13
Developing Knowledge, Skills, and Attitudes Needed to Support the Change
Have you ever had a simple routine down pat—something you didn’t need to think about, like navigating to your gate at the train station you commute from each day or placing an order on an app you use all the time—and then suddenly things changed? Your gate moved. The app was updated. And for a short time, until you adjusted, you found yourself devoting mental energy to a task that previously had been so easy, something you didn’t even need to think about. You might have felt mildly annoyed, unsettled, maybe even aggravated for the minutes or days it took until you settled into your new routine.
The same situation can arise in the workplace when change occurs. Your office relocates and for a few days you need to really focus as you drive there so you remember to get off at the right exit. Email software is updated and you have to think for a second or two to select the right tab to respond to your boss. “Eh, it’s all fine,” you may figure. Maybe you’re even happy with the relocation and the opportunity to use new software. But there’s still this slight feeling of disorientation as you work through the change and figure things out, even if it’s just momentary.
Sometimes the changes introduced at work are more substantial. A new leader comes on board and sets challenging new goals that require you to work in a completely different way. Your company implements new processes and technology and you have to relearn the fundamental tasks to perform your job. You might feel excited about these changes. You might have even advocated for them. But that excitement likely is also coupled with a sense of unease as you feel somewhat less than competent doing what is now asked of you. You may feel confident that you can learn the new way of working or master the new processes and technology. Or you might not. But there’s still this sense of awkwardness—this feeling like, “OK, I don’t know what I am doing now.”
In this chapter, we’ll address steps you can take to help employees navigate through this period of discomfort and awkwardness, whether it’s caused by a relatively minor change or a more significant one. You’ll do this by helping employees develop the knowledge, skills, and attitudes needed to support the change. You’ll see that your task will be to help employees build and maintain a sense of confidence that they can learn what’s needed to meet expectations in the new environment. To do that, you’ll need to understand how the change affects each stakeholder group and what new knowledge, skills, and attitudes they now need to demonstrate. You’ll need to develop a well-thought-out training plan that spells out how employees will learn what’s needed in an appropriate timeframe. You’ll need to work closely with the project leader who is managing your change initiative, so you can influence project-related decisions that pertain to what employees need to learn and how and when they will learn it.
The actions you take to address the training needs of employees may not only affect the success of your current change initiative; they can also affect the success of future initiatives. When you help employees feel confident they can master the skills required to support the current change, they develop a more generalized sense of readiness and willingness to support other changes that may come in the future.
Training Addresses the Hard Side of Change
As you and the leaders in your organization implement change, actions you take related to employee training can substantially impact the success or failure of your initiative. Here are the hard facts—indeed, the hard-side facts. Your organization won’t achieve the outcome it’s shooting for if employees don’t have the knowledge, skills, and attitudes needed to make the change happen. You won’t get the benefits you’re expecting from your new system if employees don’t understand how to use its features and functionality. Your new process won’t make things more efficient or won’t produce better customer service if employees don’t know what the right steps are or how and when to take them. Managers won’t change the way they are leading employees if they don’t have the ability to interact with them in the way you need. Employees need the right knowledge and skills to do what’s expected of them.
Training Addresses the Soft Side of Change
Employees need the confidence to do what’s expected, too. When any organization implements change, it’s not uncommon for employees to feel like they have lost their sense of competence. There’s a new way of doing things with new expectations. And it will take time for each employee to feel like things are right again—to feel like they know what to do to succeed in the new environment. Depending on the change and on the person experiencing it, that sense of loss may be extraordinarily profound. Or it may be relatively minor. But it almost always feels uncomfortable. I’ve been there. You’ve been there. Your employees and colleagues have been there. A sense of disorientation, a feeling of awkwardness, a sense of frustration about things taking more time arises while you learn how to do what’s needed to perform your job correctly. Sometimes there’s fear and doubt as you wonder if you’ll ever learn what’s needed. And that can send you spiraling downward as you begin to have questions about your job security. You may begin to wonder, do I have what it takes to succeed here now? It’s no wonder employees sometimes resist getting on board with a change. After all, who wants to feel awkward and incompetent?
The actions you and your organization take to address this sense of incompetence—to help employees feel confident they can learn to do what’s expected—can determine employees’ willingness to make the changes you need.
The Risk of Training as an Afterthought
Here’s what amazes me. Despite understanding how training helps address the hard and soft sides of change, organizations sometimes give short shrift to it as they create and execute their project plans. A project leader may tack training onto the end of a project plan, and pay little attention to it until the conclusion of the project is in sight. Or they create a project plan that allocates insufficient time to training development and delivery. As project dates slip, training is cut back to ensure the initiative still launches on time. Opportunities to embed training and learning throughout the course of the project are missed, as the project leader assumes that training can occur only via an “event” scheduled to happen right before launch. The project leader may assign training responsibilities to talent development staff who have been excluded from participating on the core project team. Operating blind, they create training programs that send the wrong message about the rationale for the change or the benefits the organization will accrue. Despite understanding how crucial training can be to the overall success of their change initiative, some organizations still treat training as an afterthought.
None of this is intentional. It happens when training responsibilities for a change initiative are “outsourced” to the organization’s talent development function so the core project team can focus on what they consider to be, well, core. It happens when no one is present, as project-related decisions are being made, to advocate for the role that training needs to play in the overall success of the change initiative. It happens when there isn’t anyone focused on learning and development who is fully integrated into the core project team.
