TiER1 Performance When my daughter was 15, she almost put me in the hospital. Armed with a brand-new learner’s permit and a solid six hours of driving training, she panicked in traffic and attempted a left turn with oncoming traffic. As her passenger, it was clear that she needed lots more practice before attempting solo trips. That’s because learning is a journey, not a training event or class. (As I’m sure any parent whose kid is going through driver’s education can attest.)
Many organizations fund lots of events—product training, new-hire orientation, systems training, leadership workshops—yet these events alone fail to address what it takes to go from the delivery of knowledge or introduction of new skills to fluent recall and use of knowledge and skill. In most circumstances, it takes several repetitions, along with opportunities to practice, reflect, and explore more deeply. We all fall victim to the forgetting curve. According to research from the Bjork Learning and Forgetting Lab at UCLA, Our brain has a tendency to forget some to most of what goes into it in just a few days’ time unless we have additional practice and opportunity to recall information.
Just as my daughter was nowhere near ready to drive solo after six hours of practice, neither are most employees ready to perform at peak or even rudimentary proficiency after a single eLearning course or live workshop. The consequences of failing to plan out the entire learning journey are financial: wasted dollars spent on developing and delivering an incomplete learning solution and wasted time on the part of learners and designers, which indirectly goes to more wasted dollars.
Here are a handful of solutions we have designed to help organizations go beyond a training event to sustained performance over time that produces measurable impact.
Testing is a powerful form of retrieval practice. As we forget—and then must try to remember again—we strengthen our ability to recall. Games and post-event challenge activities offer creative, nontraditional ways to tap into the power of post-tests to provide learners with the elaborative practice they need to cement information and skill into long-term memory.
Cheat sheets, reference tools, or how-to guides housed in a central repository can help people bridge the gap between training day and first-time usage of a new process or skill. We helped NxStage create an app for patients that complements their in-person dialysis training with additional reinforcement and lessons, as well as knowledge checks and how-to resources. Patients get training in the dialysis center; then, the app enables them to practice recall and serves as a “just-in-time” reference when they are at home.
There is no learning without reflection from learners on exactly what they learned and how it can be integrated into their work. Extremely motivated learners will reflect with no prompting. More typically, some prompting is useful. A manager can schedule a 1:1 conversation to elicit reflection within a week or two post-training, or periodically throughout a long-term training program that spans weeks or months. In self-managing environments, reflection can be prompted by a conversation with an accountability partner or via communication from the trainer. A video portal also can be set up for people to upload video reflections for wider sharing with an entire cohort.
This form of reflection has tremendous “ripple power” because it leverages the power of social dynamics. In environments where people routinely meet in teams (sales teams, for example, or science labs), encourage people to share their success stories in applying skill or knowledge from a training. Invite people to share the situation; what specifically they applied from training; what happened; and what they learned. We set up a story-sharing portal for a client years ago when they implemented a major process change. The stories were hugely popular and drove further success as evidence accumulated of the benefits of the new process. You can do this informally by creating a social media, Slack, or Teams channel devoted to storytelling.
People need to know how they are doing—both good and bad. Provide managers with simple coaching tools and prompts (keep to one page, if possible) for managers to use in supporting feedback to employees. Coach managers in how to use the coaching tool. Don’t assume handing out a tool suffices in getting managers to use the tool. Schedule a short session to walk them through it and overview the learning journey their employees will participate in.
The next time you are designing a new training program, consider incorporating these five techniques to elevate it from an isolated learning event to an experience that drives proficiency and recall in the performance setting. After all, it takes more than just training to avoid those “oncoming traffic” moments. Sustain the learning journey post-event through reinforcement.