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30-Minute Training
October 19, 2009
By Sarah Boehle
How do you design a training curriculum to deliver maximum learning impact with minimum disruption to employee productivity? This was the question Joel MacCharles, VP of development and facilitation for Allied International Credit (AIC) Corp., grappled with in developing his company's workforce development strategy for its call center representatives.
The answer? "Micro training," MacCharles says. In a more conventional approach, employees might be required to attend one- or two-day training seminars on call center software, for example, or the use of Excel spreadsheets. "Sure, you're exposed to all the material; you might get 50 to 100 tips in a two-day course. But how much of it are you actually learning and retaining?" he asks—"to say nothing of the lost productivity created by taking call center reps off the job and locking them in a classroom for days on end."
With micro training, however, it is possible to minimize negative impacts to productivity while simultaneously ensuring that the training delivered—all of it—is the training that is learned, retained, and put to good use in the workplace, says MacCharles.
Here's how it works at AIC: "Every Wednesday is a brand new course featuring a software topic," says MacCharles. "Every Thursday features a soft skill, typically related to collections. Each session includes a one-page takeaway containing an overview of the lesson and step-by-step instructions for hard skill topics." Sessions are never longer than 30 minutes and focus on one or two practical tips. They typically take place over lunch hour so as to mitigate disruptions to the workday, MacCharles notes, "and they're strictly voluntary."
By focusing on only one or two tips each session, MacCharles has found call center reps are highly likely to retain the new knowledge or skill. "By providing the training over the lunch hour, reps have an almost immediate opportunity to put what they've just learned to use back on the job," he says. "This helps boost retention, too."
Interested in implementing a similar program? MacCharles and his team recommend the following tips when developing micro training curricula to facilitate workforce development strategies:
•Make it employee-driven. "If you build it, they may not come," says MacCharles. Instead, he advises, have employees select and provide the content because "if they build it, they're already there."
•Limit duration to 30 minutes or less. "In a half hour, you can focus learners on one or two useful tips they can practice for themselves without delay back on the job when the lunch session concludes," says MacCharles.
•Don't make it mandatory. Participants who attend training voluntarily are better motivated to learn and master new material than those forced into it, according to MacCharles and others on his team.
•Don't call it training. "Instead of advertising a program as training, you can title it something such as 'Peer Group Development,' 'What's in it for You (WIIFY)?' or 'Learn it, Live it, Love it,'" he says. Think of it as that little spoonful of sugar that helps the medicine go down.
•Don't forget the sizzle. "Don't be afraid to be loud, obnoxious, and a little ‘out there,'" MacCharles advises. "If your content is exciting, it will get others excited" and make your training that much more effective. For example, training takeaways that serve as step-by-step instruction guides can be created to resemble pages of a comic book.
Ontario-based Allied International Credit (AIC) Corp. provides debt collection services to financial institutions, government agencies, telecommunications companies, utilities, and health-care and retail concerns throughout Canada, the UK, and the U.S. In 2009, it placed 11th on Training magazine's Top 125 list, an annual ranking of organizations that excel at human capital development.
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