I know from experience what can go wrong when the talent development function isn’t represented on the core project team. One of the most frustrating and challenging projects I ever worked on involved a change that should have been relatively simple and straightforward. The organization was implementing some new features in its HR system. Very easy to use, the technology would provide employees with much greater visibility about the benefits they received at the company. So far, so good. The organization decided to change one of its HR policies at the same time it was implementing the new technology. That meant employees not only needed to learn how to use the new features in their HR system, but they also needed to be able to interpret and abide by the “rules” set forth in the new policy. This made things somewhat more complex, but still manageable. What made the initiative so frustrating and challenging was that I, in my capacity as talent development leader for the organization, wasn’t brought into the loop until the very end of the project. Despite my early objections—and I probably didn’t protest enough—the project leader insisted that he wanted talent development involved only when he deemed it was time. So when the project leader finally did begin to share project details with me, the entire initiative had already been planned and most decisions had been made. The new policy had been drafted. New “rules” had been programmed into the HR system in accordance with that new policy. The project was almost ready to launch. And what I saw really gave me pause.
I saw that although teaching employees how to use the technology would be a snap, helping employees understand the new policy would be quite a different story. In the new policy, complicated rules governed how and when employees would accrue benefits. I struggled to understand how the various mechanisms of the policy worked, and I anticipated that rank-and-file employees, even after receiving comprehensive training, would struggle too. I also feared that as employees grappled with the new policy, they might begin wondering if the organization had an ulterior motive. Would employees think we were launching a policy that was intentionally confusing so managers could manipulate employee benefits to suit their own whims?
Resigned to the fact that this was a done deal, I created a series of scenarios that explained how the policy worked, and reviewed them with the organization’s vice president of HR so she could see what the training would cover. When she complained to me that the scenarios were far too complicated, we decided to review them with the organization’s division HR leaders to get their input. As we walked the HR leaders through each scenario, they responded with horror. “How can we ask the average employee to understand the new policy,” they complained, “when we are struggling to make sense of it ourselves?”
In the end, the organization went back to the drawing board, revised the new policy, and reprogrammed the HR system to reflect new, much simpler rules. But to do this, the organization needed to push back the project launch date several months. When the system finally rolled out, employees quickly mastered the new technology. They also seemed to have little difficulty understanding the “new” new policy, and few questioned the organization’s intent or integrity. So the project had a relatively happy ending. Mistakes were made. Mistakes were corrected. It cost the organization some time and some money for reprogramming. It cost me some aggravating conversations. But overall, things worked out. No harm, no foul.
What was so frustrating for me is that none of this had to happen. Talent development had been brought into the project late in the game. Training wasn’t considered until the project was about to launch. And so the project team made decisions that failed to consider employees’ ability to learn something that was so extraordinarily complex.
In this case, we got lucky. Even though the planned changes were about to take effect, organizational leaders finally saw—with some prodding from me and some support from other HR leaders—that proceeding as planned would be a significant mistake. And fortunately, they acted based on this new realization. But it all easily could have gone the other way. The leaders could have decided to proceed anyway, knowing that they were taking a gamble. And then, we could have ended up spending countless months cleaning up the ensuing mess. The delays and cost and aggravation could have been prevented if the talent development function had been fully integrated into the core project team—or at least represented on that team—right from the start.
Involve Training at the Beginning
I share this story because the same situation occurs far too frequently in organizations as they plan and implement change. As project planning occurs, someone needs to ensure sound decisions are made about what employees will need to learn, what they can learn, and when and how that learning will take place. If you’re the person assigned responsibility for developing and delivering training to support the change initiative, this means that you need to partner closely with the project leader who is managing the change initiative. You need to make sure you have full and timely access to project plans and decisions so the training you prepare is accurate and comprehensive. You need to see the stakeholder analysis (see chapter 9), so the training you create is tailored to what each unique stakeholder group will need to know and do. You need access to the communications plan (see chapter 12), so your training program reinforces and sends the same message about the rationale for, and benefits associated with, the change. And you need to make sure enough time is allocated in the project plan (see chapter 4), so employees develop the knowledge, skills, and attitudes that are needed to support the change.
The easiest way to ensure you have that partnership—with full access to all the information you need to develop appropriate training—is by participating in the core project team. Perhaps you already have been asked to wear multiple hats to support the change initiative occurring in your organization. You may be the change management leader assigned to the project, with responsibility for stakeholder engagement, communication, and training and development. If that’s the case, be sure that you, in your change management role, work closely with the project leader and participate fully in core project team meetings. Or you may be responsible for creating training and development for the change project, while another individual or team handles some of the other aspects of change management. You may even report to the change management leader for the work you are doing that relates to the change initiative. In that case, be sure to partner closely with that person to ensure your work closely aligns with the other change management tasks they perform. And see if you can attend the core project team meetings anyway, to ensure you have full and timely access to information you need to develop accurate and comprehensive training.
If you’re in a situation like I was, where, for whatever reason, you’re unable to work as closely as you need with the project leader or change management leader, or can’t participate on the core project team, ask to receive project-related documents like the project charter (see chapter 3), project plan, stakeholder analysis, and communications plan, and ask to be included on the distribution list for these documents whenever they are updated. You can glean important information from these documents that will help you get a head start in thinking about the training that’s needed.
Training Responsibilities
OK, so you’ve been assigned responsibility for training and development to support a change initiative that’s occurring in your organization. You’ve arranged to be a member of the core project team, or you’ve established a strong relationship with the project leader or change management leader. You’re confident that you will have full and timely access to project-related information. What is it you’re responsible for doing anyway?
For most change initiatives, the person or team assigned to handle training and development for the project is accountable for three main functions:
• Analyzing what each stakeholder group will need to learn to perform their job successfully when the change is implemented
• Preparing and executing a training plan that ensures employees develop the knowledge, skills, and attitudes they need in the new environment
• Advocating for the learning needs and capabilities of stakeholders as they relate to the change initiative
Let’s take a closer look at each of these responsibilities.
Analyzing What Each Stakeholder Group Needs to Learn
One of your first priorities will be to analyze the training needs associated with the project. Essentially, your job here is to figure out who needs to learn what and by when. For each stakeholder group affected by the change initiative, what will they need to know, do, and think, and how does that differ from what was happening before? Fortunately, you probably have a lot of resources at hand that can help you answer these questions.
