From virtual instructor-led training (VILT) to eLearning to virtual reality (VR), there’s no shortage of training delivery modalities available to choose from. This means that determining which modalities are best for your programs can be a challenge — especially as advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) continue to bring innovative delivery options to the market.
In this episode of The Business of Learning, we spoke with Lauren LePage, a learning designer at Chick-Fil-A, Jeffrey Dyer, CPTM, a senior technical training manager, and Valerie Marsh, CPTM, director of learning and development at Jushi, to learn more about:
- How to select the right delivery modality for your programs.
- How to create a blended learning experience.
- How technology is impacting training delivery.
Listen now:
Additional Resources:
- Glossary Entry: Blended Learning
- Article: Moving Beyond 70-20-10: 3 Factors To Consider When Choosing L&D Modalities
- E-Book: What Learners Want: New Strategies for Training Delivery
- Article: Maximizing Engagement in Digital Blended Training
For more tips on selecting training delivery modalities, download the complimentary infographic below:
The transcript for this episode follows:
Speaker 1:
Welcome The Business of Learning, the learning leader’s podcast from Training Industry.
Michelle Eggleston Schwartz:
Hi, welcome back to The Business of Learning. I’m Michelle Eggleston Schwartz, editor in chief here at Training Industry.
Sarah Gallo:
And I’m Sarah Gallo, a senior editor and your co-host.
Michelle Eggleston Schwartz:
We’ve come a long way in how we deliver training. With advancements in learning technologies and most recently in artificial intelligence, there’s no shortage of delivery modalities out there to choose from. From virtual reality to mobile learning and much more. But with the welcome modalities to choose from, how can you determine which ones are the best fit for your programs and how can you combine multiple delivery modalities to create a blended learning experience? To answer these questions and more, we are here with Lauren LePage, a learning designer at Chick-fil-A, Jeffrey Dyer, a Certified Professional in Training Management and a senior technical training manager, and Valerie Marsh, a Certified Professional in Training Management and director of learning and development at Jushi. Lauren, Jeffrey and Valerie, welcome to the podcast.
Jeffrey:
Thank you.
Lauren:
Thanks for having us.
Valerie:
Thanks for having us.
Sarah Gallo:
Yes, welcome. Well, before we dive into some of those very pressing questions Michelle just posed, I think it’d be helpful if you could each share your own definitions for training delivery modalities, as well as some examples of popular ones being used right now.
Valerie:
I’m happy to jump in on that one. At Jushi, we’re currently doing a train the trainer program, so we are teaching our boots on the ground trainers about the different training modalities. Starting with instructor led training, which I think is what pre-COVID most people were used to that classroom-based training, virtual instructor led, which is the way most of us have gone since COVID, where we’re doing some kind of live but online training. And then there’s eLearning training, which usually comes through a learning management system or a third party training program, something along those lines. And then obviously if you combine any of those, it’s a blended training program, which is generally what I look for. I believe we are more effective when we blend our training.
Jeffrey:
I would add to that wonderful definition in the modalities. I would add that eLearning has multiple levels. So you have your level one, which is equivalent to just flipping through a PowerPoint slide on your own. A level two, which might include a little bit more interactivity on that slide. And you can completely do that utilizing PowerPoint or Google Slides at that level. Level three where you start getting more interactivity, you start getting assessments in, you start probably including audio voiceover. And then level four where you’re building fully immersive training simulations for the user.
Lauren:
I love that. I would just add, I think of it in terms of synchronous and asynchronous of that instructor led. So that’s kind of usually my go-to of, “Okay, does this have to be scheduled or can it be more send them a video, send them eLearning type thing?” So that’s kind of how my brain breaks it up to help define that.
Michelle Eggleston Schwartz:
Great. I’d love to hear which modalities you’ve used throughout your career in training. Are there any that you found to be more effective than others? I’d love to hear your experience.
