at assessing precise needs. That helps dictate the direction training should take and what elements will be needed in the curriculum. Accurately assessing needs means that training will be less costly overall with minimal false starts or extraneous information included in the valuable training time.

Assess, then plan

Following assessments of need, a training program needs to be designed. Mastery of the objective not only needs to be stated and quantified, the necessary sub-objectives also need to be identified. After all, it is the mastery of each sub-objective that leads to successful training.

Knowledge of how people learn best is important

People learn in specific ways. Almost everyone has a favored pathway: auditory, visual, or experiential. Adults typically need experiential training before the concepts are retained. People also tend to learn by chunking information. Chunking means that learning takes place best when sub-objectives are taught in threes. It is because people retain best in chunks of threes that we phrase telephone numbers and social security numbers the way we do, just to name a couple. It is an instinctive and natural way of learning where a skilled trainer can take advantage. These are just a few of the examples why it is important to have trainers with the necessary training and knowledge to formulate your company’s human resources training and development. That is a business area where CBR excels.

In addition to human resources training and development, CBR can help companies reduce their administrative overhead and stabilize cash flow.  CBR handles a full spectrum of outsourcing services including payroll services, worker’s compensation and risk solutions, vendor management, tax reporting, employee benefits and a host of others. Your company could be taking advantage of many more cost-saving administrative outsourcing tasks.

Trainers must evaluate lessons learned before managers have to

An effective trainer knows that he or she has to check for knowledge retained. Particularly important when introducing new concepts and processes, learners often look like they “get it” but sometimes do not. Experienced trainers develop techniques for checking progress and the ability to monitor what works and adjust methodologies to get around any obstacles. This is but one more reason why it is important to have trained trainers.

Even if you have trainers on staff, and especially if you do not, the professionals at CBR can help make your training and development efforts much more effective. CBR always has specialists in adult education and corporate training at its disposal, as well as professionals in other HR outsourcing services. There is more involved in training and learning than just talk. Give us a call at our toll-free number, (888) 700-8512 and let us show you what a good job we can do filling your training and development needs.