Project-Planning Documents
Look at the project charter to understand what your organization is trying to accomplish by embarking on the change initiative and why that’s so crucial for your organization. That’s important information you can provide to employees about why the training matters.
Check out the stakeholder analysis to see who is affected by the change initiative and how. These plans provide a quick summary of what is changing for each stakeholder group and how extensive the impact is for each stakeholder. They’ll give you a sense of how many groups of employees you need to target training to and a broad idea of what that training will need to cover. The stakeholder analysis should also give you insight into how much, or how little, each stakeholder group supports the planned change. You’ll get a sense of the emotional issues and concerns you may need to address in the training you prepare.
Review the project plan. What milestones are planned, and when is work on various deliverables expected to be completed? That should help you identify when training can be conducted, and when enough information will be available for you to begin developing that training.
Go over the communications plan. You’ll see what key messages are planned and whom they will target. You’ll want to make sure the training you develop reinforces this same messaging.
Ask for any other project documents. They may provide details about the current state, or what each stakeholder group does today, and the expected future state, or what they will need to do when the change is fully implemented. Those details will certainly help you determine the tasks your training program needs to focus on.
Keep in mind that all of these resources—the project charter, stakeholder analysis, project plan, communications plan, and associated documents—likely won’t be complete when you first start analyzing the training needs for your project. So make sure you are on the distribution list and stay posted as these documents evolve and change.
People Associated With the Project
Of course, the most significant resource you can tap into to analyze training needs are the people who are working on the project and the stakeholders who are affected by it. Plan on having lots of conversations with the project leader, change management leader (if you aren’t also wearing that hat), and members of the core project team. Use these discussions to gather detailed information about what employees will need to know, do, and think, and how that differs from the current state. Ask them what resources you can get access to, in addition to the project-planning documents, that can help you figure out what employees will need to learn. If the project involves implementing new technology, ask if you can get access to the software test site so you can see for yourself how the new system works. Ask if the software vendor provides user documentation and training so you can determine if it can be leveraged to address training needs for your organization.
And plan on having lots of conversations with stakeholders to make sure you clearly understand their current level of knowledge and skill, what they think about the change, the way they learn best, and their availability to participate in training. Meet with employee supervisors to gather their perspective about the content that training needs to focus on most. Supervisors can also let you know what to expect about how quickly employees will be able to master the training content. And they can let you know which methods of training employees are most receptive to and when employees can be made available for training.
If your organization has established a transition-monitoring team, meet with them too to gather their input about what training needs to focus on most, who needs it, and when and how they think it should be conducted.
In your organization, you may already have a formal training needs analysis process that you use to determine general training requirements. Use that process if it will help you gather and organize information about who needs to be trained on what by when to support your change initiative. Otherwise, just keep asking questions:
• Who will need to know, do, or think something differently as a result of this change?
• What tasks will they need to perform as a result of the change? How does that differ from what they are doing today? When will they need to start doing things differently?
• How will performance be measured? How will you know that employees are doing what’s expected?
• What benefits will employees receive from what’s changing? What will they lose? What are the consequences employees will experience for doing—or not doing—what’s expected?
• How receptive will employees be to what is changing?
• What methods of training are employees most receptive to? When are they available for training?
Keep in mind that for the same change initiative, the answers to these questions may vary considerably from one stakeholder group to the next. Some stakeholders may need intensive training because they are significantly affected by whatever is changing. Other stakeholders may require very limited training or training on a very different set of content because the change affects them in a completely different way. Don’t expect broad-brush training to meet the need. Change initiatives can fail when training isn’t tailored to the unique requirements of each stakeholder group. Find out what each stakeholder group needs to know, do, and think, by when, and how.
Before moving on, as you are analyzing what each stakeholder needs to learn, ask yourself and others two questions: Is training the right solution? And is a more extensive, organization-wide assessment needed? Asking these questions will ensure you don’t fall into the role of order taker. For training to be effective—and for the change initiative to succeed—you need to function like a true performance consultant.
Is Training the Right Solution?
During some of your conversations with project team members or stakeholders, you may receive requests to provide training to address a need, but training isn’t really the right solution. As you gather information about who needs to know, do, and think what, consider whether training is the appropriate response.
Are employees aware of what’s changing and why, and of what will be expected of them after the change is implemented? If not, this need probably is better addressed by adding actions to the communications plan. Training can be used to reinforce key messages about the change. But employees shouldn’t be hearing about the change for the first time through training. To understand why the change is important and what they’re expected to do to support it, employees need to hear from organizational leaders and frontline managers. Don’t let leaders outsource their communications responsibilities to trainers.
Are there obstacles that will prevent employees from doing what’s expected? Can the project team remove or reduce the impact of these obstacles by adding some actions to the project plan? It’s less than ideal if training has to instruct employees about workarounds they’ll need to engage in. I’ve seen this a lot with technology projects. The core project team makes a decision they know will make the technology more cumbersome to use, and they say, “We’ll just train around that issue.” See if a better decision can be made—ask if the obstacles can be addressed—so training won’t be needed as a “fix.” How will you know when the project team is about to make one of these less than desirable decisions? You’ll hear them discuss it in a core project team meeting! That’s why you need to attend these meetings, even when you’re sure there’s nothing related to training on the agenda.
Will employees experience rewards and consequences for engaging in or ignoring the behaviors that are expected after the change is introduced? Don’t let training take the fall because managers aren’t managing. Sometimes a request for training is much better addressed through another approach, such as performance management. In the PCo business transformation case you read in chapter 11, Sharon, PCo’s head of learning and organizational development, has an opportunity to do some digging here. PCo leaders indicate that they want employees to show more accountability. Although they haven’t asked Sharon (yet!) to create training on this topic (thank goodness!), Sharon probably needs to find out more about how the company’s performance management process is operating. Are managers and employees working together to establish performance goals? Do employees understand performance expectations? What happens when PCo employees meet or exceed these expectations? And given PCo’s “culture of niceness,” what happens when employees fail to meet expectations? Employees need to see that they’ll receive tangible or intangible benefits when they engage in behavior that supports the change. Or at minimum, they need to see that by doing what’s expected, they can avoid negative consequences. Don’t agree to deliver training when performance management is what’s really needed.