Jeffrey:
I’ll jump in there. I think I’ve used them all. I have been an instructor speaking in front of a classroom full of people. I’ve been an instructor sitting in front of a computer monitor and teaching 200 people remotely across multiple states. I have also built all those same trainings from the ground up as well as I’ve been building web-based training level three and level four web-based trainings since 2013. Mostly using articulate storyline and quite a bit of JavaScript on the backend to make things do what I want them to do. So I’ve kind of had my fingers in all of those different pieces.
I think that the biggest question I always ask myself though is what’s the cost to benefit ratio? I can build something amazing and I can maintain that amazing thing, but can the guy sitting next to me or the woman sitting next to me maintain it when I leave or when I promote into a different position? And I’ve been in situations where someone’s come to me with this convoluted training and said, “Can you fix this thing?” And I have to say, “No, but I can rebuild it for you.” And that’s a lot of cost to the company. That’s a lot of money being spent and wasted. So just because you can doesn’t necessarily mean you should is the biggest thing. I think taking away from my experience there.
Lauren:
When I started training, it was always the demonstration, imitation, repetition process of instructor led going through that. And then I was brought on to manage the LMS where it was just pamphlets, how-to instructions, videos, and then we moved to eLearnings, getting graphics in there. What have I found to be more effective really for me has been finding out what the root cause is of the problem that they want training to solve. So it kind of depends, and it depends on the audience. I wouldn’t say there’s one method that’s superior to another. Your learners are going to be all across the map with whether they want to hear it, see it, listen to it.
Most people just need the hands-on and just need to get in there and practice. So it’s kind of more just how do you build that environment for them and kind of thinking more what do they need to retain the information versus this is a cool new technology. We can throw VR at it and they are at it. But really it’s more about the retention for me.
Valerie:
I second that wholeheartedly. I always hate when someone says, “Well, how do you think we should do this training best?” And I say, “Well, let’s talk about what this training is and what you need.” And Lauren said, get to that root cause of why you need a training. So I always say back it up to do a needs assessment. At Jushi, everyone knows if they need a training, they have to submit a ticket, that ticket comes to me, and then we schedule a needs assessment call. And I determine first and foremost whether training can even address the problem because I think that’s a big thing. We all hear, “Well, something’s gone wrong. We need training.” Do you? That’s always my question. Do you need training or is this an employee issue?
Is it a systems issue? Is it a process issue? Those things can’t always be immediately fixed with training until they’re addressed. Training might be needed on the backend of that, but that needs assessment to me determines what modality of training is used. And then just like Lauren said, Jeffrey, you said this too, I don’t think that it’s all about the fanciest, coolest, most flashy thing you can do. We can build highly, fancy TV production level training, but if a one-page job aid used during a standup huddle meeting would effectively get the same information through, why spend the time building something that you could easily just do a boots on the ground, quick five minute micro-learning kind of an environment?
So I think it’s important to do that needs assessment, understand what your needs are, and then really target the training for what needs to be done and is it a training that’s needed tomorrow and it’s going to be a one and done, or is it a training that you’re going to use forever? All of those things determine the best modality.
Jeffrey:
Adding on to that, I would say that you really have to have a good understanding of your audience. You have to take the time coming into a new position. I was with a utility for years, and there’s a very specific way that they do things and they’ve been around for a hundred years. And there are people who have been working with that utility for 50 years since they graduated high school. And so they’re very set in their ways. And then I moved into the technology field and they’re all about fail fast, try it out, see if it works. Let’s try the technology approach. And I ran into a problem where we had a group of people who were coming in from the trucking industry.
They were safety drivers of class eight semi-tractor trailers, and the last thing they want to do in their life is sit on a computer. They picked driving for a reason. And so I had to come in and once I met with them, I realized it didn’t matter what the company wanted. It wouldn’t be effective if there wasn’t someone for them to talk to. Everyone wanted to do web-based training because you could build it, you could get it out the door quickly, usually with some of the rapid development tools, but the drivers hated sitting there on their computers. So you have to be able to go to your leadership and say, “No, this doesn’t work for this group. Even if it costs us more money, even if it’s slower, we need to go this route because it’s more effective for the learner.”
