Proof: how will you make sure your trainees are meeting their performance standard?

      It’s always important for trainers to know their training is effective, and there is a growing focus on the different levels of evaluation, from the “smile sheets” we give out at the end of a workshop to a full financial return on investment - and beyond!

      For environmental trainers, there is often an additional impetus, which is the need for compliance monitoring to ensure that organizations are meeting their legal obligations under environmental laws. Many are required to monitor their own compliance with various operating permits, and environmental regulators often have pollution hotlines or well-publicized phone numbers for the public to report matters of interest from smoky vehicle exhausts to over-use of water. Some also have formal systems for regular inspections of activities of particular concern.

      Effective environmental training is only one part of a wider environmental training program and such programs need to be set up so that their outcomes and effectiveness can be evaluated. This needs to be done right from the very beginning of any program. Likewise, the level of compliance with your environmental performance standards or guidelines will be part of your assessment of the effectiveness of your training. 

      A number of people in the training profession have identified seven levels of evaluation of the effectiveness of training. Levels 1-4 are from Donald Kirkpatrick, Level 5 is from Jack Philips and Levels 6 and 7 are from Alastair Rylatt – the sources are listed below. The seven levels are:

• Level 1 – Reaction: Did they like it? 
• Level 2 – Learning: What did they learn from it? 
• Level 3 – Performance: What can they do as a result of it? 
• Level 4 – Results: Was the training worthwhile? 
• Level 5 – ROI: Did it produce a financial return on investment? 
• Level 6 – Sustainability: has it become ‘how we do things around here’? 
• Level 7 – Sharing the benefit: how is this helping others and the planet? 

      So there are two layers of “proof” or evaluation: effectiveness of your training; and effectiveness of the wider environmental management program to which your training contributes. 

      Regular site inspections will give you good information for both - and in many jurisdictions, the costs of these inspections can be recovered from the organization holding the relevant environmental permits. From an environmental regulator's point of view, this is good news: the funding doesn’t come out of rates!

      How does this analysis work if you are a corporate or not-for-profit interested in environmental training? How does it work if you are an environmental regulator?

This blog is the last in my series of Top Five Tips for people starting to think about setting up or expanding an environmental training program. The other four were on Partnership, Personas, Performance and Process.


What’s your hot topic for environmental training? Contact me here or make a comment below and I’d be delighted to respond with some thoughts.

The information in this blog is drawn from comes from Chapter 6 and part of Chapter 8.3 of my book ‘Seven Steps to Successful Environmental Training’. Thanks again to the New Zealand Association of Training and Development, from which I’ve learned so much about training evaluation; and as always to Ann Andrews for encouraging me to disseminate this material more widely.

The three sources of the seven levels of evaluation are (1) Kirkpatrick, Donald, 1998, Evaluating Training Programs: the Four Levels. Berrett-Koehler Publishers Inc. San Francisco; (2) Philips, Dr Jack, 1997, Return on Investment in Training and Performance Improvement Programs. Butterworth Heinemann; and (3) Rylatt, Alastair, 2003, Beyond ROI – seven levels of evaluation. An article in People and Performance, the magazine of the New Zealand Association of Training and Development, June 2003. 

Process: exactly how will you deliver your environmental training?

      When most of us think of training, we automatically go back to the crowded classrooms of our early educational experience. But these days, training can be delivered in many ways, most of them much more effective than a noisy room. 
      Options for how and where you can deliver your environmental training include:

• ‘classroom’ style at a venue suitable for interactive workshops
• field visits to an operational site
• the trainees’ own workplace 
• electronically, with synchronous and/or asynchronous delivery, or training that is delivered live at agreed times, or can be accessed at times that suit the individual trainee during work or other time.

      The first two options are classical ‘off-the-job’ training, taking place out of the normal workplace. This allows trainees to get away from work and concentrate more thoroughly on the training itself, as well as to meet new people who may do things differently in their workplaces. This type of training is thought to be more effective in inculcating concepts and ideas.

      The third option can involve formal and/or informal on-the-job training. Formal on-the-job training is often associated with gaining a qualification and usually involves the trainee carrying out normal workplace tasks with the usual equipment, systems and documents, with the help of their training materials. Such on-the-job training is generally regarded as being as most effective for vocational work. In many workplaces, informal on-the-job training is often done in on-site ‘toolbox’ meetings held every day or once a week, and can be very effective at raising awareness and skill levels.

      Electronic training (‘pedagogy empowered by technology’, as Mark Nichols calls it) is technology-supported training where the medium of instruction is computer technology, which is naturally suited to distance and flexible learning. Often called e-learning, it can also be used together with face-to-face teaching as a ‘blended learning’ solution. It can be used for informal training and also as part of gaining a formal qualification. 

