Building a quality channel for your certification scheme will not only help you grow, but provide you with the reassurance that your customers are receiving the same high standards across the globe. This blog will tell you how to ensure consistent training standards.
If you want to train people in your product there are only two options available to you:
- A pre-packaged online training course
- An instructor led course, either online or in a physical classroom.
Many organisations have a complicated process based predominantly on documentation to approve someone to be “delivery partner”. This approach works well when there is a pre-packaged product as the content and delivery style can be assessed using traditional quality-control processes but it doesn’t work for instructor led training.
Assessing trainer skills and knowledge
The delivery of your course by professional trainers, who have passed the knowledge test is important to maintain the integrity of your brand and IP. When you think the trainer is effectively the face of the organisation and representing your brand and they are usually delivering alone, you have very little control over what they say and do. In short, how can you ensure there is consistent quality in the delivery of your product under these circumstances?
The answer is to check and approve the elements that make a good trainer.
Bearing in mind, every trainer draws on their experiences and tells their own stories you need a system of approval that takes these into account.
Within APMG we determined a long time ago that the only way we could have confidence in the trainer’s ability was to assess all aspects of their trainer skills. Simple as it sounds, but apparently difficult for many organisations to do.
In short, we watch them train either physically in a classroom or from a recording, one of our assessors can assess the trainers’ delivery particularly the fluency of it and the way they engage with the course.
As well as checking their training ability, part of our accreditation services is to put them through a detailed interview to check the depth and breadth of their knowledge on the topic they are delivering.
In our view, the combination of watching them deliver a class and interviewing them to ensure they have the depth and breadth of knowledge, gives us reasonable confidence they are competent in what they are doing and in the subject they are delivering.
We review the exam results of our accredited trainers and to ensure customers are receiving a great experience, we watch them teach and provide feedback. Through our monitoring procedures we are able to see if a trainer is within a reasonable range in comparison with their peers or if they are outside that range, either much higher or lower, we can then follow up with the individual and possibly some of their clients (course delegates) to see if there are any fundamental underlying reasons or it was just “one of those days”.
If you are concerned about how the quality of your material and brand is represented in the classroom, maybe we could help - please contact me using the form or live chat in the footer of this website.