Valerie:
I agree 1,000%. In the cannabis space, I would say 85 plus percent of my employees do not sit at a desk, not in front of a computer. These are cultivators, manufacturers. If I’m outgrowing cannabis, the last thing I want to do is come in and sit down in front of a computer and do an eLearning. And they just don’t learn that way. Most of these folks got into this space because they didn’t want to go and get a doctorate level degree or something along those lines. So meeting them where they are is so vital and they will tell you what they want and how they want it a lot of times. So it’s listening to them as well.
Sarah Gallo:
Considering that audience is so key. I want to circle back to something Michelle mentioned earlier, which was around all of these advancements that we’re seeing in technology right now that are kind of fueling what you call, Valerie, these really fancy trainings out there, especially when it comes to artificial intelligence, which is impacting our field, corporate training, just like it is really every other field out there. Could you each share more on how these advancements and technology are really shaping and really evolving the way that we deliver training?
Lauren:
I can start. This is something that I’ve been extremely excited about. I think it is going to be a game changer. Because right now, I feel like a lot of my audience is Googling things. They’re really savvy in searching for things, and they’re always on the road and even in the restaurants, they’re just so busy. It’s like, “I need the information. I need it right now.” I think AI could really, really help with that, really help ease that stress of, “I got to look something up.” And I think it’ll really make that search very easy and make the information just right at our fingertips.
So the only thing, and I know there’s a lot of controversy around this too, is we don’t know what the magnitude of this and what it will bring legally and all that. So just kind of keeping an eye on the technology and how we can leverage it and stay safe with that.
Valerie:
I think as excited as I am about a lot of the changes because, again, I’ve been around for 30 years in the L&D space. So I started with overhead projector slides, y’all. That’s how old I am, and then PowerPoint came along and I thought that was fancy technology. So I’ve been through all of that, and then the LMS is coming on and now with AI and ChatGPT and all of it. But what I know in my space especially with ChatGPT, I have this, “Whoa, whoa, whoa. I want to wait.”
Because the information out there online specifically about cannabis is so wrong and often propaganda based, that if we were just allowed our learners to use something like ChatGPT to learn about a specific aspect of our industry, it would nine times out of 10 be wrong information. And so recently when I attended [inaudible] I specifically went to sessions about AI and ChatGPT because I wanted to learn more myself. But one of the most exciting things I did learn was about the capability to build your own internal ChatGPT, leveraging your own training content, your own SOPs.
And then I went, “Okay, yeah, I would be on board with that 110%.” But to go out and pull stuff off the web and bring it back, for us, it would just be wrong. So we’re not there yet.
Jeffrey:
To add into that, I’ve spent a lot of time talking to a lot of people both in the corporate world as well as in education, from the elementary school through the university level. And the key piece that comes in is AI gives you information, but it doesn’t know whether that’s appropriate, it’s not the right term, but it’ll do for now because I can’t think of a different term for it. It’s not capable of telling you that this is the right one. The example I was talking, it’s actually human to human, but I was talking to an engineer and they had this person come in, it was a spreadsheet.
They were using Excel, and Excel came back and the engineer was reviewing their work and they said, “Why did you have this beam be 37 inches deep? Why is it so big?” And I said, “Oh, that’s because that’s what Excel told me that needed to be.” And the person said, “Well, is that even reasonable? Think about it. Go to your training. Does this seem reasonable to have more than three feet of beam here for the space that we’re in?” And the person said, “Well, no, but that’s what Excel told me to do.” So I think where we have that same issue we need to address in ChatGPT or any of the other large language models where you need us as learning professionals.
