As opposed to a top-down training methodology discussed last week, a bottom-up approach to training management relies on creativity, collaboration and communication, as well as a degree of organizational flexibility and agility. Essentially, under this approach, executive management defines high-level corporate and training goals. Smaller teams are responsible for defining targets that contribute to these goals and configuring training regimens accordingly. Team leads and managers are accountable to their supervisors, but teams themselves are graced with the flexibility to adjust training and procedural approaches on the basis of both their ‘up-close-and-personal’ knowledge of the processes they are exposed to most intimately and regularly, and the fresh insights that accompany new additions to the team who are recently trained or in the midst of training. The net result is teams, departments and the organization at large is able to achieve defined targets and goals more effectively and expeditiously.

In spite of the apparent benefits, bottom-up approaches can be difficult to adopt. Firstly, while in effect bottom-up approaches do not necessarily relinquish senior management of actual control, they often generate the perception of requiring managers, directors and executive staff to cede control. Also, the migration to a bottom-up approach from an entrenched, top-down approach will often generate an amount of institutional friction as it represents a degree of cultural change. In some cases, it can be difficult to convince established management/executives that a bottom-up approach ought to be tried.

That stated, the benefits of bottom-up training approaches are vast and include:

• Common Goals: Since trainees and trainers are, by the nature of bottom-up training, driven by targets that contribute to organization-wide goals, they are more inclined to appreciate their role within the organization and understand how training relates to the accomplishment of organizational objectives.
• Enhanced Communication: Bottom-up approaches thrive on communication. With top-down training approaches, trainers and trainees are handed sets and subsets of tasks that, in isolation, don’t engender a coherent sense of where a department or organization is headed and why. However, when those tasks are framed by targets, which in turn are framed by goals, employees are encouraged to go out of their comfort zone, interact with individuals from other teams and departments within the context of common goals, adopting more effective and holistic approaches as a result. This dynamic bleeds into training as trainers and teams craft more focused, nuanced training programs that are driven by big-picture thinking.
• Continuous Improvement: Bottom-up methodologies invite all affected parties to provide feedback and proposed improvements on training programs to ensure they are as effective and efficient as possible. This include not only feedback from existing employees who may have informed perspectives and thoughtful suggestions; it also includes fresh insights from those who are new to the organization and have recently completed training or, in some cases, are in the midst of training. While obviously all suggestions from a new hire would not be immediately incorporated into an established program, the potential value of an outside perspective, unencumbered of the ‘corporate myopia’ that tends to afflict individuals and teams that have worked within an organization for protracted durations, and this is accomplished by leveraging individual talent more effectively.
• Improved Morale: No successful business leader should need to be convinced of the virtue of a high level of employee morale. It boosts productivity, efficiency, retention, innovation and, ultimately, the bottom line. Bottom-up training approaches engender improved morale in three critical ways: Employees realize their insights and suggestions will be heard and valued; they will make the effort to communicate suggestions since they won’t see a futility in attempting to foster change; and they will have a greater level of job satisfaction by understanding how their work contributes to the whole.

While the benefits of a bottom-up training approach are clear, recall that the virtue of a top-down approach is simplicity. Bottom-up approaches can be more difficult to implement and manage, given they feature an array of insights, suggestions, proposed changes and approvals. However, training management software tools exist to streamline and prioritize information and also minimize the financial burden of any approach to training management.

For more on how to adopt an effective bottom-up training methodology, check out Cultivating Competence: Leveraging Training Tools for Measurable Results, an Intelex white paper.

A training program’s effectiveness is determined by an organization’s chosen methodology for training new and existing employees. The most common and traditional approach to training management is also, on the surface, the most logical: In the traditional “Top-Down” approach, HR representatives, executives and other senior parties within an organization define the content, structure and objectives of training programs while managers and supervisors ensure new and existing employees complete requisite courses and fulfill training requirements.

This approach is, for many reasons, the most immediately appealing to senior management and human resources. Quite sensibly, it allows executive teams to structure the training regimens that, in principle, will endow employees with the skills and knowledge they need to perform their jobs to the best of their ability. In actuality, while this approach enables an organization to confidently meet regulatory, corporate, or standards-driven (e.g. ISO 9001) training requirements, it does not necessarily improve performance and cultivate employee competence.