Have employees had opportunities to share their needs and concerns? Training can derail when employees feel like it’s the only vehicle available to them to express their thoughts and ideas. Instead of focusing on the content they need to learn—the specific procedure that’s changing or the new technology—they use the training as a gripe session. If you’re intentionally using training as an opportunity for employees to share their needs and concerns about the change, make sure that’s identified as a stated objective. And if it’s the only opportunity for two-way communication that your organization is providing, arrange for organizational leaders and frontline managers to participate in the training so they can hear what employees have to say. For ideas on how to create additional opportunities for employees to share their thoughts, see chapter 12, in which we discuss the communications plan.
Bottom line: When you are analyzing training needs, wear your diagnostic hat. Think about what’s needed to drive employee performance. Consider what’s needed for effective communication to occur. Many times training will be needed. But sometimes it’s not the right solution. Work with your project leader, change management leader, and stakeholders to make sure training is used wisely.
Is a More Extensive, Organization-Wide Assessment Needed?
Sometimes an organization embarks on a change initiative where the impact on what employees know, do, and think is expected to be profound. The organization may be transforming its entire business model and strategy. Perhaps it’s attempting to shift its entire corporate culture. With changes like these, the majority of employees working for the organization need to retool and significantly upgrade their skills, acquire new knowledge, or change certain attitudes. In that case, a more formal—and more extensive—training needs assessment may be required. You may need to rigorously evaluate each job in the company to determine how tasks will change and which skills will be required to successfully perform each task. You may need to assess each employee to determine their current skill set and their capacity to develop whatever new skills are needed.
For example, an organization-wide needs assessment may be appropriate at PCo, the company you read about in chapter 11. PCo was overhauling its business practices across the organization, while simultaneously attempting to build a culture of accountability. A comprehensive needs assessment would help PCo leaders understand the skills the company needed to support their transformation and let them know precisely where they needed to intervene. That assessment might show that sales staff need training to engage in consultative selling. Or it might reveal that they already have this expertise from their work at prior employers. The assessment might show that plant managers need the finance and marketing training that PCo’s CEO pressed for. Or it might reveal that plant managers need to develop a much broader range of business skills to perform in accordance with the company’s new expectations. Without engaging in a comprehensive training needs assessment, PCo might devote resources to training that will have little effect, or they might miss providing training in areas where it’s sorely needed.
If your organization’s change initiative will have a profound impact on what a significant number of employees need to know, do, and think, talk with your project leader or change management leader about conducting a formal, organization-wide needs assessment. The steps involved in this assessment fall beyond the scope of this book; however, Needs Assessment for Organizational Success, by Roger Kaufman and Ingrid Guerra-López, is a terrific resource you can use to learn more.
The good news is that most organizational change initiatives are more limited in scale. If that’s true for your project, keep asking: What precisely will employees need to know, do, and think and how does that differ from what happens today? By when do employees need to learn what’s needed? How do affected employees prefer to learn? When are they available for training? Is training the right solution to address these needs? As you gather the answers to these questions, you can begin preparing your training plan.
Preparing and Executing a Training Plan
In its most basic form, a training plan summarizes whom the target audience will be for training, the objectives the training will address for each audience, how and when training will occur, and who is accountable for ensuring that training is developed and delivered. A well-constructed training plan will help you:
• Coordinate actions that will help employees develop the knowledge, skills, and attitudes they need to meet new performance expectations, given the changes that are occurring.
• Ensure training activities support the objectives of, and align with, the overall project plan and other project-related activities.
• Communicate planned training activities to others on the project team and to organizational leaders.
Table 13-1 shows a quick snapshot of the training plan that Sharon, PCo’s learning and organizational development leader, prepared in the case study you read about in chapter 11.
Table 13-1. PCo Training Plan
You can summarize your training plan in a simple Microsoft Word document or Excel spreadsheet. If your organization has a different format in place to create training plans, it’s fine to use that too. Just be sure your training plan identifies the target audience and training objectives, summarizes how and when training will occur, and identifies who is accountable for ensuring training is developed and delivered.
Target Audience
By reviewing the project charter, stakeholder analysis, project plan, and related documents—and through your conversations with the project leader, change management leader, core project team members, and various stakeholders—you’ve begun to identify all the various stakeholder groups who will be affected by the change. You have a sense of which stakeholder groups will need to develop new knowledge, skills, and attitudes to do what’s expected of them. List out the various groups who will need training.
Objectives
From your review of the project documents and various discussions, you have a sense of what each stakeholder group will need to know, do, and think differently as a result of the change. Which of these needs can and should be addressed through training?
Create learning objectives that summarize what each stakeholder group should be able to understand or do when they have completed training. Tailor objectives to the unique needs of each stakeholder group. Perhaps your training addresses new technology that all employees need to begin using. Will supervisors use different functions within the software to perform their review and oversight responsibilities? If so, identify supervisors as a separate target audience and list out the unique learning objectives the training needs to address for them.
Make sure training objectives don’t just focus on teaching employees how to perform tasks. Your training probably needs to address what employees think and believe about the change too. Or as we said in chapter 12, when we discussed communications, make sure the messages sent through training address the heart, the head, and the hands, so you connect with each employee wherever they are focusing most.
• Heart: What do you need employees to believe and feel? You likely will want employees who complete your training to feel confident they can learn and do what the organization now expects of them. You want them to feel like the organization understands that the change may be challenging, but that it is there to support them through these challenges. One objective for your training may be to help employees recognize that they are not alone and that the organization is providing resources to help them learn and do what’s needed to succeed in the new environment.
