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Teaching Your Best Employees to By Jeanie
McKay Your training budget has been slashed, but new employees need to be trained in order to do their jobs effectively. Cutting training out entirely may not be a good option. One way to deal with this problem is to use subject-matter experts as trainers. This strategy, if implemented with careful planning, can pay off for your company. Training requires more than having experts stand up and expound Training skills are not intuitive to everyone. Just because people are experts in their job does not mean that they can successfully train others. Many technical experts are very intelligent, detail-oriented individuals who know their jobs well. However, besides performing well in their jobs, trainers need to have a charismatic personality, be able to deal patiently with people, and be able to explain the basic job steps. This is sometimes difficult for experts to do. When selecting a potential subject-matter expert first assess their skill-level, overall knowledge and their credibility within the organization. Then evaluate the candidate by asking yourself this question, "Can this person logically communicate his or her ideas?" To find out the answer, interview the person. Ask the employee how he or she feels about training. Then ask the person to explain how their job is performed. Assess how the individual communicated the information to you. If you feel favorable about the preliminary interview, begin assessing how potential trainers measure up in the four most important trainer competencies:
When employees under consideration rank well against these questions, how can they then be transformed into effective, dynamic trainers? Most new trainers need to initially work closely with an expert trainer for a period of time. In most cases, the trainer-to-be should sit through a course and observe good training methods and techniques modeling. Then the trainer-in-training should take on several course modules to team-teach with the experienced trainer. Following feedback and coaching, the new trainer can eventually take over an entire course. Training in-house experts may provide cost-saving benefits Using internal subject-matter experts may prove beneficial for several reasons. First, it provides a company with a cadre of trainers who can flexibly meet specific organizational training needs Second, cross training employees in this manner provides career development value. Subject-matter expert trainers develop leadership, communication, and organizational skills. Third, using in-house experts is cost effective. The subject-matter expert trainers often help create and document company standards. The standardization ensures that everyone performs tasks the same way and variation is reduced. Because in-house experts understand the organization and the jobs well, they know exactly where to focus the greatest course emphasis. Down the line subject-matter expert trainers can eventually be trained to develop new courses themselves or closely assist professional designers in the creation of instructional manuals filled with real world, application exercises and practice simulations. |
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