Page 106 - The Creative Training Idea Book Inspired Tips and Techniques for Engaging and Effective Learning

lucas chap 03 11/20/02 11:46 AM Page 95
Setting the Stage for Learning 95
at point-of-sale locations). They also send out surveys via e-mail or mail. In addition,
customers often write to comment, compliment, or complain about service or a specific
employee. All of these types of feedback can be invaluable in analyzing how well par-
ticipants are performing on the job and when determining future training needs for in-
dividuals or groups.

Performance Reports
An additional source of needs feedback is employee performance appraisals. By exam-
ining and analyzing the reports of session attendees and other employees with similar
job descriptions or at similar job grade levels, you can gain a perspective of how well
your learners are performing compared to others. You can also potentially identify broader
organizational training needs.
In addition to performance appraisals, you should examine organizational perform-
ance reports. Documents such as sales and customer service summaries, internal em-
ployee satisfaction surveys, and internal and external customer satisfaction surveys offer
a wealth of valuable training need information.

Focus Groups
You can also use focus groups, as you did before training. You may want to use the same
people from the pretraining groups in order to close the loop on their ideas and opinions.
Such people can be helpful in determining how effective their ideas before the session
were in meeting training needs. Their feedback can be useful in increasing their knowl-
edge and awareness of the complexities of the training process, providing feedback to
them, and potentially in gaining their future training support and involvement.

PUTTING YOUR BRAIN TO WORK: ACTIVITY
Think about post-session follow-up efforts that you have seen used in the past.

What strategies were employed to get feedback and data?

Do you think that those initiatives were effective? If so, in what ways? If not, why not?

How can you use post-session assessments in the future to improve learning quality in your sessions?