• Head: What do you need employees to think and know? One objective for your training is to reinforce messages about the rationale for the change initiative, why your organization is pursuing it, and what the benefits are for the organization and for the stakeholder groups participating in the training. Make sure the training helps each stakeholder group understand the unique way in which the change will affect them. Training should answer the questions “Why this?” “Why now?” and “Why you?”
• Hands: What do you want employees to do? Identify the behaviors each stakeholder group needs to be able to demonstrate. By the end of the training, what will each employee be able to do?
Training Program and Method
You’ve figured out who needs to learn and what they need to learn, and you probably have a sense of when that learning needs to occur. Now you’re ready to decide how. How will you structure programs and activities to address the training objectives you have set?
Let’s take a quick look at the programs and activities Sharon identified in the training plan for PCo. Here’s what she sketched out based on her meeting with the company’s leaders:
• A classroom-based MBA boot camp program, led by faculty from a university and the organization’s business leaders, designed to help plant managers make smarter finance and marketing decisions
• A classroom-based sales training program, led by a vendor, designed to help PCo sales staff employ a more consultative approach to selling
• Online tutorials designed to help employees interpret basic financial documents and understand their obligations to protect confidential information
These are all fine approaches that probably will address—at least in part—the objectives that Sharon and the executives at PCo identified. They’re fairly conventional solutions—classroom training and online tutorials—and they serve their purpose. These training programs will begin to equip employees with knowledge and skills so they can do what PCo expects of them. But do they go far enough?
What I have learned from years of working with organizations as they navigate through change is that whatever training you have planned probably isn’t enough. If you have classes planned to teach employees how to operate your company’s new technology, that’s a great start, but employees probably will need more help to master using that new technology. Employees may walk out of your classes thinking they know what they need to do, but they likely will fumble a bit as they begin using the new technology anyway. If you’ve prepared an online tutorial to teach employees a new procedure, that’s terrific too. But don’t be surprised if employees experience frustration during their first attempts at following the new steps they have learned. If, like at PCo, you’re offering courses to help employees make better business decisions, or manage more effectively, or sell in a different way, that’s a great part of the solution. Hopefully employees appreciate the encouragement and ideas they will receive by participating in your training program. But they likely will struggle, at least for a while, as they try to implement these new ideas back on the job. Classroom training and online tutorials are great, but their impact only goes so far.
The organizations I know that experienced the best outcomes with their change initiatives took a far more aggressive approach with their training plans. They recognized that employees might feel anxious about their ability to master everything they needed to learn to support the change that was coming. They anticipated that employees might feel frustrated as they tried out new behaviors for the first time. They knew that employees might be reluctant to embrace the changes that were planned, because they wanted to avoid that awful feeling of incompetence.
To help employees feel more confident in their ability to learn and then perform what was needed, these organizations structured their learning programs to help move employees through that period of incompetence and frustration as quickly as possible. They found ways to adjust the timing and frequency of learning programs and activities, so employees had the opportunity to receive training as early and often as possible as the change was being implemented. They took steps to reassure employees that support would be readily available to them as they attempted to engage in the new behaviors that were expected of them. And finally, these organizations structured their learning programs to reinforce and extend whatever training was offered through other means. They implemented approaches that ensured employees would continue to build needed knowledge and skills long after the project had officially concluded.
Here are some programs and activities I’ve seen organizations include in their training plans to achieve these goals. Many of these ideas are exceedingly simple. Others require more planning and coordination. As you create training plans to support change initiatives in your organization, consider if these approaches make sense for you to use.
Approaches That Accelerate the Timing and Frequency of Training
These approaches help ensure employees receive training early and often throughout the change initiative. They ensure that training isn’t just designed to be an “event” tacked onto the end of the project plan. Instead, training occurs through a series of activities over the course of the initiative. By helping employees learn early in the project life cycle, the change becomes more tangible. Employees can begin to envision what the future state will be like because they can see it for themselves. By delivering training focused on small chunks of content, employees see that what they need to learn to support the change is actually quite manageable. As they master each small piece of content, they may become more confident in their ability to learn what’s needed.
You can do this by embedding training in stakeholder status meetings, conducting training at each milestone and as each short-term win is achieved, and using quality assurance testing to train.
Embed training in stakeholder status meetings. The project team for your change initiative probably meets periodically with stakeholders to update them on the status of the initiative. Allocate a portion of time in each status-update meeting to teaching a small chunk of content that employees need to learn. I’ve seen an organization use this approach to train employees in preparation for their move to a new location. During each move-update meeting, the company dedicated a small portion of time to teaching employees one new task they’d need to perform at their new site, like swiping into the building’s security system or operating the new type of phone that was being installed. A tip sheet for each task was available online, so employees had handy reminders they could access as needed. When the move finally happened, employees didn’t have to spend precious time learning these systems and tasks for the first time. Instead, they were able to focus on unpacking and adjusting to their new workspace. Likewise, a large medical center used this approach when they introduced a new electronic patient records system. In each employee meeting that occurred during the months before the system “went live,” the center introduced two to three new vocabulary words or concepts employees needed to know to effectively work with the new technology. When training on the full system was conducted closer to launch, employees felt less overwhelmed because they’d already had a head start learning about some of its key components.
Conduct training at each milestone and as each short-term win is achieved. Think about each milestone that is planned for your project. Is there something employees need to learn related to that milestone? If so, see if it makes sense to deliver training when that milestone is reached, instead of waiting until the very end, when all of the project deliverables have been completed. Hopefully your project is planned in a way that delivers short-term wins (see chapter 4 for more on why early wins are so important!). Plan training so that it’s delivered as each short-term win is achieved. Does your change initiative involve making 10 new software features available, and two are ready to launch now? Launch them and train employees on how to use them. It’s probably easier for employees to learn a few new features at a time rather than having to figure them all out at once. If your organization uses Agile methodology for project planning (see chapter 4 for more on Agile), your change initiative likely is already organized around generating multiple bursts of output that stakeholders will need to learn throughout the project life cycle. Be sure you’re ready to provide training as each output or short-term win is made available.
