Letter from the President - July 2016
TRAINING ISN’T A FOUR-LETTER WORD
I recently attended a roundtable of design technology managers. The topic of conversation was related to training. A common thread during the event was, “How do you handle training?”
There isn’t a single best answer. If there was one, someone would have found it a long time ago. There are so many factors that it can be a challenge for an organization to develop a strong strategy. The trainees themselves are different, often with conflicting learning styles. Presenters have different styles too, each effective in differing areas.
Assessment is one tool that might not be used enough. Organizations that perform assessments of new hires can target training specifically to an individual’s needs. There is also the benefit of determining how effective the training is when you conduct a post-training assessment. You can measure how much someone learned and retained.
An organization also needs to tailor its training to the needs of the individual. Someone who is experienced in using a specific application such as AutoCAD® or Revit® will not need to be taught the basics. But the individual will need to learn how the organization uses each application in the context of its approach to design, the standards, and best practices.
I often heard during the roundtable that organizations did an introduction to an application such as Revit. The average duration for this introduction was two to four hours. Sometimes it was conducted by an individual; other times, online or recorded media was used.
But all too often I heard that the standards and best practices were “taught” as on-the-job experience. Tis can be understandable. After all, an organization wants to start utilizing a new employee in a billable way as soon as possible. But what are the effects? There are a couple of major effects that jump out at me.
First, if the new people do not know there is a standard or best practice that is applicable to the work they are doing, how much of their work needs to be corrected when it is found they did something “wrong”? Granted, they probably only make that mistake once. But in how many other areas will they also make mistakes?
Second, you are relying on someone else in the organization to train a new person in the organization’s standards and best practices. What if the trainer doesn’t agree with you? All too often I’ve heard someone say, “Well, that’s the way it’s supposed to be done, but here is the way we do it.”
I have had great success in onboarding new employees and setting expectations with management that training will take three days. Tis gives us the time to train new employees in the organization’s standards and best practices. You may face an uphill battle in your organization trying to get a two- or three-day training system in place, but it can really be worth it for the benefits.
