As part of my role as a Training Solution Consultant at ServiceNow, I speak to lots of our clients about their plans to train and enable their users as part of their Go Live with ServiceNow. More and more, I’m hearing that the “Train the Trainer” model (or TtT or T3 as it’s sometimes referred to) is an outdated mode of delivery. Instead, they opt for a purely digital method as it’s perceived to be quicker, easier to deploy and less reliant on staff time. This got me thinking: is Train the Trainer still relevant in today’s digital world?
Probably like most of you reading this, I’ve been on the receiving end of poor training or enablement as part of a new software tool that was going to “save staff time and the business money”. In fact, in one case there was no training, just a manual and a passing “it’s so user intuitive, you don’t need training!” Either way, the net result was poor user adoption and in one case, the company stopped using the tool. But would a classroom-based training session beforehand have helped, or would a more digital approach have worked better? There are different approaches out there and each has a set of positives and negatives.
Digital
There are multiple options available to support this mode of delivery. The one point that people agree on is that whatever is being delivered must reflect the company’s implementation. There’s nothing worse than sitting through the required training only to find out that the actual software looks very different.
This digital delivery really speaks to the “just enough” and “just in time” approach that Jeff Car refers to in his Forbes article, The Future of Learning: Top Five Trends for 2020. This approach is usually quicker to deploy and more cost-effective to keep content up to date than a TTT approach. In the cloud-based world that I work in, ServiceNow releases two new versions per year and people need to understand the nuances in new releases. The time it would take to deliver an instructor-led class on the new version would take too long. However, the purely digital approach can be quite frustrating and isolating for people. I mean, isn’t it quicker sometimes just to ask someone rather than find the eLearning or video and go through it all again? There are also a lot of people out there who prefer to receive some form of training from an actual person.
Train the Trainer.
What’s better than having a group of employees trained to impart their knowledge to the user community, support the implementation, and then act as SME’s once Go Live takes place? These familiar faces then help with virtual drop-in sessions in the first few weeks post Go Live to make sure that everyone is comfortable with the new software. The bonus is they are also sufficiently trained to answer any first line support questions to help ease the burden of the support team to focus on more urgent cases at Go Live.
Unfortunately, this tends to be the most expensive approach, as it takes time to skill people up and deliver the sessions. Furthermore, the training sessions are only as good as the people who deliver them – not all SMEs make good trainers. I have found that organisations tend to discount this formal training approach if they have a lot of users in multiple locations across the globe as it would take too long to train everyone. One client worked out that by the time user training program was due to finish, the first few groups who were trained at the start of the rollout would have forgotten most of what they’d been taught.
The blended approach
Taking the best of each approach is an effective strategy that we see more often now. The software provider will train a group of “Super Users” who then host virtual sessions that cover much more focused topics such as:
- Why is the company moving to the new software? (Often, this detail is provided by the client stakeholders, not the software provider).
- High level view of how to log in and navigate around the new software.
- Show people where any pre-requisite learning material is (eLearning, demonstrations) and how to access it.
- Demonstrate any post Go Live support (Knowledge Base articles or in-app support).
- Answer related questions.
Virtual delivery means that more people can be included in each session, which then means that training is completed sooner. This approach also supports multiple different learning styles, helps clients tell a compelling change story, and guides users on their journey to leverage new tools.
Most of the enablement is then broken down into smaller components that can fit easily into the employee’s day. Keeping the updated content is easier to deploy via a short video, eLearning course or updated in-application support tool. The SME’s can also host a series of drop-in sessions for those who feel they need it.
So, do I think that a Train the Trainer approach is out of date? Ultimately, no, I don’t. My belief (other beliefs are available and indeed, welcome) is that one of the most powerful tools to helping with user adoption is a group of trained staff going out and evangelizing the user community, acting as SMEs for their peers, and helping the support team at Go Live. That being said, putting everyone through a one or two-day training course to familiarize them with a new tool more than two weeks before Go Live is not feasible in today’s working environment. Whilst I am all for that “just-enough-and-just-in-time” approach, I am also a firm believer in the context that training can give.
The Ask a Training Expert Blog is published monthly by members of the Training Solution Consultant team. For more information about ServiceNow Training and Certification, visit our website. Please comment on this article to see your question featured in upcoming blogs.