I can take… There are websites utilizing the LLMs that will write you an assessment. You give it your article, you give it your job aid, you give it your training material and you say, write me a 100 question multiple choice assessment, and it will do that, but at best it’s a rough draft. You need to have a learning professional come in and look through and say, “Is this even a reasonable question?” And then that’s what you present to your SMEs and say, “Okay, now we need to validate these questions.” I don’t know enough working with trucking. I’ve never been a truck driver. I need a truck driver to come in and tell me I would never do that. This is how I would address this problem.
So that’s sort of how we need to approach it is these are tools, but humans are still the creative force and we’re still the knowledgeable force and we need to be the subject matter expert for the computer before we ever send anything to our line of business subject matter experts, because otherwise we’re going to look like fools when we meet with them.
Valerie:
Absolutely. I think that’s why it’s so important to still have the professionals on board because in my industry, for example, our regulations sometimes change daily. So what you would find out there wouldn’t even be correct. So I agree with Jeffrey. I look at anything that any kind of AI technology would give me as a very rough draft, and then I would tear it apart and still send it to a SME and have it go through a review process before it ever went out.
Sarah Gallo:
I think that really is hopeful too, right? For L&D leaders and for our industry, that human element is so, so needed and that’s not going away anytime soon. I guess next off, do you each have any tips on how to begin utilizing technology, whether it’s AI or an LMS or an LXP or any type of learning technology to deliver training? Do you have any recommendations on just beginning that process?
Valerie:
I’ll start. I have implemented an LMS for my past four companies. So similar to Jeffrey, these were industries that had been around for quite a while, folks that weren’t used to using technology. So I think you have to step into it carefully. You have to, again, as we’ve repeated quite a bit today, know your audience. What are they ready for? What are they capable of handling? If you’ve got someone like in my past position where this was an asphalt company. So these folks are out literally on the road laying down asphalt.
Again, they’re not in front of a computer, but also many of them don’t even have smartphone technology. So how do we get them in front of an eLearning or any other kind of technology-based learning? And I think as I still talk to the learners, most of them want to be in a classroom. For some reason, that’s where they’re still comfortable. They feel like, “I will get the most out of it that way.” And one of the things that I’ve been working with my team at Jushi on a lot too is recognizing the neurodivergent learners.
So we’ve got those folks that have a lot of different neuro diversities where we need to take those into account when we’re considering different types of learning modalities and how do we present the content to them.
Lauren:
I love that. That’s what I love about the blended approach, making sure that you have all those different modalities in there and really just thinking about where they’re going to be using this and applying it. So that’s why I’m like, people get really stressed out about this new technology. “I need to use this, I need to do this.” Where it’s like, think about your learner. Take a deep breath, think about your learner. Think about what they’re going to be doing day to day, think about what they need, design it, then find the technology that works the best for it. Technology should be a tool that we use to benefit the learner and for them. So that’s what I would have to say on that one.
Valerie:
I think saying technology is the tool, is the best statement made so far. It is a tool, but it isn’t the only tool and it’s not the only way to present learning content. I love that.
Jeffrey:
I will say there are technologies that we need to advocate for within different industries. Thinking to the driving industry, vehicle simulators can shave a lot of time off of training. That’s money, right? That’s time you can save. I did a lot of research. I was pushing a company that I was working with to go this way, and they kept bulking at the cost because each simulator was going to be a hundred thousand dollars. You need to drop a million dollars here, but look, you’re going to save $3 million over five years. But it’s that sales piece that you have to do. This is a technology… It’s just the next step from a technology that’s been around since the 1930s. We have these different steps.
Sometimes you have to advocate for new technology. You have to be able to look and see… Thinking to virtual reality, working in the utility industry, there are situations you don’t want to put a person into intentionally, but you need to train them how to work within those situations. And an instructor led can get you so far, you can build a ditch and put a person in it in controlled situations, but you can’t make the bad things happen where you could in a virtual reality simulation have a gas leak and have to have them get out of that trench and even make it like a little game, “Oh, I’m sorry, you’re dead now let’s restart. Let’s look at where you made your mistake.”