While an appreciable measure of simplicity is inherent in the top-down approach, it is accompanied by a number of potential and business-critical weaknesses:

• Lack of Cross-Team Communication: Just as quality management pioneer W. Edward Deming argued that thorough quality management is cultivated when all contributors have a sense of how their actions play into the bigger picture, organizations are best equipped to achieve high-level business goals when all individuals and teams have an understanding of how individual and team efforts contribute to the organization’s success. Isolated perspectives don’t give employees a sense of meaning in their jobs, and fail to motivate individuals to incorporate a sense of their organization’s mission into their day-to-day responsibilities. Cultivating a sense of purpose begins with training, and when training programs are dictated from the top, limited to narrowly defined tasks, and insensitive to how teams work together and how an operation functions as a whole, cross-team communication is inhibited and employees aren’t as motivated to work together to achieve organizational goals.
• Protracted Management of Change: Any growing or established organization will have to handle change as departments expand or are restructured, as employees and senior staff come and go, and as improvements to existing structures are identified and implemented. Top-down training approaches ill-equip businesses to handle changes, especially in large organizations where a series of hierarchical tiers must be surmounted before essential training modifications are implemented.
• Stagnation of Creativity: Employees directly exposed to the processes they execute day after day are the most likely to devise more creative ways to improve and streamline the systems they interact with, since they interact with those systems more closely than others in the organization. And in most cases, lessons learned and identified process improvements can be mapped directly back to training and leveraged to better prepare incoming personnel to do their jobs more effectively. Yet with top-down training approaches, new, useful ideas face an array of organizational hurdles that must be overcome before they can be institutionalized and rolled into new training. Not only does this inhibit the pace – or even existence – of continuous improvement in training management, it stifles the cultivation of creativity as employees are dissuaded from proposing new ideas because they expect they will be met with ‘business-as-usual’ resistance.

In addition to the above-mentioned disadvantages, a top-down training methodology also tends to stagnate the pool of talent an organization can draw on to improve training. And critically, top-down approaches often lack built-in mechanisms to ensure employees are both trained and competent in their job functions. In essence, it is the difference between employees being taught how to push a button and actually applying valuable lessons in their day-to-day responsibilities in order to fulfill an organizational goal.

With the right metrics, evaluation tools and feedback mechanisms, either approach can be used to positive effect. But in the 21st century’s economic climate of increasing innovation, creativity and competition, the top-down approach is beginning to show its age.

For more on how to adopt an effective training methodology, check out Cultivating Competence: Leveraging Training Tools for Measurable Results, an Intelex white paper.

According to experts, though the connection can seem distant or indirect, proper training has a clear impact on quality, just as it has a clear impact on every aspect of business.

As business process design and ISO 9001 expert Chris Anderson noted in a blog post on the top ten root causes of business problems, poor training is the number one source of business issues. Two decades of business management led Anderson to place poor training ahead of poor methods, poor employee placement and poor engineering and design on the list.

“People don’t make mistakes,” Anderson insists in the post. “Systems make mistakes.”

And just as product and service quality issues arise from systemic deficiencies, employee performance — and its impact on quality — is correlative to the integrity of training management systems.

Training and quality are best thought of as peas in a pod — inseparable elements that should always be mentioned in the same sentence. Even if an organization feels it is 100 per cent where it needs to be from a quality perspective, training is essentially what got it there.

Best-in-class companies have thorough, streamlined training management programs (most often leveraged by software) that deliver measurable results. For those that overlook thorough training, it might be due to lack of time and other resources. However, such an oversight often leads to harsh ramifications: product recalls, brand damage, injuries, fatalities and bankruptcy.

Ontario is poised to dramatically rework how it manages occupational health and safety.

Earlier this month Bill 160 was amended by the province’s standing committee on social policy and is now headed to the provincial legislature for a third reading and vote, meaning it could be law by as early as June. The proposed bill flows from the work of an expert panel formed in the wake of a string of workplace-related deaths across the province.

