PLAN YOUR TRAINING

August 26, 2013

If we’re going to make our training initiatives more productive for our organizations, we first have to know what needs to be done. And, to accomplish those goals, it naturally follows that we must plan intelligently.

The key to successful training is to make it an integral part of an organization’s business objectives. Up-front planning helps ensure that your investment in training will deliver measurable results. Your goal is to make training a cost-effective solution that supports the business objectives of your organization.

It is critical to focus training where it will have the greatest effect on performance. Using needs assessment and task analysis techniques will help you identify the greatest opportunities to improve performance through training.

In order to be successful, a training plan must become a solution that can be implemented within the existing structures of your organization. From broad decisions such as curriculum design or the integration of a new learning technology — to details such as staffing, scheduling, and equipping the learning environment — you should strive to transform the training plan into a smoothly functioning reality.

In sum, you need to identify your organization’s training needs so that you can recommend the best way to maximize the dollar return on investment. And, you’re going to succeed at that task as long as you successfully develop these two necessary strategies:

• Needs Assessment and Task Analysis

• Training Plan and Implementation

You’ll be pleasantly surprised at the positive dividends you’ll receive from your front-end efforts. Because of those efforts, your training initiatives will prove many times more valuable to your organization.

Knowing, first, what needs to be done can then be readily followed by the doing and, ultimately, by the accomplishment. Victory comes to those who analyze and plan before they implement.