Use quality assurance testing to train. If your change initiative involves implementing a new technology or new process, the project plan probably includes a step where testing will occur to make sure the software or procedure functions as planned. Consider using quality assurance testing as a training opportunity. Invite stakeholders who will need to learn the new technology or process to participate in testing. Provide stakeholders with a brief overview, then give them “scripts” that describe the scenarios to be tested, and the steps they need to follow to conduct the test. The core project team may thank you for providing resources to assist with quality assurance testing. And you’ll be ahead of the game by having a group of stakeholders who are already partially trained by the time your formal training program is ready to launch. If you plan things well, you may also be able to incorporate the scripts and scenarios used during testing into your formal training program.
Approaches That Reassure Employees That Support Is Available
When employees first start engaging in the new behavior they have been trained to perform, they likely will need support. They’ll try some things they thought they learned, and quickly realize they haven’t quite yet mastered what they need to know. These approaches help employees feel confident that assistance will be available to them as they try out new behaviors.
Create job aids and tip sheets. If employees need to learn steps to perform a new task or factors to consider when making a decision, develop job aids or tip sheets they can refer to as they try things out back on the job. Your job aid may cover steps for conducting a productive virtual meeting in your company’s new “work from anywhere” environment, or the procedure for accomplishing a task using new software. Maybe your tip sheet addresses factors employees need to consider when deciding how to handle confidential information. For example, Sharon, in the PCo case, might create a job aid that helps employees interpret financial data and understand whom they can and can’t share this confidential data with. Depending on your work environment, you can post job aids and tip sheets online, or provide them in printed form so employees can post them in their physical workspace. If the same content is addressed in classroom or online training, be sure to let employees know how to access the job aids and tip sheets that support this training. Your goal is to help employees feel like they have resources they can turn to for support as they try out new behaviors related to the change.
Set up drop-in “clinics.” Consider setting up a physical or virtual support center that employees can turn to for help. I saw one organization do this to support a group of employees who needed to begin using new software as part of a larger change initiative. Some employees quickly mastered the new tool, while others who felt far less confident took advantage of the drop-in clinic the organization had established. Employees who needed help brought real work they needed to complete to the clinic, and sat side by side with an expert who provided hands-on coaching until the employee was comfortable working alone. Other employees who needed less support simply called the clinic experts for quick answers to their questions. I’ve seen this same approach used by an organization that wanted its managers to provide more effective coaching to employees. A virtual “clinic” was established that recently trained managers could turn to for an expert review of the coaching conversation they planned to conduct. Managers role-played with clinic staff the coaching conversations they had planned, and checked in with them to debrief after their actual conversations with employees had occurred.
Train super users. Super users can be a valuable asset for assisting in training other employees. Start by providing more extensive training to one or more users who work in each department or area affected by the change. Let employees know they can turn to these specially trained, “super user” co-workers for expert assistance. This approach is commonly used when organizations are implementing new technology or new work processes. But it can be used effectively to support other changes as well. Is your organization relocating? Consider designating and training a move super user in each department, whom employees can turn to with questions about packing procedures, commuting, resources available at the new location, and so on. Of course, be sure you’re not taking advantage of your super users’ expertise and generosity. You still need to train everyone else affected by the change. Super users are there to supplement the training you’ve provided to all affected employees, by providing a little extra help to their co-workers when they need it.
Tap into the transition-monitoring team. We talked about the transition-monitoring team in chapter 7. Review your training plan with them to verify that your plan addresses what each stakeholder group needs to know. Have team members test out your training to make sure it’s clear, comprehensive, and focused on the right content in the right way. Provide more extensive training to team members and ask them to serve double duty as super users. They can supplement the training you provide to their co-workers by offering on-site assistance to co-workers when they need it.
Approaches That Reinforce and Extend Training
These approaches help employees continue to learn—and build confidence in their ability to learn—after the project has officially concluded.
Embed training in staff meetings. Employees in your organization probably meet periodically, either in person or virtually, to discuss department business. Ask department leaders or managers to allocate a portion of time in these meetings to reinforcing content that was covered in more formal training. For example, the vice president of sales in the PCo case can devote a portion of each staff meeting to helping sales staff work through the challenges they’re encountering as they apply their newly learned consultative selling skills. Provide managers with a discussion guide that helps them generate conversation among employees about how they are applying their new skills. In these meetings, have them ask employees to raise examples of situations they are struggling with or have questions about, and have employees talk through these situations to help one another find solutions. Have managers keep you posted on the topics employees have the most questions about, then update job aids and tip sheets to address these concerns. In an organization I worked with that used this approach, we asked managers to conduct a half-hour discussion during staff meetings each month, using a discussion guide we posted online. Each month’s online guide focused on a different behavior the company needed employees to demonstrate more consistently. For example, one month the discussion guide focused on “taking informed risks.” The guide asked managers to pose questions like, “What kinds of risks do we deal with in our jobs in this department? How should we decide how to handle that risk? What information should we consider before deciding how to proceed? Who, if anyone, should we talk with before deciding how to proceed?” The discussion guide provided managers with general principles and guidelines they could raise as employees provided their own answers to these questions. In your organization, managers may already use their staff meetings to reinforce material they know employees need to learn. But don’t count on all managers to do that. Provide managers with resources, like discussion guides, to help them focus a portion of each staff meeting on learning. Let managers know they are expected to do that. State in your formal training plan that your organization is relying on managers to reinforce training during their regular staff meetings.