So I think there’s a lot of value in some of these pieces that we need to not dismiss because of the cost and not dismiss because it’s new. I know I said earlier, we need to take our audience into consideration, but sometimes you have to drag your audience with you. One of my coworkers used to finally say, “Our job is to take the clipboards away and teach them how to use the computer.” And you’re never the popular guy when you go in and you take the clipboard away, but that’s sort of the step you have to take sometimes.
Valerie:
I think VR is one of the things that I’ve looked at a lot for any kind of OSHA safety based training. To me, that’s one of the technologies that makes the most sense because just like Jeffrey said, you can put them in scenarios. You could never put them in safely in a real world environment. But in my industry, working at heights, working in confined spaces, those are things that VR would be immensely helpful in from a training perspective.
Sarah Gallo:
We’ll be right back after a brief message from our sponsor.
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Michelle Eggleston Schwartz:
Why is it important that L&D professionals take a blended approach to training delivery utilizing multiple modalities? I know we already touched on this a little bit earlier where you shared the need for blended learning and just how valuable it is. I’d love for you to expand a little bit more on that and share any recommendations you have for delivering an effective blended learning experience.
Valerie:
I’ll jump in because I’m going to get a little nerdy here. Ebbinghaus taught us about the forgetting curve, or some people flip it and call it the learning curve. But we know in any scenario, no matter what type of learner you have, no matter their neuro differences, iterative learning is important and we have to reintroduce topics as much as possible. And so to me, blended gives you that kind of naturally. You get to do an eLearning and then maybe do an on-the-job training and then have something an instructor led, Q&A session afterwards. That just reinforces that learning and gets you past that forgetting curve where first time I learned something, I’ve forgotten 75-95% of it and then those just decrease but you’re not doing the same training over and over and over again.
Because that’s what I see in a lot of industries is, “Oh, these folks don’t remember how to use fire extinguishers. So we do this fire extinguisher training five times a year.” And I’m like, “Well, if it didn’t work the first four times, why are you doing it a fifth?” If you take a blended learning approach and let them do some self-guided training and then some Q&A session and then some live training where they’re actually getting hands-on experience with a fire extinguisher, for example, that is a much more impactful program than just any one modality for anything that you teach.
Jeffrey:
I would say sort of building on that, I’ve seen great success working within that multiple modality spread over time approach. But also one of the benefits of eLearning is you can build an assessment to reinforce what someone doesn’t know. To your fire extinguisher example, I’ve seen so often where 25% of people forget how to use it, so we’re going to put a hundred percent of the people through this training. And you end up getting very resentful people. I mean, it’s bad enough that the government says that we have to sit for an hour and a half in some trainings, and you get to the end of the WBT and there’s this big countdown timer that says, “You have 15 more minutes left. Don’t turn off the screen, or you have to start over.”
That’s bad enough. Our hands are tied in those situations. But being able to address what the learner needs, being able to build a pre-assessment that says, “Oh, you already know 98% of this. Let me just review with you this 2%.” That’s you. Me, I sit down and say, “You don’t remember a thing? Let’s redo this training and go over from the beginning.” You’re addressing the individual need of the learner at that time, and you’re saving the time and brain power of everyone else, and that saves time and money for the company in the long term where you just, “I didn’t need to take all this, but I did need the small piece of it.”
Lauren:
I mean, I honestly really have nothing else to add to that. I love that.
Valerie:
I would say I think in my industry, we have the problem of states mandating X number of hours of this training, and I always work very hard with the states to say, “Come into the 21st century.” It’s not about one hour of training on fire extinguishers. It’s about effective fire extinguisher training. And so like Jeffrey said, if I’m someone who came from a background where I use fire extinguishers every day, why do I have to sit through an hour of fire extinguisher training? I should show my knowledge, show that I know how to use it, and then I am [inaudible] check, training passed. But we still have this very antiquated thought that learners have to do this.
