I work for a small company and am a one-person training department. Our 13 locations are spread across a major city and contain between 2-4 person teams. It is quite difficult to be everywhere at once and address the needs of each individual & thier stores. I am looking for advice that can allow me to make the trainings count, per say. Each location is recieving the needed skills and knowledge, but I am not seeing the transfer from skills to behavior to performance to achievement the way I would like. Our current education schedule looks something like this: Training session (classroom, on-the-job interaction, role play, simulation, assessment), then about two weeks later (after I get to the rest of the locations) Follow up - Q&A about specific issues and possible resolutions. Where can I add on to be more effective, or what can I improve upon to be more productive with the time I have? Any suggestions are welcomed.

Mike,
Is any training, coaching or feedback occurring within the 2 weeks after you 'leave' them? Training should not end after you are completed with them as they need to apply the information continuously throughout their job. This is not necessarily from you but more from their Supervisor.

Are they being measured on their performance for the first 30,60,90 days and communicated what the expectations are?

You can't do everything - although it seems like you are the one-man travelling show. This may not be a Training issue - may be something else but the only way to find out for sure is to do a Needs/Gap Analysis.

The answer to your first questions is probably not to no. Our managers/supervisors although involed with the training do not feel that it is a job requirement of thiers to follow up on job training. That I guess is my biggest issue, looking forward, is getting the managers to continue to educate and develop thier staffs on a per office basis.

I think we just identified my performace gap issue with the first question.

Although some on the forum disagree wholeheartedly with me on this, I'll say it anyway. Trainers should not depend on supervisors and managers to do any training. It's nice to put that off on them, but to actually put that into practice is next to impossible. Every manager I know has far more to do than be a trainer. After all, the job title is "supervisor" or "manager" - not "trainer" - and for good reason. You are the trainer so the responsibility rightfully belongs to you to follow up with the people you have trained. If the training and follow-up are done properly, that is all you can do - period. The rest is up to the learners - and they are of course influenced positively or negatively by specific demands on their time by management, the working environment itself, their own intrinsic motivation, performance expectations, etc., etc.

As for the performance gap, I don't know what it is, but it is not lack of "training" by managers.

It's a curious thing - how trainers ever got the idea that it is the manager's fault if the learners don't use the info they learned back on the job. It's pie-in-the-sky to believe that. It's a nice idea etc., but it is not reality.

I do want to disagree that managers/supervisors, etc. can not be apart of the training process. The Reason: If the managers/supervisors do not use the learning or demand the use of skills to be different than what was taught, then the learning will not take hold. The managers need to be the reinforcement for the skills learned by providing feedback, direction, and accountability to the staff to utilize the materials and skill sets taught to them from the training sessions. I can't be in 13 places at once, so therefore, I must rely on the managers to continue the learning process after our session is complete.