Why on earth was someone trained in some important regulation but then not required to actually use it until a year later?

quote:

totally agree with KaliKo's take that it is BAD PRACTICE to just give them something to read.

Yeah - heaven forbid anyone trust working, professional adults to read and then ask questions if they're not clear on something. Silly me.

The OP did say REFESHER, did she not? Implying that at some point, this regulation was supposedly learned? Do we know that every single person is having trouble following the rules? Do we know that a refesher "training" is what will solve the problem that people aren't following the rules? And why, once again, are so many people allowing others to put the onus of accountability of application on training?

I don't know about you, LL, but if I had to do something only once a year, I am not sure I would be able to follow the rules because I would likely have forgotten them (the way it is described above). Likely not every single person. So how do you determine who does not have the skill? Wait for defects and cost the organization a bunch? Not good strategy in my book. Proactive better.

Now I like your last point - sort of. My first question is why would you have such a complicated thing laid on everyone? Why not change the org. so that one person becomes more skilled and does it for the others somehow. Why not put the onus on a better organization design rather than on training. But we don't know what the topic is so hard to really say here.

I think there is a huge gap between what the OP said and what each of us is thinking it means. I will wait until the OP returns to clarify. (Not holding my breath)

To fill you in on some of the blanks I left you wondering about...It's IRS regulations and company 401(k) plans. While the annual regs are the same for every plan, the regs for setting up each plan allows for differences best suited for the company/employees. So our employees have to know the regs. and the plan's rules and process a transaction so it is compatible with both. Our full training class is delivered just in time. Employees use what they learn at that time, but the task is a once a year requirement. By the time they do the task again, some do not remember it or try to apply it the same to every plan when each plan is different. There are online procedures giving step by step instruction which many people use successfully. Others, however, find it easier to ask a neighbor and the neighbor tells them incorrectly because they're going by what they did for their plan and it may not be right for the neighbor's plan.

And that 150 people, that is a subset of people; but I agree that it is possible to reduce it to an even smaller subset to focus on this task. It's something I can suggest.

And Ben is right...someone can suffer big losses if the transaction is not done correctly and if it's my company's fault, we have to pick up the bill. I'm not so sure it's training either. And it would be good if people would read the procedure instead of asking a neighbor. I was going to suggest the following solution, but wanted to see what others had to say before I did so. That's why I posted such an open ended question.

What do you think of this? It's not training, but a reference type of website to include:
1. A quiz for users to confirm what they know and set them straight on what they don't know (feedback with an explanation or link to the procedure). The quiz could be graded, but not recorded…more of a fun way to test their own knowledge -like the quizzes in magazines. Or a review activity (fun game) instead of a quiz.
2. Fact or fiction - a series of scenarios and user identifies if the info is complete or screen shots are accurately completed.
3. Expert opinion - present a scenario of things that commonly go wrong. User states what he would do in the situation and compare it to an expert opinion.
4. Update on what's new and what's out with the regulations.
5. A forum for discussion and help from other team members

I like the CSI idea, too. Thanks for all your input. It's very thought provoking and that's what I need.