Workshop training can save an organization time and money, and offers long-term performance benefits because of the special emphasis on practicing skills and transferring them to the job. More efficiently than many other methods, workshops can close the gap between desired and actual job performance, and are most valuable if practical and relevant to both organizational and individual training needs. They concentrate training within a minimal time frame of 40 hours at most.
What's the key to creating an effective workshop? Designers and facilitators should focus on jobspecific objectives benefiting both employee and employer, and should always include participants as resource persons in both the planning and the delivery of training.
Workshops generally provide training in three areas—knowledge, skills, and attitudes—and can be designed and delivered in-house by company staff, or custom designed by outside consultants and conducted in their facilities. But experts agree that the most effective workshops are those that involve participants and their managers and supervisors in the planning, from preliminary or preworkshop stages through the workshop itself and the follow-up phase.
Early input from these groups ensures that the training will directly address trainees' specific job concerns and needs. Two ways of acquiring input are: discussions of the training plan among workshop designers, facilitators, managers, and participants; and questionnaires or surveys on their expectations and objectives.
This issue of Info-line covers successful methods and techniques for planning and conducting workshops, gathering data for drafting workshop plans, designing the workshop format, and preparing leaders and facilitators to motivate participants and help them to accomplish objectives.
The most important aspect of workshop design is the planning phase. Front-end work involves comprehensive needs assessment studies involving surveys, interviews, and both structured and unstructured observation. As the workshop progresses, planning remains a vital process of the experience. At every stage of the workshop, from preworkshop planning through follow-up, designers and facilitators must be prepared to make changes and make new plans to better meet learners' training needs. Here are some guidelines for wise planning:
Define the need. Identify training needs from perceived job behaviors. Bring managers and participants together for preworkshop meetings to discuss needs and agree on action plans.
By studying the audience profile, determine whether participants will need briefing or preworkshop activities to be prepared sufficiently for the activities, exercises, and information. During preworkshop planning, obtain input from participants by verifying their needs, expectations, and experience.
Set the program objective. Define practical objectives based on training needs. Write objectives clearly in terms of expected behavior changes during the workshop. Develop a budget and determine the maximum amounts of time and money needed to best support workshop objectives. Also, develop a strategy for presenting and selling your budget to management. Present your workshop to line management for review and make adjustments based on managers' recommendations.
Determine workshop subject matter content. Select activities and exercises to support workshop content. Draw up a schedule of the various sections of the workshop in sequence.
Concentrate on designing activities that are as close as possible to actual workplace conditions and organizational issues. In organization-centered workshops, clarify roles and responsibilities. In workshops that focus on individuals, concentrate on what action must be performed, how to undertake it, and when it is necessary or appropriate to do so. Arrange activities, exercises, and information in sequential order from either simplest to most complex, or the order in which they occur on the job.
Consider program delivery. Put together workshop materials and presentations, obtain media equipment, visual aids, etc., and select the training room and facilities for the best seating arrangements and space to support workshop objectives. (For an in-depth treatment of media, see Info-line No. 8410, “How to Prepare and Use Effective Visual Aids.”)
Provide for ample participation. If appropriate, organize participants into job-related groups during the workshop. Throughout the workshop, encourage participants to suggest ways of applying workshop objectives in their particular job environments. Encourage them to state barriers to expected job performance and to think of ways to overcome them.
Evaluate workshop effectiveness. When the workshop is over, hold meetings between participants and managers to discuss the action planned and management approval. Evaluate the workshop in terms of results and learner improvement, paying close attention to whether participants achieved the workshop objectives. When participants are back on the job, follow up the training with sessions or meetings to work on newly acquired behaviors.
Determine needs by picking up clues in the workplace. Observe the workforce in action and listen to their concerns. New technologies or plans to automate can create a training need by changing the nature of an employee's job. Executives and managers may discover performance problems during appraisal periods and productivity research.
Early in the workshop planning process, consult with learners in order to respond to their needs and maximize the relevance of the training. Ask them for specific input on what the content should be and how the workshop should be structured.
Pay attention to organizational needs. To make sure the training addresses them, consider the following issues: Is the workshop practical? Can the learning be put to use immediately? Is it relevant to the company's daily activities, to the organization's environment and culture? Does the instructional design process involve learners as resource persons?
Give your workshop draft this test for practicality: Look at the training from the learner's perspective. Does the draft address the particular performance problem or skill deficiency? Does it give you answers or tools to achieve the solution? Take a relevance test: Look at the workshop from an adult learner's perspective. This particular group of learners focuses on immediate and practical solutions to on-the-job problems. They want on-target training, especially when it takes time away from their jobs.
If you're designing training to make changes in organizational practices and elements, think of how the workshop should address current communication styles and procedures, processes for establishing objectives, methods for involving departments, relations among departments and between superiors and employees, employee attitudes, and procedures for resolving conflicts.
Make sure the workshop covers key issues by gathering data: Use a poll to get managers' views, conduct formal and informal interviews, and hand out surveys and needs assessment instruments. (For more details, see Info-lines: No. 8502, “Be a Better Needs Analyst”; No. 9401, “Needs Assessment by Focus Group”; No. 9408, “Strategic Needs Analysis”; and No. 9611, “Conducting a Mini Needs Assessment.”)
