By Michael Heffelfinger, Director of Education Services
If your social media feed is anything like mine lately, chances are you are seeing a flood of pictures of children going back to school. With each post, I cannot help thinking of the parents behind the camera and what is going through their heads. Possibly it is a swirl of emotions from anxiety to happiness as they see their child take the next step and hoping the education they receive prepares them for the future.
When I continue to think about these posts, it is a wonderful reminder of how important our own education and training is to our success and your teams. A recent survey by the National Center on the Educational Quality of the Workforce (EQW) found that a 10% increase to workforce education led to an 8.6% gain in total productivity. Working with clients, we have seen the proof in these numbers. With a well-designed education plan and curriculum, your proposal team can begin to take advantage of this productivity gain as well.
What makes a well-designed education plan and curriculum?
- Before you start with any training, know your internal process. You can use the process as your guide to identify what topics need to be covered and the order of these topics. The process will provide structure to the training while also highlighting how each topic fits into the bigger picture.
- Confucius once said “I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.”
This saying highlights the progression of how we learn as adults. If we just hear, it is likely to have the least amount of retention. If we just see, we will have better retention than hearing, however, it will not be a strong as when we are able to do. When the curriculum incorporates action, you capture the highest level of retention. By including hands-on practice or scenario based activities with demonstrations, you further enable the learner to grasp the new skills they are being taught. - One of the biggest mistakes is what I call “train it and forget it.” This is where a training event happens, everyone is excited, but no follow-up training is ever conducted. After a training is completed, participants may still have questions. As much as we wish for people to be sponges, the reality is that students will not retain 100% of the information they learned. There has to be opportunities for them to ask questions after the training has concluded. The best cadence is typically one to two weeks after the completion of the training with on-going follow-up on a monthly basis.
If you are considering learning on your own or looking into outside training options for your team, consider the three points above.
Qvidian maintains a very strong commitment to the education of our customers and their teams. All of our Qvidian University courses are diligently designed to capture the highest level of retention. Our newest course, RFP Management, is a great example of the thoughtfully designed curriculum that you will find in all Qvidian University offerings. In this course, the learner will go through the experience of answering an RFP and see how what they learn fits into a process. By the end of the course, each participant will play the role of the RFP Manager to another participant.
For more information about Qvidian University and the new RFP Management course, please visit Qvidian University.