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Getting Ready for Global Training
by Steve Rosenbaum and Jim Williams
 
As it appeared in the ASTD OD/Leadership Newsletter
 

The Challenge

In a global economy, training needs to be able to be moved, replicated and broadcast anywhere in the world, often at a moments notice.  While there are certainly culture and language issues to be addressed, the real challenge lies in the systems, processes and infrastructure used to develop and deliver training.  If these systems and processes are informal, vary from project to project or are simply broken the result will be a hodgepodge of training that is difficult, expensive and in effective to move from location to location.

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For example, a lot of job related training is never written down.  In some instances an expert with a stack of PowerPoints presents this training in a classroom.  In other cases, there is no formal training because there are only a few new hires at any time and it’s easier to do on-the-job training.  Now through expansion or outsourcing you have to train 50, 100 or even a 1,000 new employees.  Are you going to send your expert around the world with a translator?  Is you expert even available for extensive travel?  How long will it take to build training where nothing currently exists?

 

How about driving all that training into some type of Elearning?  Since very little if anything is written down, you have long development cycle ahead.  Some job training requires a lot of hands on coaching and practice.  As a result, Elearning simply won’t be sufficient to get your new workforce up to speed. 

 

Also it’s not uncommon for growing companies and especially larger companies to have different soft skills programs in different location.  Instead of having one problem solving course, every business unit has its own. This is certainly more expensive and fails to build a common culture across the organization.  However, because training often gets decentralized or the responsibility of business units, this duplication because the norm rather than the exception.
 

The Solution

In getting ready for global delivery of training, there are six major areas to consider.  The first is to create and gain agreement on a set of learning principles that can be applied across the organization.  No matter where training is delivered these principles are applied to ensure that training is cost-effective and really works.  Principles are really pre-made decisions about who does the training, how and where training happens, how training is measured, and how training is developed.

 

For example, a principle could be that you are going to develop training that is job specific but buy generic soft skills from a vendor. Another principle might be that managers need to be directly involved in the development and delivery of training for their staffs. In a sense, you are articulating what you know works from a training standpoint and insisting that everyone follow these rules. 

 

Second, the set of principles you develop will help you establish standardized tools and templates that will help in developing and distributing just in time training.  For example, if you decide to do a lot of knowledge training online, you don’t need to design a new web site for each piece of training.  It’s easier to create a framework for knowledge delivery and then content is simply dropped into this template.  While this may seem graphically boring to the developer, it’s easier for students to know how to go through lessons, how to take tests or where to get help. 

 

The same tools and templates can be developed for all forms of training and assessments.  Often this doesn’t take a lot of work but rather requires picking one way of doing things rather than many.  Third, there needs to be a strong level of measurement rigor.  If you don’t know if a program really works, why would you send it half way around the world?  With each program there should be a measurement of proficiency and a measurement of how long it takes to reach that level of proficiency.  For example, if salespeople currently reach proficiency in six months with the current training program, it’s important to look at how to reduce that time before shipping the training elsewhere. In any case, it’s important to look at real numbers that relate to performance not just opinions.

 

Fourth you’ve got to get the content written down.  Most instructor lead or expert led training is still a stack of PowerPoint.  You can’t be instructor independent if all the content is still in someone’s head.  In addition, you can’t go to Elearning or some other form of self-study without a good way to capture content.

One of the most effective ways to capture expert content is to tape record and transcribe expert presentations.  The transcripts can be cross referenced to each PowerPoint slide or actually placed in the notes section. You also find that screen capture videos are a great way to record transactions and even customer calls the way the experts do them. 

Fifth, you need to evaluate all training to ensure that the delivery method is the best suited for the task.  On a global basis decision about language and bandwidth also need to be accounted for.  For example, classrooms are not the best way to do knowledge delivery.  Classrooms are better for application and practice.  Moving content out of classrooms into self-study is make global delivery easier but it’s difficult if things aren’t written down.  You’ll find that you can move a lot of these decisions back into your learning principles so that these decisions can be made quickly.

Sixth, you need to evaluate the core soft-skills programs and select one model for each.  Selecting vendors that have programs that are already in Elearning or have a high level of self-study should be favored.  If something isn’t unique to your organization it’s better to buy something off the shelf and save your development resources for company specific training.  You might want to consider vendors who already have experience in the global arena so that many of the important issues are already solved.

 

Conclusion

Getting ready for global training is all about establishing a foundation and framework for training that enables you to move quickly and in a consistent manner.  This involves a set of clear principles, rigorous measurement and standardized tools and templates.  Critical to making this all work is to get executive sponsorship and organizational buy-in to your approach which in turn should elevate your status as a learning leader.