Training to succeed

MANILA, Philippines - Private corporations and government agencies spend on professional development training for their management team and workforce to prop up business and deliver improved performance. While the training varies in terms of content, process and effectiveness, the high quality ones are more likely to produce better results or meet expectations. This is true in the case of Javelyn Lee, business director of a company offering digital marketing training.

Lee, whose role is to work with clients to understand what their challenges are, was among those who recently took up a four-day Foundations of Instructional Design program of Learning and Performance Partners Inc. (LPPI), a provider of customized learning solutions to different industries. The training was a fitting follow up to the LPPI training sessions she undertook last year which helped her clinch two big contracts for her company.

“The LPPI training sort of gave me a framework that I can use every time I meet a client,” says Lee. “My clients now appreciate that I understand their problems and needs. The objectives of the training should be attainable, realistic and most importantly, measurable because in the end you’re only as good as your output is.”

Before undergoing last year’s LPPI training, Lee recalls the challenge of working with clients. 

“Whenever I talk to clients, I didn’t know how to start or what questions to ask. My thoughts seem not structured, so I end up asking a lot of questions and taking too much of my client’s time. Sometimes, I even miss asking a question, which is not efficient. So the turnover, when it comes to presenting the recommendation, takes a while.”

Aside from Foundations of Instructional Design, LPPI’s other core training programs also include Train-the-Trainers Workshop Courseware Development Workshop, and Evaluating Training Results. The training on instructional design is intended for people developing the company’s training program for employees. The train-the-trainers workshop, on the other hand, is for people who conduct the training themselves while courseware development and evaluating training results workshop is for people who make the training materials and who are tasked to measure the training’s outcome, respectively.

Jed, a training specialist from a government institution, also attended the same training held at the AIM Conference Center in Makati together with two other co-workers. “I find it very helpful because in the current setting of our office, we are now moving towards addressing directly the training needs of our employees. My training on foundations of instructional design gives us the tools to assess the specific competencies an employee would need to address,” he says. 

There is more to training than the actual delivery.  To enable effective instruction, the planning that goes behind it matters, according to LPPI president and instructor Armi Treñas in her blog post entitled “The Benefits of Instructional Design.”

LPPI’s training course was not difficult to absorb for Jed, who admits to having attended only a few training programs in the past, because of how Treñas herself had trained them. “Armi puts emphasis on application so we are immediately able to apply what we’ve learned. She also provides specific inputs on our outputs, so we are able to readily correct mistakes,” he says. 

Treñas laments that there are still numerous organizations who equate the number of training programs with effectiveness.  According to her, what’s important is the quality of the training, or what she calls “instructional integrity,” which determines its value. “It is not enough that we train, what matter is whether participants learned,” she quips.  

Treñas believes that Philippine businesses must invest in quality training programs to be able to bridge the gap between education and workforce requirements, and to increase the country’s global competitiveness.