      E-learning or training is text-light, image heavy and interactive, so it’s great when people are poor readers, bad with numbers or learning in a new language – all very common workplace issues. It's also great when:

• large numbers of people are involved
• working people need to study in their own time
• you want to give your learners regular positive feedback 
• large distances make it hard for everyone to get together. 

      Your choice of training delivery method will depend on a range of factors including:

• the numbers of people to be trained and how widely dispersed they are
• the preferred learning style for each target group, as indicated by your persona and interview work 
• any practical constraints, e.g. any preferred time of day and the length of time trainees can be released from work to attend training 
• the availability of suitable and affordable training venues
• the availability of field sites for theoretical activities and active construction sites willing to allow visitors 
• transport requirements and costs
• your overall budget and the involvement of other parties.

      Can you see the relevance of your work on Partnership, Personas and Performance to informing your choice about how to deliver your training? What thoughts do you have about what would suit the situation facing you and your partners?

This blog is the fourth in my series of Top Five Tips for people starting to think about setting up or expanding an environmental training program. My last blog was on 'Performance' - and there is one more tip to come!

The information comes from part of section 2 of Chapter 7.2 of my book ‘Seven Steps to Successful Environmental Training’. Some of the material was drawn from Wikipedia at http://bit.ly/o6vFhn. I am indebted to many excellent trainers who have addressed these questions through the New Zealand Association of Training and Development and to Cheryl Regan and Innovaid, with whom I’ve developed interactive e-training. Thanks too as always to Ann Andrews for encouraging me to disseminate this material more widely.

Performance: exactly what do you want your trainees to do?

      The first hard question to ask yourself before you invest a lot of time in researching the benefit of an environmental (or any!) training program is: “Is training the solution to the problem?”

      It’s no use making people attend training workshops if you can’t clearly define the training objectives and outcomes, or if workplace factors make it too hard for trainees to apply what they learn.

      The first of these relates to issues in your workplace; the second to issues in those of your trainees. I'll focus just on the first - it's the sine qua non of good training.

      Training won’t solve your problem if you can’t define the environmental performance gap in terms of what actions people need to change or acquire: trainees must have a clear definition of what they need to do. 

      But, yes, training can be the solution to the problem or part of the solution when you can carry out a training needs assessment and clearly define the following factors in measurable terms:

• what’s the desired environmental performance?
• what environmental benefits would flow from that level of performance?
• what’s happening in terms of the activities of interest and their environmental consequences? Where is performance below ideal? Who is performing well, and how do they do it?
• what’s the performance gap? Can it be defined in measurable terms that training can bridge?
• what’s the cause of the gap? 
• what new practices will bridge the gap to the desired performances and outcomes?

      If you have a new performance benchmark like a new guideline that clearly specifies the standard of environmental practice required, then appropriate training will help people step up to the new mark. 

      But if you have no clearly defined performance standard that the industry can meet, such as a guideline, you need to create one or adopt or adapt someone else’s before delivering any training. Without this, training won't be able to solve your performance problem.

      When developing a new performance benchmark, remember that ultimately, the success of your training comes back to Partnership: if the wider industry you’re working with understands the importance of better environmental performance in legal, business and environmental terms, its members will do their best to support application of the new performance standards on site. 

      In sum, training will be part of the solution for your environmental problem when you win support for the training initiative and its new practices and desired outcomes from the relevant internal and external players, thereby ensuring good workplace support for your trainees.
      What performance standards or guidelines do you have or could you develop on which to base your environmental training?

This blog is the third in my series of Top Five Tips for people starting to think about setting up or expanding an environmental training program. My last blog was on "Personas" - and there are two more to come!


The information comes from part of Chapter 5.1 of my book ‘Seven Steps to Successful Environmental Training’. I am indebted to many excellent trainers who have addressed these questions in the New Zealand Association of Training and Development. Thanks too as always to Ann Andrews for encouraging me to disseminate this material more widely.

Personas: how to characterize your trainees and make your training the best they’ve ever had!

      The better you can characterize your trainees – your target audience – the better your training will be. In your thinking about the environmental issue you want to address, you will already have done a lot of good work: you will have seen exactly who does the things you don’t want done and who doesn't do the things you do want done. You’ll already have a great idea about who or what empowers or disempowers the skilful actions you want them to carry out. So what else do you need to consider?
      A useful trick to really understand your target audience is to use personas. (Having done Latin at high school I would prefer to say ‘personae’ – but the term has been anglicized, so let’s go with the current professional usage.)

      A persona is someone you invent to represent the real people who make up the target audience for your training. A good way to generate a persona is to base it on a real live human being that you know. Can you clearly bring this person to mind? Can you see them? Can you hear their voice? 

