Training fills the gaps - but just what is the gap?

Tweet If training is supposed to fill-in the gaps of knowledge and skills we have, or to build on our existing base, it seems to me that we need to know first of all what are those gaps? What knowledge- and skills-base are people coming to the class with? When we roll-out a new SAP HR installation, for example, and people get trained on how the new Hiring action works, we may be hitting them with a whole new set of things they have no idea about. How do you login? How do you get around the SAP screens - why are all those icons different that what I see in my Outlook? How do I use a mouse? What are keyboard shortcuts? How do I have two applications running, and switch between them? Even aside from the technology, we make assumptions about business process knowledge. Can we assume the our participants are familiar with the hiring process from start to finish? Do they know why there are certain requirements in that process? Do they understand why it's important to follow the process completely? My answer - no, we can't assume those things at all. To have effective training, we need to have a good idea of what the participants already know about the subject matter, and then design training to start from that base of knowledge. We will find knowledge gaps in both the business process and the technical skills, and then we can build training to fill those gaps and build upon that new base. It's like building a good foundation before framing the house. Would you build a house on a partial, crumbling foundation and hope for the best? Of course not! So let's stop building training programs that way.