What Should Effective Training Look Like?
By Paul G. Whitmore, Ph.D., Senior Performance Consultant
and Mager/CEP Associate

Suppose you are manufacturing a product in which each item is made by a single crafts worker. Your product requires a lot of rework in the field after it is delivered to the customer. Field reps have to go in and fix this part, replace that one, and adjust another. Some items never work well, depending on which crafts worker made them. Such inefficiency is costing you all of your profits. Your initial approach to dealing with this problem is to find ways to do the rework more efficiently—do it faster at lower cost. That’s the academic approach.

A far more efficient approach is to deal with the problem at its source: the manufacturing process. You assign crafts workers to those jobs they do best. You invest in the development of a largely automated assembly line. Every single item you ship falls within specified quality standards. Rework in the field is down to zero, and you are keeping all of your profits.

Traditional training methods resemble the academic experiences we were exposed to in school: information is presented in textbooks and lectures, and each student decides what to study and how. Students are tested on what they learned and assigned grades based on their test performance. The students seldom are able to recall what they learned and apply it on the job. Even the “A” students go through a long learning period on the job (the infamous “learning curve”) after the program has ended.

Training programs that follow the criterion-referenced instruction (CRI) model provide a much different experience, with much better results. The focus of the training is on performance ¹ rather than subject matter. Employees practice performing the mental and physical skills required on the job, instead of being presented with information in textbooks and lectures. There are no grades or tests in the conventional sense. A “test” consists of the instructor observing an employee to see if he or she has achieved competence in a skill. Each employee practices each skill until he or she achieves competence. When job competence is verified, the employee moves on to the next skill. Every employee who meets the program’s performance criteria or standards succeeds in the program and on the job. Because employees must demonstrate competence in the skill as part of training, every employee is fully competent on the job at completion of the training program, rather than two or three months later (or more), as is often the case with traditional training programs.

If you look in on a CRI-based program, you will rarely see employees sitting in rows of chairs facing the front of the room watching and listening to a glitzy media presentation or expert lecturer. Instead, there may be several small clusters of employees helping each other practice, or employees working alone. One or two may be watching a short video demonstrating a skill. Different employees might be practicing many different skills, depending on where they are in the program and what they need to learn or practice at the moment. Several instructors may be moving about in the area, reviewing individual employees’ practice, and coaching them on how to improve performance. The instructors are skilled performers and expert coaches. When lectures are used to prepare students to practice, they are short and focus on a few specific skills. Employees practice the target skills immediately following each mini-lecture.

The training may not even take place in a classroom. It may happen on the production floor, in the employee’s office, in the field, in a break room, or by computer. All the employees in a class might not even be at the same location at the same time. They may be scattered about at various places to support whatever activity they need to engage in at the time. There may not even be organized classes of employees. They may enter the training program at times convenient to them and leave as they complete the training. Wherever and however it happens, the instruction (materials and instructors) will guide employees through practicing those skills they need to learn as effectively and efficiently as possible. The cost of the training will not exceed the value of the skills to the organization.

What drives this kind of training? Success, more than anything else. Success in each and every part of the training. Little successes and big successes. Employees are always prepared to learn whatever they are asked to learn. There is no failure. If an employee needs help or more practice, he or she gets it. Once an employee meets the standard on a skill, he or she moves on—and not before.

Criterion-referenced programs do not result in substantial learning curves on the job after graduation. Learning curves following traditional programs result from not teaching employees all the skills they need to succeed on the job or from not having employees practice such skills in realistic contexts. In CRI, because each employee practices each job skill in job-like conditions to job standards during training, training performance and job performance are the same. Complete transfer from the classroom to the job invariably follows, and graduates arrive at the job fully competent.

Good training today can be much better than the kind of instruction most of us experienced as we grew up. A powerful training methodology exists now, but upper management doesn’t know about it. What most executives believe about training is based largely on what they experienced in their schooling. Therefore, the greatest challenge lies in educating internal customers and executives about the power of criterion-referenced instruction.

1.The general term performance instruction is often used to specify training programs that contain substantial information (or knowledge) presentations, but in which the students are also required to apply that information to practical problems. Such programs are really performance-enhanced subject matter training. Such programs do not produce employees who are fully competent performers at the completion of the program. In criterion-referenced instruction, necessary information is presented immediately before practicing the skill in which the information will be applied, and only that information required by the skill is included in such presentations. Criterion-referenced instruction does indeed produce competent performers by the completion of the program.

Excerpted from How to Make Smart Decisions About Training: Save Money, Time, & Frustration by Paul G. Whitmore, Ph.D. (CEP Press, 2002).

If you would like to learn how to use CRI to maximize your organization’s workforce performance, go to http://www.cepworldwide.com/workshop/cri.html.

Need help designing a CRI-based training program for your organization? Contact Paula Alsher at 770-458-4080 or palsher@cepworldwide.com for a FREE consultation.