I have to sit in a classroom, in my industry at least, because we are monitored in many states by the Board of Pharmacy, and for some reason, the BOPs can only think about a classroom that you sit in for an hour and are taught by a teacher. And I often have to have conversations that are like, “This is the 21st century. We can absolutely do this in a, and it might take them 20 minutes.” Or we could pre-assess folks that have been in the cannabis space long before it went federally… We’re not federally legal, but long before it went state legal. They were in what we call legacy cannabis space. I don’t need to teach them how to propagate a plant. They’ve been doing it long before corporate cannabis was doing it.
And so I think we as learning and development experts, that’s where we come into play a lot of times is by bringing the world into the 21st century of learning and understanding that even what is currently being done and of a lot of our secondary and post-secondary education is not even effective. And we have to, in the corporate world, go the next step and say to train these adults effectively and efficiently. There are multiple ways to do that.
Jeffrey:
I’ll jump in and add, you’re going to the secondary and post-secondary education piece. In the utility industry, there are a lot of jobs that require you know algebra, I mean basic algebra. You need to be able to… There’s physics that they’re doing. They’re testing a pipe for corrosion, and that involves running a current along it. And so many of the people… It’s simple substitution. It’s this times this equals this, but they memorize it for solving each… They memorize it as three different equations because they don’t understand. So often we have to go back and reteach things, and it’s always the question that the math teacher gets in junior high and high school, when am I ever going to use this?
There’s never a good answer to that, right? Everyone’s like, “Well, you never know when you don’t have a calculator.” And everyone pulls out their phone today. Because everyone has a calculator, and that’s not the answer. But it’s that step of, I don’t know what job you’re going to have, but that job might need this. And that’s where L&D professionals need to come in and say, “Hey, remember in high school when you asked that question? Well, I’m the answer.” Now you need to know how to do this. So those steps and doing that is so important for the learner and for the company, and you have to be able to address the person where they’re at because you might hire someone to do the job who just graduated from a junior college with associate’s degree in math.
They don’t need the math class to do that job anymore, but you might have the 50-year old who’s been with the company since he was 18 and he doesn’t remember algebra, and you now need to teach him to do that job. So you really have to get to the learner and address their need and just meet people where they’re at. And that’s where blended learning can be a huge help. You can do that pretest, you can do whatever you need. And you could even flag it in LMSs today. If someone does really poorly, you could flag and say, “This person needs an ILT.” And enroll them into the ILT and create these custom paths.
Michelle Eggleston Schwartz:
Those are such good points that L&D really needs to meet learners where they are and do those knowledge checks and assessments and really determine where they are to more effectively and quickly move them along in their learning journey, not hold them back necessarily. I’m wondering if you have any tips for L&D professionals to determine the best delivery modalities for their training programs?
Jeffrey:
My first tip is know your learner. When working as a training manager, I have a number of senior instructional designers under me, and then they all have teams of designers under them. And I’m always saying, “Why are your people not in the truck? Why are your people not in the field learning how to do this job?” You need everyone who’s working within a space to know that space. It gets complicated If you’re working with vendors who are the people building your training for you. You have to know that it’s going to cost you money to put them in the field for them to learn, and there’s not going to be development happening.
But there’s so much value in getting to know the people you’re working for, not the people who hired you to build the training, but the people who are going to consume that training. You need to understand them to be able to even know what the first best step is.
Lauren:
And building off of what Jeffrey was saying is, it’s different than listening to them saying, “I learn best in the classroom.” That needs to be broken down. Because you could get to, “I learned best in the classroom because that’s dedicated time I have to focus on this where I’m not getting pinged all the time, or my manager sees this time blocked out where I can actually learn.” Because that’s where the self-guided learning kind of falls flat is because really the learners are like, “This would be great if I had time for it.” It’s kind of getting to the root cause of knowing your audience as well there of, do you learn best in the classroom or do I need to have a chat with your people leader and really break down where do you learn best and how can we make that space for you to learn best, is what I would say.
