The magic ingredients to designing effective learning policy?

[ryan]

So.... you understand your company's corporate objectives.....

your Training Programme is aligned to them....

now how are you going to implement this programme?

What are some of the many ways that organisations traditionally go about implementing? What are some of the new thinking on successful implementations? Which ones work best?

Here is a selection of learning policies I've seen in practice I would be interested to hear which ones have been successful for you.

"The Sales Director tells everyone you must complete this course"

Mandating Course and Self Assessments is effective in maximising attendance or completion, but will not maximise business results on it's own. Compulsory completion can also have the side effect of 'closing the mind' in sales people as they're being told what must be done.

Pros: Great for increasing completion rates

Cons: Does not guarantee business success

Other options:

1.Optional sales attendance
2. Attend only if minimum knowledge and performance criteria haven't been met.

"You can only gain access to the experts once you understand the basics."

Specialist Course or Subject Matter Expert Access access restriction is simply becoming a tool to minimize the huge burden on the experts in a company. The people with all the knowledge on particular topics are become an automatic first choice for sales people to get answers from… even when they should know the answer themselves. To reduce their workload answering basic questions, restrict access to subject matter experts or specific classroom courses until they have reached a minimum knowledge level through online course material.

Pros: Increases sales competency and minimises work of knowledge experts such as Product Managers and Presales

Cons: Can be seen as ‘red tape’ barrier to selling.

Other Options:

Use an online collaboration community to enable sales to post questions that other sales people or the subject matter expert can answer. The knowledge gets captured and creates an organizational memory.

"You need a minimum length of experience in a role to progress to the next level”

Minimum Tenure helps ensure staff have the time to apply the knowledge learned, and for the company to measure the results.
This is great to minimize churn in high churn roles where employees are inadvertently ‘trained up to leave’. Minimum tenure also help manage classroom budget cost and manages the amount of coaching time required by team leaders and sales managers.

Pros: Helps prolong tenure in high churn sales roles

Cons: Limits the dissemination of knowledge and skills into stratas of sales people.

Other Options:

Fast track high performing staff identified as high performers.

"Demonstrate you understand this by presenting to us.”

Proving Knowledge through peer presentation can be a great way for the individual to reinforce learning by verbalizing content while, if coached, also helping with presentation skills.

Pros: 90% of content presented or played back is retained in the memory

Cons: The team gets one persons view of the knowledge that may not the correct view.

"The difference between an amateur and a professional is an amateur practises until they get it right. A professional practices until they can't get it wrong.”

Intensive development through weekly boiler room sessions where each sales person completes an online course, discusses their thoughts with their team and share their learning with invited guests eg; tech staff,support staff, Product Manager. They then put some of their new found knowledge into use by roleplaying the key learning points.

Pros: encourages team building and motivation

encourages debate

brings in tech staff and support staff without relying on them for training.