Provide booster-shot training and tips of the month. Provide periodic microlearning programs that remind employees about what was covered in formal training or that teach employees how to perform a task at a more advanced level. One organization I worked with reinforced training related to a process change by sending employees an online, two- to three-minute tutorial each month—each focused on a single task previously addressed in classroom training. Another organization that was implementing new technology shared a new tip sheet with employees each month. Although formal classroom instruction was offered to help employees learn the basics, the monthly tip sheets helped employees gradually learn how to use the system’s more advanced features.
Remember transition planning. This isn’t really an optional approach. You need to do this. Make sure you think through how training related to the change will be maintained after your project has officially concluded. Some employees will have participated in training, and that training just didn’t stick. What mechanism do you have in place to help employees who need to repeat training? If training was conducted via classroom instruction, how will employees who missed it get access? If training was conducted online, have you structured enrollment so employees who need to complete the training multiple times can take it again? If some of the content covered in the training needs to change, who will update that content and how will you ensure employees are trained on what’s new? As new content for job aids and tip sheets is identified, who will prepare it and how will it be distributed? And how will you ensure that new employees who join the organization after your project officially concludes receive the training they need? As you create your training plan, make sure you think through how you’ll ensure that training continues after the project team has disbanded.
Validate Your Plan
Once you have drafted the objectives and training approaches planned for each target audience, circle back to the people you’ve had discussions with to verify that the information included in your training plan is accurate and complete. Ask your transition-monitoring team for their feedback. Make adjustments as needed.
Throughout the course of your change initiative, and through your ongoing conversations, it’s likely that additional stakeholder groups will be identified, or that other training needs related to the change will surface. Timeframes may change too. That’s all OK. Keep adjusting your training plan to reflect new information as it emerges.
Advocating for the Learning Needs and Capabilities of Stakeholders
As your change initiative proceeds, there will be times when you need to assume the role of advocate. Your job will be to ensure the core project team understands what employees need to learn for the initiative to achieve its intended target—and considers how they will learn it—as the team makes project-related decisions. Your role is to make sure the project is planned and executed in a way that allows employees to develop the knowledge, skills, and attitudes they need to do what’s expected of them. You need to be proactive, recommending actions that will afford employees appropriate opportunities to learn. And you need to be vigilant, on the lookout for decisions that might compromise employees’ ability to learn what’s needed in the right timeframe. There may be times when you will need to engage in some difficult conversations, where you present the case for decisions to be reconsidered and where you provide the rationale for more appropriate decisions to be made. But it will be worth it when you see employees grow and flourish and the project succeed.
You’ll certainly need to play the role of advocate when project schedules are prepared and timeframes are established for training to occur. Discuss with the project leader or change management leader the amount of time needed to prepare and deliver required training, and work with them to incorporate training-related dates into the overall project plan. Be realistic—and firm—as you explain what is included in the training plan you created and why you established the timeframes that are set forth there. If training activities need to be concluded by a certain date for the project to launch on schedule, be clear about when training will need to begin. Ask how the overall project plan can ensure training begins and ends within the timeframe that’s needed. If other project tasks slip that push back the start date for training activities, discuss with the project leader or change management leader how the project plan can be adjusted to ensure appropriate time is still allocated for training to occur.
At times, you may have the opportunity to play the role of advocate as decisions are made about the design of other project deliverables. For example, as the core project team lays out steps for a new process employees will need to follow, take a step back and consider how easy or difficult it will be for employees to learn the new procedure. Is there a simpler way the process could be designed that achieves the same goal, one that won’t be so frustrating for employees to adjust to? If so, advocate for a better way. That’s the situation I faced when the organization I described earlier was implementing new software and changed one of its HR policies at the same time. I recognized that employees would struggle as they tried to understand the new, complex, and convoluted policy, and would begin to question the organization’s motives. And so I stepped in to advocate for a different approach to be taken, one that better matched what employees had the capacity to learn and that better reflected the organization’s actual intent. As an advocate, I had to engage in multiple, difficult conversations, but the outcome was worth it.
How did Sharon in the PCo case fulfill her role as advocate for employee learning needs? She advocated for learning—in a way—when she questioned if employees would understand the financial documents PCo’s CEO planned to distribute. Sharon may have recognized that without some training or assistance, employees would be ill-equipped to use the information PCo leaders planned to share. She stepped up and questioned if employees would need more support. That’s great. But where else does Sharon need to intervene? If Sharon prepares a training plan that merely reflects the ideas PCo leaders proposed during their meeting with her, she is acting like an order taker. Some of the actions contained in the plan may address employees’ learning needs, at least in part. But they likely will miss the mark too. The good news is that while Sharon may have felt “dismissed” from the executive staff meeting she participated in, she recognized that her work wasn’t done. She knew she needed to question and challenge the ideas PCo’s leaders had proposed. She knew she needed to propose alternative—and additional—approaches. Sharon recognized that she needed to step out of the order-taker role and act as an advocate. In your organization, when you engage with stakeholders as a performance consultant—when you seek to understand stakeholder needs, challenge the wisdom of proceeding with ineffective solutions that you’ve been asked to implement, and propose creative solutions of your own—you’re acting as an advocate.
And finally, during training sessions, whether you conduct them in person or virtually, you likely will hear feedback from stakeholders about the change itself. In your advocate role, you can share that feedback with the core project team and organizational leaders. In fact, training participants may fully want and expect you to let leaders and the team know about the concerns and frustrations they’re experiencing. As the person responsible for training, you play an intermediary role of sorts. You’re charged with conveying important information about the project to employees. And you also have responsibility for conveying employee needs and issues back to the project team. When you conduct training, let participants know what you will and won’t share with others. And be clear about what is and isn’t confidential. If you establish the norm that “what’s said in this classroom stays in this classroom,” seek employee permission before discussing with the project team the feedback that you’re hearing.
Here are two quick tips to help you advocate for employees’ learning needs: Use your access to project team members and get support from other stakeholders.
