A Simple Question

We thought it was a simple question.  Is the way that we train effective and does it make a difference back in the workplace?  When you start to unpack this little question, it is decidedly not that simple. So, we applied for funding from Callaghan Innovation to help us answer it.

We gained the funding and then embarked on a fully fledged research project with two Doctors no less to help us answer the question.  The researcher talked to our trainers, our students, and ex-students still in the workplace, and to employers to find out which training methods we use seem to assist the most with knowledge and skills being retained, and so are more likely to be able to impact in the workplace.

We looked at lots of literature and analysed the results of our research and found it came down to these important things: trainee preparedness, course design, and trainer attributes.  You are probably going to say, yeah, so what is new, could have told you that already … but we learned a lot from this research, and we are actively changing how we are designing our courses, and how we deliver.

You also told us a lot of things about ourselves, how we do things, and what works best to prepare people for work in industry.   Change is not going to happen overnight – we have 125 pages of research to digest and work through, but change will happen.