Focused on training and prevention, some of the bill’s key elements are as follows:

• Training standards: The bill would call upon the Minister of Labour to set training program standards and ‘approve’ compliant organizations accordingly.
• Training provider: In addition to minimum standards for training programs, those who administer training would also be required to achieve “approved training provider” status, though those certified under the Workplace Safety and Insurance Act would be automatically approved.
• Prevention: Quite notably, the bill would establish both a Prevention Council and a Chief Prevention Officer (CPO). It would also take the responsibility of workplace safety away from the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board (WSIB) and hand it to the newly created CPO, who would report to the Minister of Labour and also be charged with the development of a provincial health and safety strategy. The Prevention Council, composed of provincial health and safety organizations, trade union representatives, employers, and other experts in the field, would provide advice to the CPO as he or she develops an province-wide strategy and prepares an annual report for the Minister.

Additional changes include adjustments to the number of trained health and safety personnel required for small businesses, altering how reprisals are referred to the labour relations board, and more.

According to convention, businesses across Ontario could be given up to 12 months to comply with the new rules, though the Ministry of Labour may ask employers to adhere to the act’s requirements on an expedited basis. Proactive businesses ought to begin determining how they will address the coming changes. For up-to-date news on Bill 160 developments, check out OHS Insider’s excellent blog on Ontario health and safety reform.

Many businesses make the mistake of approaching training as a one-time or ad hoc responsibility: employees are trained when they are hired and rarely, if ever, retrained or trained for new competencies.
Businesses cannot adequately embrace the much sought-after ideal of continual improvement until they incorporate continuous training into their business models.

It is essential to establish a training program that helps every employee realize their potential, and in turn helps the business realize its potential. Such programs should be constantly revisited and always altered due to employee, manager and customer feedback. It should be a continuous process.

One aspect of continuous training should be a program that regularly schedules learning sessions with employees to build, develop and diversify their skills and knowhow as they grow with the company.

No discussion of continuous improvement would be complete without reference to W. Edward Deming, the man responsible for quality control and its most critical mechanism, the Plan-Do-Check-Act cycle or Deming cycle. Not only can the Deming cycle be applied to training and training management programs to mitigate negative impacts on quality; the famous statistician’s focus on curbing the role of checklists and giving all employees a sense of meaning behind their responsibilities can be applied to achieve integrated training.

It’s the cultivation of the “curious” side of an employee, and it is achieved by using Deming’s model to get employees to think beyond their immediate jobs. For example, if you’re operating a press, you probably retain a lot of knowhow beyond just press operation. That is, you probably have a better sense of how to better the quality of a product or the experience of a customer.

But it can be very difficult – in large organizations, especially – to incorporate continuous improvement into training programs without the right tools to streamline training management and ensure employee competence.

Unfortunately, in tough economic times, training budgets are often the first to fall.

A recent report by Training magazine illustrated that both training salaries and training budgets took a hit across 2009 and 2010. According to the magazine’s Salary Survey, training salaries fell by about $2,300 on average, and the results of its 2010 Training Industry Report showed that more than 32% of training budgets decreased, while 24% stayed the same. Of the companies that showed budget decreases, 42% reported decreases of between 6% to 15% and 23% of companies reported decreases of more than a whopping 23%.

Another survey by learning management consulting firm Expertus in 2009 confirmed this trend: training budgets plummeted as businesses tried to mitigate the anticipated effects of the economic downturn. According to the survey, which included 84 training professionals across 19 industries, nearly half (48 per cent) of respondents indicated they expected to see training budgets fall in 2009, up from 41 per cent in 2008.

However, slashing training budgets is among the worst things a business can do during a recession. Though it sounds counterintuitive, economic challenges should spur organizations to invest in enhanced training. After all, tough economic times mean tighter margins and fiercer competition. It is a survival-of-the-fittest environment. But guess what? The fittest are also the best-trained.

The trick is not to cut training budgets and neglect training programs. It's about developing a leaner, meaner, more efficient training machine.