Use Your Access to Project Team Members
So how do you advocate for the learning needs of employees as your change initiative proceeds? The most straightforward way is to just state what’s needed and why during discussions with the project leader, change management leader (if you’re not also serving that role), and core project team. Have these conversations as early as possible in the project life cycle—ideally while initial project plans are being drafted—so the overall project plan can be constructed to accommodate what’s needed. As you spot issues and concerns, discuss them—again, as early as possible—with the project leader, change management leader, and core project team. For you to appropriately serve your role as an advocate for employee learning—for you to hear what’s going on and recognize situations where you need to step in—you need to work in close partnership with the project leader or change management leader. Ideally, you should participate in core project team meetings too.
Get Support From Other Stakeholders
To advocate for employee learning needs, you can also leverage the power of other stakeholders involved with the project. For example, if training dates are at risk, or if you’re questioning the wisdom of a process design decision, you can recommend gathering input from employee supervisors or from members of the transition-monitoring team. It’s possible their recommendations will coincide with and support what you are advocating. That’s the approach the vice president of HR wisely suggested in the situation I described earlier, where I had serious doubts about the design of an organization’s new HR policy. The VP recommended sharing the new policy design, and associated training, with a broader group of division HR leaders who would need to support the policy and respond to employee questions about it. After receiving their input, the original design was scrapped and new decisions were made that better reflected what employees could learn. I recognize now that the way I performed my advocate role during this situation was imperfect. Although I had raised concerns to the project leader, I gave up at some point. What would have been better is if I, instead of the VP of HR, had recommended gathering input from the division HR leaders. That way, the mess could have been cleaned up even earlier. I should have recognized there was an opportunity to leverage the power of other stakeholders to address the issue I had raised.
As you advocate for employee learning needs, recognize that there are other stakeholders who likely have the same goals and intent as you. Take a look at the stakeholder analysis if you need ideas about whose help you can solicit. Other stakeholders want to make sure employees have the knowledge, skills, and attitudes needed to achieve the project outcome, just like you do. Take advantage of the opportunities to work together with these stakeholders to advocate for those needs.
Training as a Mechanism to Build Change Resilience
In this chapter, we addressed steps you can take to help employees build the knowledge, skills, and attitudes they need to support the change that’s occurring in your organization. We talked about analyzing needs so you have a clear sense about who needs training on what and when. We explored ideas for providing training that helps employees learn earlier in the project life cycle and in more manageable chunks. And we looked at actions you can take to reassure employees that the support they need is available as they try out new behaviors back on the job. We looked at steps you can take to help employees continue to build knowledge, skills, and attitudes after your project has officially concluded. And we looked at how important it will be for you to advocate for employees’ learning needs throughout the entire course of your change initiative.
Why does training matter so much? On the hard side of change, for your change initiative to achieve its intended outcome, employees need to be able to do what’s now expected of them. They need to know how to operate the new technology, how to perform the new procedures, how to make decisions according to new protocols. On the soft side, for employees to support what’s changing, they need to feel confident they can learn what’s needed in the right timeframe. They need to trust that your organization is providing them with the appropriate resources they need to learn.
In some ways, the training you provide can have an impact that extends far beyond your current change initiative. When employees recognize that they can learn what’s needed for the current project, that feeling can generalize to the next change initiative they face, and the next after that. When employees see that your company is providing resources that help them move through the expected period of incompetence as quickly as possible, they may begin to feel like your organization has its act together, that it manages change well. When employees recognize that they can navigate successfully through change, because there’s help readily available when they feel lost and disoriented, they become more resilient. The training you provide can help employees learn what’s needed to support your current change initiative and more readily get on board with change initiatives to come.
To do this, participate actively on your core project team. Meet frequently with your project leader and change management leader to ensure your training plan fully integrates with other plans. And create and execute training programs that are tailored to the unique needs of each stakeholder group and that take advantage of every training opportunity that’s available.
About to Begin?
Are you about to begin preparing training for a change initiative that’s happening in your organization? As you develop your plan, ask yourself:
• Do I have access to all the people and documents I need? Can I join the core project team or attend their meetings? Do I have access to project documents like the charter, project plan, stakeholder analysis, and communications plan?
• Have I analyzed the unique training requirement for each stakeholder group? Am I sure training is the right solution to address their needs?
• Does my training address both the hard side of change, or the knowledge and skills employees need to learn, and the soft side, or the attitudes they will need in the new environment?
• Have I found ways to accelerate the timing and frequency of training? Am I delivering training in manageable chunks to help employees feel confident they can learn what’s needed?
• Are we reassuring employees that they will be supported after training has concluded? Do I need to create job aids and tip sheets? Should we establish a drop-in clinic or help line? Can we train super users or press the transition-monitoring team into service to address employee questions back on the job?
• What are we doing to reinforce and extend training after formal training concludes? Can we embed training in staff meetings? Should we conduct periodic booster-shot training sessions?
• Have we determined how training will be maintained after the project has officially concluded? Who will be responsible for training new hires and employees who need to repeat training? Who will update training material as the content changes?
Of course, despite these efforts, all employees some of the time—and some employees all of the time—will still feel reluctant to get on board. You’ve provided opportunities for employees to get involved with your change initiative. You’ve made sure they understand what’s changing and when, and what the impact will be for them. You’ve helped employees build the knowledge, skills, and attitudes they need to succeed in the new environment. What should you do if they push back anyway?
In chapter 14, we’ll take a look at resistance. You may be surprised to learn that sometimes resistance can be a really good thing! There may be times when employee resistance is just what your project needs to generate results! But of course, that’s not always the case. Sometimes you should take advantage of the resistance that’s occurring, and sometimes you’ll need to quiet it down. Or just maybe you need to do both.
Learn more. Check out:
Kaufman, R., and I. Guerra-López. 2013. Needs Assessment for Organizational Success. Alexandria, VA: ATD Press.
Rothwell, W.J., B. Benscoter, M. King, and S.B. King. 2016. Mastering the Instructional Design Process: A Systematic Approach. John Wiley & Sons.