      Working with your persona, you can ask yourself questions about their workplace, attitudes and actions, their goals, desires and fears, their likes and dislikes, limitations and constraints. What are their physical, educational, personal and social characteristics? What is their experience? How willing are they to learn? What sort of learning situation would best suit them?

      Personas can also be synthesized from data collected from 1:1 or panel interviews, to help you more accurately represent your real group or groups of target audiences. Capture the information you need in a narrative about your persona: this can be anything from a couple of paragraphs to a 2-page description. Add a few fictional personal details and maybe even a name (keep it respectful, as this will set the tone for your training!) to make your personas become more realistic characters. 

      You may need to create more than one persona within each target audience, but one is best. This will help you pin down his or her training needs more tightly.

      Their strengths may be very different from yours, so if you feel awkward and unsure about trying to come up with a kinesthetic method rather than a visual/auditory method, this is a good thing: it’s a sign you’re stretching your comfort zone. Be aware that as you develop your personas and they take on their own life, you may start to feel uncomfortable as you realize how much you need to change your own preferred way of delivering training in order to meet their particular learning styles. Not all of us have had happy learning experiences in classrooms!

      Conversely, if you are cruising along with a comfortable formula, ask yourself if you are really tailoring the training delivery to meet your trainees’ likely learning preferences. Some people will learn the same way that suits you best; others won’t. Mix and vary the methods, seek feedback and stretch and grow as a trainer!

      If you do this thoroughly, you will end up with training that is truly user-centered. What a wonderful training experience it will be!

This blog is the second in my series of Top Five Tips for people starting to think about setting up or expanding an environmental training program. My last blog on 'Partnerships' was the first - and there are three more to come!

The information comes from part of Chapter 7.1 of my book ‘Seven Steps to Successful Environmental Training’. Some of the information about personas is drawn from Wikipedia at http://bit.ly/o3PEw4. I am indebted to my friend and colleague Christine Heremaia of Good Causes Ltd for this reference, and to some of my colleagues in the National Speakers Association of New Zealand who also use and recommend this excellent method of understanding your target audience. Thanks also as always to Ann Andrews for encouraging me to disseminate this material more widely.

Partnership: the genuine article means doing environmental training WITH your stakeholders - not FOR them or TO them

      Last night in a mentoring session with the wonderful Ann Andrews, she asked, "If you had someone from your target audience right in front of you, what are 5 key tips you would like to give them?"
      Having something of a thing about alliteration, I came up with 5 Ps: Partnership, Personas, Performance, Process and Proof. I'll write about these over the next five weeks - starting today with Partnership.
      I believe with all my heart - and every bit of my experience tells me it's true - that partnership is THE fundamental platform of an environmental training program (and probably every other kind of training program, as well!). 
      Q: How soon is too soon to approach your stakeholders about your training ideas? A: It's never too soon. Whether you are an in-house or external corporate trainer, a government agency or a not-for-profit, start talking to your key internal and external partners while the idea is still a sparkle in your eye. That way, they will appreciate that you are genuinely seeking their involvement as a partner in developing a training program that will work for everyone. 
      This is especially important when there is a legal compliance aspect to the training: for example, helping people do restorative stream bank planting does involve delivering training to help them gain maximum plant survival rates and the ecological and other benefits that will result. Most such programs are supportive, incentive-based programs and your trainees would not be subject to enforcement if they didn't do any planting at all, or didn't do it as well as desired. By contrast, unauthorized discharges of sediment or other contaminants are illegal in any environmental jurisdiction, so any training partners carrying out activities that pose such environmental risks are potentially exposed to enforcement action (I'll talk about this more in "Proof" in a few weeks time). Involving them as genuine partners from the earliest stages of your thinking will make it more likely that the desired Performance and training Processes are workable and endorsed by the industry - something that will be crucial for uptake of your training.
      I've seen two compliance-based programs go down different tracks in a way that clearly demonstrates this. One was initiated in full partnership with the industry and 20 years later, is still thriving, with the industry itself embracing the benefits of good environmental performance and continually striving to raise the bar. The other was a "top-down" model where the standards were imposed on the industry with little consultation, and over 15 years later, is still mired in legal disputes and cynical compliance.
      It's a no-brainer that partnership is a good idea. Why not jot down right now who your key internal and external partners might be, and how you might approach them?
      
      By the way - the glitches on my website have now been ironed out - but we've discovered that some organizations' firewalls prevent people from signing up for the free ebook - this is the first stage in accessing the free resources that go with the "Seven Steps" book. If you have any trouble, please email me, because I can sign up for you, and you can then go on to a page called "My resources" and download all the free resources that go with the "Seven Steps" book.  
      And if you have been trying to pay for a copy of that book (thank you!) the purchasing system is now fully enabled.... 
      Click here to find out more about Ann Andrews' website: it's chock-full of wonderful training and other resources.