Use an open-ended interview style to uncover hidden issues that may not be revealed by the workshop designer's structured question/answer format. Encourage interviewees to discuss what they like best and least about their jobs and about the workplace. Listen closely to their comments and suggestions for clues that reveal training needs. Use instruments for sensitive issues that may be hard to discuss face-to-face. For example, managers may feel more comfortable filling out a questionnaire on values than discussing this topic.
Involve participants in workshop design. Seek their input and be sure your design is flexible enough to accommodate their ideas. This establishes ownership and a reason to buy into the training. Participants can give designers valuable information about their training needs, their jobs, and the workplace.
When you've established the basic purpose for your workshop, use a variety of methods to involve participants in the planning and design phases.
Give participants questionnaires about their expectations of the workshop and a list of possible training objectives. Explain that these forms will ensure their input in preworkshop planning.
Provide managers and participants information from the questionnaires and the list of preliminary objectives. Managers need this information to approve the training, and participants need to know what to expect and how they can contribute to the plan.
Revise the preliminary objectives of the workshop according to responses to the questionnaires. Use results of tabulated surveys to establish final objectives and to plan the type and sequence of the learning activities. When there isn't sufficient time to follow this course, the plan for learning activities can be presented to the managers and participants along with the questionnaires and lists of objectives. In this case, the respondents should be told to limit their changes to a minimum.
Consult with managers. They are usually closer to employees than trainers and designers, and, for this reason, are able to help you match your design views with employees' expectations.
Schedule a time for managers and participants to get together to discuss the workshop plan.
Once workshop designers determine participant needs, analyze organizational needs, understand participants' expectations, and gather all the necessary data to begin constructing a final design, they are ready to establish workshop objectives, the measurement by which participants assess their progress during the workshop and the basis for evaluating the workshop at its completion. Follow these guidelines for writing effective objectives:
Use objectives to impart the organization's purpose for conducting the workshop.
Write statements that clearly describe the desired behavior participants should be able to demonstrate at the end of the workshop.
Identify those behaviors as evidence that participants have achieved workshop objectives.
Describe criteria for measuring acceptable performance, specifying degrees of acceptability.
State clearly what you expect participants to be able to do and describe the conditions under which they are expected to perform. For example, given the number of publications you are expected to produce under tight deadlines, and the amount of projects you're assigned on short notice, be able to draft a schedule for producing and distributing by January 1 the company's report to investors.
Use action-oriented words like compare, contrast, solve, identify, and write rather than vague ones such as understand, know, and grasp.
Write objectives that are easy to demonstrate. (For a more in-depth treatment of objectives, see these Info-lines: No. 8505, “Write Better Behavioral Objectives”; No. 9110, “Measuring Affective and Behavioral Change”; and No. 9512, “Transfer of Training: Making Training Stick.”)
Ideally, workshop instruction moves from simple concepts to complex ones, from helping participants become familiar with ideal behaviors to making them competent. To progress from introductory to advanced stages, structure workshops according to four major learning levels: knowledge, comprehension, practice, and performance. Each level requires a specific method of teaching.
This segment of the workshop provides participants with information about specific objectives and standards for learning. Tools for communicating this knowledge include films, tapes, panel discussions, readings, and lectures.
To completely understand the instruction, workshop participants need to be able to make associations and connections between their current behavior and new behaviors being taught, to relate the workshop content to current and future job-related behaviors. Tools for this aspect of the workshop include demonstrations, simulation, and dialogue.
On this level learners try out the new behaviors. Practice opportunities help them begin to accept and apply what they've learned. Teaching tools for this level are straightforward activities and exercises. During this preliminary application stage, it is very important for workshop leaders to give participants strong and positive reinforcement.
Tie the learning levels to job transfer by using action planning during the workshop. Give participants assignments and exercises to encourage them to plan actions they will take to change their on-the-job behaviors by using the new skills and knowledge they have.
To help transfer skills, create an atmosphere of reality in the workshop environment. Use simulations and role plays and make sure all training content is job specific. The workshop must relate directly to organizational concerns and targeted results.
Ensure that participants will apply the new behaviors by consistently providing positive reinforcement. Managers, supervisors, workshop leaders, and other administrators participating in the training should make a special effort to applaud good behavior and offer positive feedback when needed.
Take a practical approach, making sure the workshop actively involves participants and maintains a sharp focus on applying new behaviors. Encourage positive attitudes and high levels of skill and competency. Acquiring new behaviors depends more on these elements than on knowledge and understanding.
The following are steps individuals undergo to change their behavior:
Recognize the significance and value of changing the behavior.
Determine which behaviors must be changed and how to go about changing them.
Learn new behavior patterns.
Test these ways by practicing them to find out which get the best results and are the most appropriate in different situations.
Get feedback on the new behaviors. Find out how others respond, and consider their suggestions for improvement.
Use positive reinforcement to build on good behaviors and develop performance confidence.