Training and Development Professionals
Plan, develop, implement and evaluate training and development programs to ensure management and staff acquire the skills and develop the competencies required by organisations to meet organisational objectives.
One hour to teach a whole system
You are a training and development professional at a logistics company, running a session on a new system for depot staff. It is Monday. Thirty depot staff arrive for your session in an hour. The system goes live on Friday, the manager has given you only a short time, and not everyone wants to be there.
Choose what you would do. Then see what happens. There are often good reasons for each choice.
I can only spare my team for an hour. Cover everything in the system, every screen and every option, so nobody can say they weren't told. Just get through it all.
Cover every screen as asked, so the manager is satisfied and nobody can say later that you left anything out of the hour
You race through everything. People leave overloaded and remember little. The manager has a tick on the list but not a team that can use the system on Friday.
Agree to the hour but focus it on the few tasks staff must do on Friday, with a guide for the rest
Marcus accepts when you explain what the team will actually do on day one. Staff leave confident with the essentials. A short session aimed at real tasks is more useful than a long one.
Tell him one hour is not enough and that you will not run it
You are right that time is tight, but you have offered no alternative. Marcus is annoyed and the team goes into Friday with no preparation at all.
I've been doing this job for twenty years. This is a waste of everyone's time. We managed before without all this, and I'd rather be on the floor.
Ask him what he would do in the first week and use his experience as part of the session
Colm shares a good point, and a couple of others join in. But some of the class wanted the content, not a debate, and you lose a few minutes. Using experience helps if the room stays on track.
Tell him it is compulsory and he should stay quiet and listen, since everyone else is here to learn and it is not up for debate
Colm does stay quiet, and so does everyone else. He sits with his arms folded and remembers nothing. People can be made to attend, but not made to learn.
Acknowledge his experience, then explain what is changing and how the system will affect his work
Colm realises the new system changes how he signs off loads. He asks two sharp questions that help the rest of the room. Respecting experience wins you a useful ally.
Your session feedback is excellent. Nearly everyone said they enjoyed it. We'll tick this off as done. Do you think we need to do anything else for this system?
Agree, since the feedback is excellent and the job is complete
Friday arrives, and staff make errors that a bit more support would have prevented. Enjoying a session is not the same as using what it taught.
Suggest checking in on the floor after launch and offering short refreshers where people get stuck
Shu Fen agrees, and a few days later you find several problems. It is the right step, though a plan made earlier would have caught them faster.
Explain that enjoyment is not the same as learning, and propose floor visits in the first two weeks to see what is working
Shu Fen agrees. Your visits turn up one confusing step and a missing guide, both easy to fix. Learning is only proved when people do things differently.
How it went
The system goes live with a prepared team, a guide at every station and a plan to check on how it is going. Training is about helping people change how they work, not just filling a room, and you learn as much from the floor as from the whiteboard. Would you enjoy designing that kind of learning?
This is a simplified, fictional situation to help you explore. It is not professional instruction or a test of your ability.
Case study: The training everyone enjoyed and nobody used
A fictional case set in the learning and development team of a fictional logistics company with depots in several towns.
The situation
Imogen worked in learning and development at Redgum Freight. The company had brought in a new scanning system for parcels, and she ran a half day session at each depot. People said they enjoyed it and the feedback forms were glowing. But a month later, the depot managers reported that scanning errors were about the same as before. The company had paid for the training and the managers were asking whether to repeat it, or if the staff simply could not learn it.
What they did
Imogen spent two shifts at a depot, watching staff scan parcels and speaking to them on breaks. She noticed that the system's steps in real life did not match the order taught in the session, and that workers had made their own shortcuts. She rebuilt the training around real tasks, and added a one page guide at each scanning station. She also asked supervisors to spend five minutes with each new person in their first week.
How it turned out
The errors dropped over the following months, and the staff said the session finally made sense. Imogen began visiting the floor before designing any new training, and the managers started asking what people needed to be able to do, instead of what to cover.
What would you do?
- Why were the feedback forms not enough to show the training worked?
- What did Imogen learn by watching the work instead of asking about it?
- How would you teach someone a skill that you have used for years?