CapraTek Training Program Design

Unit 10: Final Project

Lauren A. Fahey

HRM 5015

Dr. Richard Wagner

December 6, 2016

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Training Topic for CapraTek

After interviewing all of the SMEs that I selected at CapraTek, the primary issue they all

agreed upon was leadership and making a team run smoothly or conflict resolution skills. The

employees that will be required to participate in this training program will be all of the

employees that are in a supervisory position and/or are managing a team. This training program

will meet the strategic needs of CapraTek due to the fact that once the training program has been

completed, the supervisors and/or team leaders will be able to understand their roles better and

be able to run their team in a more cohesive manner.

Objectives for the Training Program

The objectives of the training program are:

The professionals will develop their leadership skills.

The professionals will develop proficiency in handling personality disputes on

their teams.

The professionals will develop skills to more effectively perform as supervisors or

team leaders.

According to Eduardo Figueroa (2016), some other training objectives are: “developing

better teamwork through the building of synergy and cooperation; teaching supervisors and

employees how to work together in harmony; reducing the conflicts that cause problems,

accidents, bad customer service, inefficiency, stress, and loss of money; and the trainees will

learn to communicate more effectively and be able to utilize more effective management skills

that are based on respect, motivation, and sensitivity, rather than intimidation or misuse of

authority”.

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Training Needs Analysis

According to HR Guide (2015), a training needs analysis is described as: “The process of

identifying training needs in an organization for the purpose of improving employee job

performance”. After completing the training program, the trainees should not only be able to

confidently handle any issues that arise with their employees, but also be able to handle

personality conflicts that will arise on the team. In order to identify what the trainees already

know, I would not only interview them individually but also observe them as they are interacting

with their employees or managing their teams during meetings. This way, I can tailor the training

as needed so each employee receives the most amount of information and skills needed from the

training.

According to Randall P. Bandura and Paul R. Lyons (2015), “In acquisition, the learner

has to resolve the tension between apprehension (concrete experience; what is sensed and

perceived) and comprehension (abstract conceptualization; what is understood). Apprehension

is the taking in of information. Comprehension is when the learner breaks down this information

into meaningful events and places it within a personal mental structure that makes clear for

her/him how the information fits with what is known or believed”.

At the end of the training, the employees should be able to acquire the knowledge and

skills needed to be a successful leader and team manager without becoming flustered due to

having poor conflict resolution skills.

What the Employees Should Already Know

Before the employees start the training, they should already have basic management

skills in handling a certain number of employees, as well as some conflict management skills in

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order to handle some situations that arise with managing a team. According to Eric Basu (2012),

there are certain things that companies can do to train their managers to become leaders

including conducting different types of training programs.

“In my current company, we have definitely been guilty in the past of throwing people into the breech and expecting them to suddenly develop manager skills without any formal training.  However as we’ve grown over the years we’ve found that there is no escaping the need for a more formal approach to training our managers. Luckily for us, we have internal resources that most companies don’t have.  Over 60% of our employees are former military, with varying degrees of leadership training and skills” (Basu, 2012). 

Some of the questions that I will be asking the trainees before the training program

begins are:

How do you typically handle personality conflicts?

What is your first step in resolving conflicts or disagreements amongst your employees?

How do you typically manage your employees or team?

Do you have a specific leadership style?

Complete Training Program Design

Internal or External Trainer

I will be using an external vendor for the training program due to the fact that an internal

employee may not have all of the tools needed to conduct a training program. Some of those

necessary tools that are needed to successfully conduct a training program such as the ability to

convey information to others or being able to provide constructive feedback for the trainees after

they have completed the training program.

The external vendor is the best fit due to the fact that they consistently give trainings on

the topic and are well-equipped to not only answer any and all questions that may be asked by

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the trainees but they are able to convey information in a variety of ways that accommodates all

styles of learners including kinesthetic, aural, and reading/writing, as well as providing

constructive feedback to the trainees at the end of the training program.

Location of the Training Program

Although the majority of the training will be on-site, the trainees that are unable to attend

the on-site training will have access to the training materials via Blackboard and will be able to

Skype with the trainer in order to ask any questions, as well as to be able act out the live-action

roleplaying after the training is completed.

The distance learning unit will complement the traditional training program by

incorporating assignments and roleplaying of scenarios that are presented. According to

Washington State University (2016), “When distance education is used in addition to classroom

teaching, it enhances the curriculum by adding current or additional information or making

class assignments. Distance education is used extensively in places like Alaska where students

are scattered over distant geographical areas that would otherwise prevent attending classes”.

How the Material will be Presented to the Trainees

The learning unit will be presented to the trainees in a PowerPoint presentation that is

approximately seven slides long. The first slide will be a brief introduction to the training and

what the trainees can expect. The second slide will be have some questions for the trainees to

answer such as “How comfortable are you handling a tense situation that arises with different

personalities?”, etc., which will allow me to gauge all of the trainees’ comfort levels.

