Are You an Effective Trainer?
By Evonne Pilarski, Tim O’Connell, and Vicki Dornbush

Typically, adult learners in a training environment typically absorb about 15% of the information presented to them; by the next day, they remember only about 10%. Being a trainer is like being an actor. You have a lead role and all eyes are on you. You must know the material, practice your lines and be able to convey your message clearly. A good trainer has mastered the ability to communicate and read body language signals. By providing variety in the training, hands-on practice sessions, and eliciting user feedback, the trainer can meet most of the varied needs of the users.

Along with being patient and flexible, trainers need several other skills. They must speak with enthusiasm and vary tone and pitch to keep users attention, while avoiding negative speech and tones. Successful teachers are open and receptive to questions and criticism and closely observe the student’s body language and are responsive to the class mood. Most importantly, an effective trainer knows how to have fun with their students.

Just like an actor must know their marks, it’s vital that trainers be familiar with their class outline. A class outline keeps a trainer on track with their topics and with their time. This involves a familiarity with the information and the amount of time that it requires to cover each topic. Keeping a class outline helps everyone stay focused. It should consist of several things. First, schedule start and end times, as well as, lunch and break times. The subjects should be listed in the order in which they will be taught with estimated start and finish times; for example, 9:00am “Creating a Guarantor Account” 20 minutes.” Most times, it is best to begin with easier topics and move to more difficult topics.

Effective trainers should also strive to be consistent when presenting their material, especially when working within a training team. Being consistent will reflect professionalism. Training teams should work together to develop, understand, and test training guides. Testing guides in the training environment helps to achieve the greatest accuracy. Also, make sure that the training guides have been approved by the Project Team Lead for correct workflow and content. Help each other within the team by communicating to each other what works and what does not. Each team member is responsible for keeping current on all changes to the workflows. Establishing classrooms expectations and a class agenda that are shared with the students will also keep trainers consistent. Remember, trainers are not responsible for delivering information about changes to user’s workflow. This news should be delivered by their manager or leadership team with an explanation of why they are changing and the improvements that are expected.

An effective training team is created by following some common guidelines inside and outside of the classroom. Always begin by understanding your students and their needs. Ask students question to find their level of comfort with computers and software. One simple way to engage students and create respect is to learn everyone’s name and address them by name throughout the class. Another simple, but important guideline for training is to be prepared for a range of situations. Have a detailed plan for training advanced users, as well as a slow version for beginners. Inevitably, things will go wrong. Students miss class, training rooms become unavailable, training manuals disappear; the best defense is a good plan.

Lastly, an effective trainer should follow up by documenting how each class went. Some questions you may ask yourself are:

• Were the students engaged?
• Did they seem confused or bored?
• How were their evaluation scores?
• What were some consistent questions being asked?
• Does anything need to be modified for the next class?

In the end, understanding and following these simple training guidelines can lead to a rewarding and reoccurring role as an efficient trainer. Your goal should be to help those adult learners continue to increase the percentage of information learned and returned in the long run. For more information on training users please contact us at vcs@getvitalized.com or 610-444-1233. You can also visit our website at www.getvitalized.com for more information about our services and solutions.