Valerie:
I agree. I think I was just going to take one step backwards from where both of you are, which is the needs assessment. And I think that’s so important because nine out of 10 learning development teams that I’ve ever stepped into or been involved in are what I call order takers. And so the business comes to them and says, “We need training for this.” And they go, “Okay,” and they build the training and then something goes wrong. And then guess what? L&D gets blamed because, “Well, the training didn’t work.” And I always say anytime I start at a new company is you’re going to learn that I will not allow myself, [inaudible] if I’m a one person L&D team, which I’ve been for many, many years, or now where I do have a team, I will not allow us to be order takers.
Yes, we are going to partner with the business, we are support for you and we are going to be here, but as the experts, I also need you to trust me when I sometimes might say, “You know what? Training’s not going to fix this problem.” And then let’s talk about what will, because a lot of times, like I mentioned before, training will come on the back end of that. So if you need to fix a process or you need to fix a system, then you need to train that. Those things have to be done first before the training will ever be effective. And so I think it starts with the needs assessment.
Jeffrey:
I would say the needs assessment, absolutely. You need to also be very methodical in your building training design. You need to have a full job breakdown, right? Once I know what I need to train, I need to sit down and I need to break it down, and I need to put the time in to say, “Okay, how hard is it to do this thing? How often do I have to do this thing? And how dangerous is this thing to do? And do I get a chance to stop and reference?” If something’s super easy to do, but I only do it once a year, but I can stop and look at a job aid, that’s what I should build you because having that job aid will give you what you need.
If I do something every day, but if I do it wrong, I’m going to kill myself. Then whether it’s easy, medium or hard to do, if death or dismemberment is a result of this thing, then I need to build the training differently. I need to make sure you’re getting hands on under observation. Now I’m thinking to the tow truck operator and hooking up that car and pulling the lever that lifts the car. On paper, that looks really simple, but if you mess that up, that could have disastrous consequences. So once you know that there’s actually a training need, you have to slow down development and be able to come back and say, “You know what?
Based on what we’ve observed on this situation, the DIFF analysis.” I always had it as the DIFF analysis when I was being trained. Difficulty, importance, frequency and I forgot the other F. I added an I. Can you take the time to stop and read because I can do something different than… There are things that once you start, you can’t stop. You have to keep going. I worked in food service for the longest time. And changing the oil, the minute you open that spout, that hot oil is coming out. You’re stuck. So you better know what you’re doing before you get there. So your approach just has to be so different depending on that.
And you learn that when you get your instructional designer in the room with the subject matter expert. So you have to be able to stop training development, do an evaluation before you ever start talking about what the training’s going to look like. You need to know what you’re going to build.
Valerie:
I think the best example is in a previous company that I worked for, they were going to implement what’s called the seed to sale tracking system, essentially. So you have to track the product just like you do with meat or anything else. From the moment it is manufactured to the time it goes into the consumer, it must be tracked. So in the event that something has to be recalled or there’s an issue, you know exactly where that animal or that plant or whatever it came from, that’s vital. And so at a previous company, I got brought on board because they had attempted to launch this system for three years unsuccessfully. And I was told it’s because the training isn’t right.
And so I was like, “Okay, well then let’s figure out what’s going on because my training team had never been involved.” It had been all of these third party vendor kind of trainings that were done. And I said, “Well, let’s step in and find out what the problem is.” And the first meeting as I’m listening, I said, “Okay, what I need right now, can somebody show me the process workflow for this seed to cell system? So what happens when I put that plant in the soil? How does that go into the system all the way to when it walks out the dispensary door in a patient’s hand? What does that process look like?” It was like crickets in the room. And I was like, “Well, wait, what?” “Oh, we don’t have that.”
“Okay, well, what about SOPs? Just a standard operating procedure for each step along the way. What does that look? I’ll build the process workflow, right?” “Oh, we don’t have that.” Well, guess what? Your problem’s not training. Your problem is yes, you might have this fancy multimillion dollar system right now, but no one knows how to use it because it hasn’t even been set up to work effectively within your organization. And so just like Jeffrey mentioned, I had to say, we kind of have to stop and go backwards. We’ve got to build those SOPs and those processes. And then as we did that, what we discovered is, guess why it wasn’t working? Because they had decided how it worked in cultivation.