So, you’re meeting the status quo and passing your safety inspections. That’s great, but it’s no reason to let your safety program stagnate. Why not aim a little higher?

While a no-accident policy is definitely a noble goal and achievable in some industries, it is important to set realistic yet demanding goals. OSHA’s Voluntary Protection Program (VPP) is a great way to start.

VPP essentially recognizes worksites that have gone above and beyond in their health and safety efforts by implementing top-of-the-line safety management systems. Sites awarded by the program are considered exemplary leaders in safety performance and are eligible to receive one of three rankings:

• Star: The highest level of recognition, the Star Program recognizes sites that have achieved injury and illness rates at or below their industry’s average, self-sufficiently control workplace hazards, and boast the most robust, comprehensive safety management programs.
• Merit: Merit sites are on the road to becoming Star-recognized, but need to boost health and safety performance to be considered excellent.
• Star Demonstration: This designation is reserved for worksites that address unique, often sector-specific health and safety concerns and issues.

Many employers might wonder why they ought to exceed basic health and safety requirements and seek recognition through the program. There are many reasons, all of which will contribute to any organization’s social and economic bottom lines:

• Fewer Accidents: On average VPP participants see at least 50 per cent fewer accidents on an annual basis and a Days Away Restricted or Transferred (DART) case rate of 52 per cent below the average for their industry.
• Increased Productivity and Efficiency: Fewer accidents mean less downtime and a more effective, efficient use of your human capital.
• Reduced Insurance Rates: As your company or worksite demonstrates superior safety performance and encounters fewer or no fatalities or accidents, annual insurance rates will plummet.
• Attract and Retain Talent: Not only will existing employee morale get a boost from your exemplary safety record, being VPP Star-recognized will help your company attract top industry talent who will be lured by your commitment to safety.
• Marketing and Brand Equity: With fewer or no accidents, injuries, fines and fatalities, VPP recognition can ultimately be leveraged with marketing campaigns to boost brand image and attract high-calibre customers.
  

Achieving VPP recognition is demanding, but completely realistic if a worksite has implemented a robust, streamlined software-based safety management system.

To learn more about VPP or join the program, contact OSHA’s Office of Partnerships and Recognition at (202) 693-2213 (or the VPP Manager at your OSHA Regional Office). Read all about VPP here.

In case you missed it we just posted an article over in the Intelex Press Room called "Compromised Training Programs Can Sabotage Quality". It ran today in Quality Digest Daily which is an electronic publication from Quality Digest magazine (www.qualitydigest.com).

Written by Intelex's Content Specialist (and blogger), Paul Leavoy - this article offers a wealth of information on the fall-out from neglected training programs in both product quality and service. If you like what you read be sure to have a look at some of Paul's other insightful writing - his newly published whitepaper on purchasing safety management software is also a must read.

Intelex is pleased to announce they have been selected by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory to provide a Training and Licensing Management System for their 4800 employees. The Laboratory, one of nine Johns Hopkins divisions, approached Intelex in search of a cost effective IT system that would allow them to streamline the management of their employee training and certification requirements at the departmental level.

The Intelex Training and Licensing Management System that they selected has the ability to establish specific training requirement and certification standards associated with any workgroup, is robust enough to accommodate a large number of employees, and is highly automated allowing for easy scheduling and re-scheduling of training. The Compliance Report, which is a pre-built feature of the system fosters the generation of real-time reports drawn from all training data in the system. Key reporting metrics include: assigned training by employee, training hours completed, training hours pending, certifications completed, certifications pending, certification renewals approaching as well as data specific to individual courses such as the number of employees assigned to a course and the number completed.

"We are excited to add John Hopkins University to our educational client roster along with others like the University of Virginia and Texas A&M University," commented Intelex President and CEO Mark Jaine, "Our EHSQ software systems have been gaining a lot of momentum within the education industry and we are looking ahead to continue this trend and provide solutions unique to the industry's needs." With the Intelex system being highly scalable in nature, it will be able to adapt to the expanding needs of the University and ultimately not be outgrown.

Find out more about Intelex's Training and Licensing Management System.