Thanks ahead of time for any help that can be provided.

I am working with an in-house two week sales course that incorporates pre and post work as part of the training. Sales associates are flown in from around the country to attend. Not sure if it is a helpful piece of the puzzle, but the main audience are recent college grads, 21yo, and embarking on first professional employer.

Current prework includes a conversation with mgr about expectations during the training, conversation with mgr to articulate branch specific protocol on various issues, and accessing online training resources (to be used in the course). The post work reinforces the training content once back in the branch on various topics covered. Most of it is designed as a conversation with the participants manager.

The reason for this post is that we are in the initial stages of revising the pre and post work to be of greatest benefit to learning, time, efficiency, practicality, etc.

Does anyone have successful experiences with pre and post work for courses you are working with currently? Also, how does anyone feel about tracking the completion of both?

All/any advice, suggestions, comments appreciated.

Tyler

Absolutely we do.

What we try to do is use classroom time for discussion and application. We try to give very little new content in that setting. It's mostly a waste of time.

So what goes into the pre and post work is the content and reinforcement of the content.

Confirm- we use this extensively. Not only to optimize the use of class time, which includes quite a bit of material being covered so the class reviews/reinfoces/provides practice for key concepts, not introduce the concepts initially.

Key to pre- and post- work success seems in my org:
1. Accountability- if they won't do pre-work and aren't "qualified" to attend class, don't let them drag down those who did the work.

2. SUPPORT- Managers sometimes aren't good trainers/coaches/mentors on certain topics. And in some decentralized operations, one manager's perspective may differ from what the company's core message might be. Thus, I highly recommend giving a lot of documentation/structure/support to managers participating so they know what to do and stay well-aligned (but not scripted/totally constrained) with the core company program. Suggest asking for their input as well- you learn much from the front line to improve your program.