For companies without a training department, finding the “right” trainer within an organization to train the novice is one of the main challenges of staff training. A professional trainer is equipped with many years of training or teaching experience. Therefore she has the right skill sets to conduct training courses.
However when we assign the training task to a senior staff member to train a new employee, we are assuming that if the senior staff member can do her job really well, she can train someone else just as well. The senior staff may be very good with her work, but it doesn’t make her a qualified trainer. Another challenge is that the trainers may pass along some bad habits to the trainee.
The next option is hiring external trainers to facilitate the training. Such individuals might be experts in their fields and have a wealth of knowledge to share with the trainees. However, the external trainers may not be familiar with the processes and working practices of the organization, or even with the equipment in the organization.
With the evolution of technology, some of the above internal training issues can be overcome. The training lesson can be recorded in advance (eg podcast). The recorded material can be vetted by the manager in an organization before being releasing the learning material to the staff. In short, the manager has full control over the training curriculum and learning experience of the trainee.
Another benefit of the podcast is that the senior staff does not have to be tied down the entire day with the trainee. It allows the senior staff to carry on with his day to day duties. In the meantime, the trainee has the flexibility to view the podcast repeatedly or anytime and anywhere, if necessary.
Finally, the training material can be broken into chunks, eg by topic, tasks, etc, enabling the trainee to digest the new information. According to research, chunking of information results in higher retention.(Dashe & Thomson, 2014).
In short, when it is used appropriately, technology can provide efficacy in training more so than the traditional training models.
Reference
The Power of Chunking: How To Increase Learner Retention. (2014, June 12). Retrieved from
Dashe&Thomson: http://www.dashe.com/blog/learning/chunking-memory-retention/