Welcome to Step 2 in our process for creating a great training program at your organization! Step 2 will be covering the actual formation of your training program, which is deciding and planning what you’ll be doing before you set your organization in motion.
Part 1: Deciding why you’re doing it!
Knowing *why* you’re doing something is usually covered *after* the other “W”‘s (i.e., who, what, when, where, why), but at Edmego we know “why” is actually the most important question. Why would you implement a great training program? To reduce (training) costs, and get a high return on your (human resource) investments, of course! It’s a given that your employees need to know basic information to do their jobs, and if they’re lacking any of the basic skills or knowledge required to do that job properly, it’ll cost your business (a lot of) money in some way or another.
One of the larger, less-emphasized reasons to have training is **to reduce the liabilities incurred through a lack of a training program**. We live in a litigious society, one in which people will see a slippery mopped floor and *try* to break their back on it, or goad good people into messing up. When humans mess up (as they tend to do) lawsuits will cost your company loads of money unless your (expensive) lawyers can prove that your employees were taught to avoid such a scenario. Avoiding just one legal loss can pay for your entire training program for years (or a few months, if you’re sufficiently large, or if you use a competing LMS).
Part 2: Deciding the “Who?”‘s of your training program
The next also-important part of implementing a great training program is deciding who’s in charge of implementing it. If you’re using Edmego LMS, we’ll work with your implementers to ensure that your training program is implemented properly and that you’re satisfied, unlike many LMS’s where you’re expected to implement everything yourself. Also, a LMS isn’t going to replace your current trainers–it’s simply a tool to reduce training and logistics costs, and multiply the number of people they can train effectively.
In addition to knowing who will be directing it, knowing who will be the beneficiaries of the system is also important–that is, who will be receiving and benefitting from the training. In a broader sense, everyone inside and outside the company–workers, managers, executives, shareholders, customers and the general public–should benefit from the training that the trainees receive, but here we’re talking specifics. How much training does a sales clerk need? Do the executives need training? How about company contractors?
Part 3: Deciding what training you’ll be providing, and where it’ll come from
While you *could* order an LMS and just use some of the features, your training program should probably have content loaded on it. The next big question is what the training will consist of, and where it will come from. Examples of training content include simple auto-progressing PowerPoints, professionally-voiced SCORM-compliant slideshows with quizzes, mixed content such as videos and worksheets, live or recorded training seminar videos, and so forth. e-Learning tools and terms will be covered in more detail in Step 3, but knowing what training you want comes before knowing how to acquire it: You can make the training content yourself and upload it to our LMS, you can purchase general training from third party companies specializing in its creation, and you can use training which we provide in our training packages. Also consider who in your organization will be getting the training–Department A and Department B could get their own specialized training, in addition to a few base courses that every department receives.
Part 4: Determining when the implementation will be completed
Many of our clients, before they started with us, had been metaphorically running around with their hair on fire for months without any results of a proper training program to be seen, before the executives stepped in and told them to get their *stuff* together. We know how long it takes to implement a training program for clients of all sizes, and our clients are consistently happy with how quickly their programs take to launch. Regardless of the LMS you choose, however, you still need to have an idea of how long launching your program will take. Consider these questions which can affect the time-to-launch: How large is your organization? What training will you need to use, and, if you’re not already using one of our pre-loaded courses, is it in a format ready for the LMS? Do you have a database or list of employees and roles ready for our automated account creation?
Stay tuned for Step 3: Terms and tools available for online training!