They decided how it worked in manufacturing, but no one had realized there’s a gap jumping from cultivation to manufacturing, and no one knew what to do with it. So it just got stuck there. And then everybody kind of looked the other way like, “Oh, I don’t know what to do with that. That’s not my problem.” And that’s really not a training issue. That’s a process procedural issue. But it got identified because L&D finally got involved, and we said, “We can’t build.” Jeffrey, I think you said this earlier, we’re not the SMEs. We’re the SMEs of learning and development, but we’re not the subject matter experts for what we’re training. So we rely on them.
And when you identify those gaps, then it becomes that epiphany moment of, “Oh, yeah, I guess we do need sobs. I guess we do need process workflows. We do need job descriptions to determine who’s doing what along the way. Then we can train it effectively.”
Jeffrey:
And to add onto that, I can’t tell you the number of times that I’ve been in a meeting because something’s about to get launched, and I’m the only person who stopped and said, “Did anyone think about what this means to the person who’s going to have to do this in the field?” The engineers come up with this grand idea. The CEO loves it, the leadership sign off on it, the software people go out and they buy it, but not one person stopped to think what the impact is when it hits. And so often it’s me saying, “Have you thought this through?” And nine times out of 10, the answer is, “No, not really.”
It’s like, well, I can’t build you something until we know what the impact’s going to be. So I need you to okay me to sit down and present this to the SMEs of the people who are going to be doing this, and I need you in the room with me because I’m not going to be the one getting yelled at.
Lauren:
I can totally relate. I used to be a technical writer, and so I would sit down with the SME and they’d be like, “Okay, this is what we’re rolling out.” And I’d be like, “Okay, what are the steps?” And so I would write it out, and then I’d find myself, well, I’m just going to make them up because they don’t really know and I’m just going to be super creative and then make up this grand process, send it to them, and then they look over and they’re like, “Oh, we need to change this.” And so it’s almost like they need a starting point, L&D to come in as the experts of what the learner needs, what the end user needs, and then they can react to that.
And it’s really hard, I’ve found with a lot of SMEs to think of that without someone saying, “See these big giant steps that are just made up? We need this.” Your user’s going to ask about this.
Sarah Gallo:
Well, on that note, I think we’ve shared so many good takeaways from all of you. L&D really is not an order taker. It is that true business partner and considering what your learners need. It is really key when it comes to delivering any training. So with that, Valerie, Lauren and Jeffrey, thank you so much for speaking with us on the podcast today.
Valerie:
Thanks for having me.
Jeffrey:
Thanks for having me.
Lauren:
My pleasure. Yes, thank you.
Sarah Gallo:
How can our listeners get in touch with you if they’d like to reach out?
Valerie:
For Valerie, they’re welcome to reach out to me on LinkedIn. I am out there on LinkedIn, or they can email me directly at vmarsh@jushico.com.
Jeffrey:
And for Jeffrey, you can also find me on LinkedIn and you can also email me directly. This one will be actually not a company email, but dyer.jeffrey.m@gmail.com. That’s M as in Michael.
Lauren:
And for me, Lauren LePage. You can also find me on LinkedIn, and my email address is Lauren.lepage@cfacorp.com.
Michelle Eggleston Schwartz:
To learn more about training delivery modalities, visit the show notes for this episode at trainingindustry.com/trainingindustrypodcast.
Sarah Gallo:
And if you enjoyed this episode, let us know. Leave a review wherever you listen to your podcasts. Until next time.
Speaker 1:
If you have feedback about this episode or would like to suggest a topic for a future program, email us at info@trainingindustry.com or use the contact us page at trainingindustry.com. Thanks for listening to the Training Industry Podcast.
