Enter-trainers!

THE corporate trainer today has a new job. Trends in training delivery, technology and outsourcing have made trainers more accountable for their performance than ever before. The typical trainer's job used to be fairly straightforward and routine. His main responsibility was to impart standard, work-related training to each new crop of employees.

Sessions were held in classes for fixed periods of time and used many of the same teaching methods commonly used in high school or college classrooms. At the end of each session, the new recruits were tested and then sent on to their jobs. Some were called back for follow-up training.

Today, the need for better and more comprehensive training in more areas past, emphasis on quality control, issues such as affirmative action and diversity training, are all making the trainer set up higher standards. Every organisation must keep up with the increasing customers' level of expectations or be left behind.

Trainers all round the globe are replacing their traditional tools - lectures, flip charts and overhead projectors with games, quizzes, magic, props, costumes, theatre, videos and comedy. Entertainment makes people more relaxed, more spontaneous and more creative. Information presented imaginatively, with a real time perspective, is more engaging and relevant and motivates learning.

Robert Pike, President of Creative Training Techniques International Inc., Minneapolis, in his training sessions, uses creative props and re-enforces learning by demonstrating. He makes a point to use various learning styles - visual, auditory, kinaesthetic and tactile. Music and innovative props like straws, potatoes and yarn. He makes the participants to write, draw and move around the room during the training sessions.

The 90-20-8 rule: Pike explains that people can listen for 90 minutes with understanding and for 20 minutes with retention. So there is a need to involve people every 8 minutes to reinforce the learning. In one exercise, Pike used the results of a survey showing the six top concerns of training directors to show how to use ``window panes'' to anchor learning points.

In the first pane, he sketched a computer to show that trainers today are concerned about the technical explosion. In the second pane, he drew a pair of ballet slippers to symbolise their concern about balancing the needs of an individual employee and needs of the organisation. In the third pane, he drew a book with an arrow pointing to a disk to indicate concern about the information explosion. In the fourth pane, he drew bars to represent a prison, showing that training directors are concerned about how to retain good employees without making them feel captive. In the fifth pane, Pike drew a star breaking out of an egg, to represent the pressure trainers feel to ``hatch superstars.'' In the sixth and final pane, he drew an exit sign and a scale to show how trainers are concerned about balancing community and corporate needs during downsizing.

As Pike drew the figures, he explained and discussed the figures and had the participants draw the figures and discuss them. When he asked how many times everyone had reviewed the material, few guessed that they had gone through it seven times.

Similarly, many companies have created learning games based on TV game shows, such as ``Family Feud'' or ``Jeopardy!'' in which trainers substitute questions with workplace or product information to help employees recall facts. Francoise Morissette, an industrial psychologist with a Toronto-based HR consulting firm, uses stories, props, music, theatre, visuals, and video in her presentations. ``People have a variety of learning styles. Using entertainment increases the chances of appealing to the various types'', she says. According to her the traditional learning process is too linear, too left brained, so she tries to involve as many perceptual processes as possible. For learning to take place, emotions must be involved.

Participation is a major advantage that successful entertrainment holds over formal, by-the-book training. For instance, many entertrainers keep attention levels high by using energisers- brief, playful activities that make move people around. They may have content value or they may create a readiness for learning.

People retain things when they experience them in an unforgettable way. A good facilitator leads people to insights by discussing, reflecting and questioning what they experienced rather than telling them the learning points of the exercise. An effective facilitator guides people into realisations about what occurred.

Trainers have to evolve training as a process and not an event to manage. They should ensure that participants are capable of better performance and enhanced competencies in their workplace. A sure shot to ensure this would be to deliver training in a more interesting and participative fashion.

However, as training becomes more and more entertaining, organisations should guard against gimmicks and flashy speakers who may pump the audiences up, but don't make connections. Trainers must also ensure that the innovative approach produces the desired outcome. To have any learning value, a dynamic trainer must always keep the objectives in perspective.

M. N. SUREKHA surekha.hyd@careercommunity.co.in