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Each month, we feature a new article designed to give you tips on how to make the most of your training dollars. Some speak to the needs of learners. Some speak to managers. All focus on how you can make learning transcend the training room walls.
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Turning Compliance Into Competence
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Compliance training is carried out in order to meet regulatory requirements or reduce risk of liability. Itusually goes something like this:
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Read – or listen to – a long list of policies and procedures
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Take a test to demonstrate that you can remember what you’ve just read
It’s quick, it’s inexpensive to develop, and it’s brutally dull. Worse, it’s almost guaranteed to be forgotten the moment the test is over.
Many argue that there’s nothing to be done about it. Compliance training is compulsory training, and you can’t mess with that.
I say you can. In fact, I say that compulsory training should be seen as a golden opportunity to move from compliance to competence.
Let’s say, for example, that you must recertify in emergency safety practices. With compliance training, you would read what to do in case of accident or injury and then take a multiple choice test. With competency-based training you might, instead, read a series of problem scenarios. With each problem, you would have to figure out which policies to apply and which procedures to put into effect. There would be feedback for wrong decisions, and progressive success for correct choices.
Instead of recalling information, you would be applying your knowledge to realistic situations. You would be building competence.
Competency-based training is more complex to design, but it results in true learning.
Why settle for anything less?
Tip 1: The Importance of Making Mistakes (pdf 62 KB)
Tip 2: Of Hostages, Tourists and Learners (pdf 59 KB)
