A recent article in HR Magazine (HR Magazine, January 2012, Low-cost safety training, by Angela Collis, SPHR, GPHR) suggested that if an employer can’t afford to send all the employees to safety training, that a low-cost approach would be to send one and let that one teach the rest upon return to work.
Although that may sound reasonable, there are some considerations from a training standpoint to consider, too. Research conducted by the National Training Laboratories (NTL) identified average training retention rates by method of training/teaching used and discovered this:
- Teach Others or Use Immediately = 90% retention
- Practice by Doing = 75%
- Discussion Group = 50%
- Audio-visual = 20%
- Reading = 10%
- Lecture = 5%
Professional experience tells me that non-professional trainers may:
- Show what to do without explaining «why» and providing documentation.
- Provide little or no instructional material.
- Not follow a logical learning sequence.
- Use jargon and acronyms without defining their meanings.
- Be nervous and not able to communicate effectively.
- Not be consistent over more than one group.
- Not have a way of measuring learning.
- Tell all they remember but maybe not all the essentials.
- Not be able to teach effectively concepts they may not thoroughly understand. (Repeating is not teaching.)
If the NTL study is accurate, then the best results you can expect from this low-cost method is probably high retention by the temporary trainer (90%) and minimal (5%) by the audience. However, an effective way to make the most out of this low-cost approach and still gain the maximum retention is by a technique called TRIPLICATION.
This is a three-step process of teaching and learning:
- The trainer performs the activity and explains to the trainee what they are doing.
- The trainee performs the activity while the trainer explains what they are doing. (The trainer «talks them through it.»)
- The trainee performs the activity and explains to the trainer what they are doing.
An easy way to remember this is:
- You do, you say
- THEY do, you say
- THEY do, THEY say
If the designated «trainer-upon-return» is aware of this method before going to training and know they are expected to use it during their training-everyone-else sessions when they get back, the retention rates of the attendees will be much higher than by just sitting through a required lecture from someone who may not really want to do it.
Finally, since documentation of learning (not just sitting through training) is so essential today, it would be smart to have a short, written test with multiple choice or fill in the blank answers afterward with a passing score required.
This way, essential documentation exists that a person was there and did learn something. In these days of increasing litigation, an employer can never have too much documentation that they acted proactively in training their employees.