Developing Effective Training Programs. (Educational Update)

Introduction With continued advances in technology, markets become more competitive and management expectations of performance efficiencies increase. No business enterprise can maintain the status quo and improve processes without concerted effort in spearheading innovative change in the pursuit of quality and efficiency. As with other realms of business, there is a considerable body of knowledge to acquire to meet the performance demands of research administration. Research Administrators (RAs), familiar with the cycle of proposal development to program close-out, must be responsive to changes in policies and procedures in their university and department, and must be aware of federal regulations and modifications of sponsors' guidelines. Furthermore, there is a continual need to communicate policies and processes between business administrators, principal investigators, and the research staff. The result is a constant learning curve for both junior and senior research administrators. Training initiatives must prove their worth and are often among the first functions to be sacrificed during economic slowdowns. To survive in such an atmosphere, training must emphasize skills and the acquisition of knowledge in direct support of performance goals. Not only can effective training promote productivity, it can foster personal and professional development, contribute to the progressive organizational environment, help boost productivity, and promote employee morale. Grant (US News & World Report, 1995) notes: Motorola has the most comprehensive employee training programs of any US corporation, and as a result has boosted productivity 139%, sales 18% and earnings 26%. Courses at Motorola University are geared to business strategy. Every employee receives a minimum of 40 hours of instruction per year. Every business, including research administration, has performance issues, but the dilemma of optimum performance is universal. How can the quality of training be enhanced? How might training needs be accurately determined? What training methodologies are most appropriate for different learning objectives? When is training the proper intervention for productivity or efficiency issues? 'What factors influence training besides the material and the trainer, and what control could there be over these factors? The first step in developing a successful training initiative is to consider the issues that influence its effectiveness. Needs Assessment If you do not know what you need, you will not get it. Identifying a need specifically enough to develop initiatives to resolve problems takes expertise, time, resources, and support. Take the example of a headache--just as physical symptoms can have complicated causative factors, so do performance issues in the workplace. Thus, the first step in considering the implementation of a training program is a thorough evaluation and the development of a specific plan for intervention. Consider the example of a department accountant team member who attends Cost Accounting Standards (CAS) training on three separate occasions. Two of the instances are informal informational sessions and the third is a bona-fide workshop complete with additional resource references. Still, after having repeated exposure to the concepts of CAS and to the processes by which the institution responds to these standards, the accounting staff member continues to have difficulty in applying the concepts to work tasks. Specifically, the fiscal technician continues to make errors in allocating expenditures to the appropriate direct (i.e., award) versus indirect (i.e., departmental overhead) accounts. Further consideration reveals not so much a lack of understanding of properly allocating expenditures, but considerable indecision in. confronting the principal investigator (P1) with previous and current inappropriately allocated charges. In this example, all the CAS training in the world would likely not provide the staf f member with the authority or fortitude to inform or challenge a Pi about how award Funds should be spent. …