Training and Development Professional
What the work is
Plans, develops, implements and evaluates training and development programs to ensure management and staff acquire the skills and develop the competencies required by an organisation to meet organisational objectives.
Would you enjoy the work?
These are the main tasks in the official description. Mark how each one sounds to you.
- Identifies training needs and requirements of individuals and organisations
- Sets human resource development objectives and evaluates learning outcomes
- Prepares and develops instructional training material and aids, such as handbooks, visual aids, online tutorials, demonstration models, and support training reference documentation
- Designs, coordinates, schedules and conducts training and development programs that can be delivered in the form of individual and group instruction, and facilitates workshops, meetings, demonstrations and conferences
- Liaises with external training providers to arrange delivery of specific training and development programs
- Monitors and performs ongoing evaluation and assessment of training quality and effectiveness, and reviews and modifies training objectives, methods and course deliverables
- Gathers, investigates and researches background materials to gain an understanding of various subject matters and systems
- Writes end user products and materials such as user training, tutorial and instruction manuals, online help, and operating and maintenance instructions
Try it
A simulation and a case study from this kind of work, set in the learning and development team of a fictional logistics company with depots in several towns. They are fictional.
The kind of days you could have
Good days
- A sceptical group of staff finishes a session and asks when the next one is
- You watch someone use a new skill on the job without even noticing they have learned it
- A training idea you tested on a small group works and the whole company adopts it
Hard days
- A room full of people who were told to be there and do not want to be
- A manager wants a month of learning squeezed into an hour
- Great feedback forms, but the same mistakes keep showing up on the floor
Written by Career Calling as a general guide. Real roles vary by employer and place.
Work a mission
Step into a simulated workplace in this field, with a brief from your manager.
Description and tasks: Australian Bureau of Statistics, Occupation Standard Classification for Australia, 2024, Version 1.0 (opens another site), occupation 222431, used under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence. The skill guide above is our plain English summary.