The third and fourth slides will have some psychological techniques that are well-

established in assisting employees with leadership tactics and conflict resolution skills. The fifth

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slide will have a short and entertaining video for the employees to watch, which will provide a

way for the trainees to remain focused on the training program. The sixth and seventh slides will

have two different roleplaying scenarios that I will have the teams practice before they do a live-

action role play for me.

The trainees will be acquiring the new information by sitting in an interactive lecture,

where they will be able to ask questions and the vendor answers them. The lecture will be set up

similarly to a university lecture, where the professor opens the floor to questions or discussion

after the first ten minutes or so. I chose this method due to the fact that it accommodates a variety

of learners and is the most successful at allowing trainees to absorb as much material, while

allowing them to immediately put the information to use in work situations.

According to Marilyn Gist, Anna Bavetta, and Cynthia Stevens (1990), there are two

process approaches that facilitate training transfer. The first process approach is self-

management training or being able to self-manage one’s training. The second process approach

is goal-setting training or being able to set goals in a reasonable manner and completing those

goals without getting overwhelmed. The main advantage of these two process approaches is that

they can be used to “augment many training programs without requiring changes to the basic

instructional content”.

Lesson Plan

Time Activity Instructions

60 minutes Leadership and Conflict Resolution

Set up the PowerPoint and turn on computer equipment before class begins (check for connection issues)

5 minutes Divide class into groups of 5 Divide the class into groups of 5 any way you choose and

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have the groups sit at tables for this discussion

30 minutes Trainees will roleplay scenarios with the information learned

Give the trainees 5 minutes to decide on a scenario and 15 minutes to act out the scenario

The training program will be completed in one day, as the PowerPoint presentation is

approximately one hour long, with a ten minute break before I divide the entire class into groups.

Once the groups have been created, they will have approximately thirty minutes to roleplay the

two scenarios that were created specifically for management and team leaders.

How the Trainees will Practice What They have Learned

The trainees, at the end of the training program, will have reviewed the roleplaying

scenarios before conducting a live-action roleplaying of the scenarios. Each scenario has a mock

team or set of employees that the supervisors and/or team managers are working with. The idea

of having trainees conduct a live action role play for me is so that I can get an accurate picture of

how much the trainees absorbed from the training program and whether they need additional

materials to study and practice at home.

The trainees will break into groups of five after the lecture is complete and will be given

approximately five minutes to come up with scenarios that they will act out in order to best

absorb the information that they learned during the lecture. An excellent roleplaying example

would be from my own work experience. During a meeting for the administrative team, the

trainer broke the members into two groups of four to five.

Giving the Trainees Feedback on the Training Program

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For the direct feedback, I will be rating the trainees on a Likert scale from 1 to 10, 1

being that they did not understand the training at all and 10 being that they accurately understood

the training. After the direct feedback is given, I will meet with the trainees one on one to give

them further feedback on what they understood and what they need to work on.

I plan on giving the trainees feedback in two different ways once the direct feedback is

given, interview and observation. The first way that I will be giving them feedback is in a group

setting, after they have completed the live-action role playing (observation). I will be giving

them feedback on how they interacted with their mock board of directors and asking how they

felt about their confidence with presenting their ideas to the mock board of directors.

The second way that I will be giving the trainees feedback is through interviewing them

one on one after the group feedback session has been completed. I plan on interviewing each

trainee in a private area where none of the other trainees can hear what is being said. Some of the

things that I will be discussing is my evaluation of their performance in the live-action role

playing, how they handled questions that the mock board of directors presented regarding their

money saving ideas, and whether they need additional materials to practice and study at home.

Evaluating Trainee Performance

I will be evaluating trainee performance by observing the trainees manage their

employees and handle conflicts at least two times a month for the next three to four months to

see how they absorbed the information and necessary skills from the training program. Along

with observing them for at least a quarter, I will also have the information from their pre-tests,

which indicates to me what the trainees were like before the training program and what they

knew before starting the training program. I will also have their post-tests, which will indicate

what the trainees learned from the training program

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Evaluation Plan for the Training Program

According to the Northwest Center for Public Practice at the University of Washington

(2016), there are five stages for evaluating a training program, which are: “describing the

outputs, a pre-training assessment, the post-assessment or the trainees’ reactions, a second post-

assessment or what the trainees have learned, and the follow-up to the training program”.

I have enclosed an image of the Kirkpatrick-Phillips model for evaluating this training

program to show the five different steps that are used to evaluate the effectiveness of training

programs.

(GoSignMeUp.com, 2016).

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The typology that I have chosen to evaluate the training program is Summative Evaluation,

which is “an evaluation conducted to determine the extent to which trainees have changed as a

result of participating in the training program. That is, have trainees acquired knowledge, skills,

attitudes, behavior, or other outcomes identified in the training objectives?” (Noe, 2013).

The reason that I selected this typology is due to the fact that Summative Evaluation uses

quantitative data that was collected through a variety of methods such as “tests, ratings of

behaviors, or objective measures of performance such as volume of sales, accidents or patents”

(Noe, 2013). Furthermore, Summative Evaluation may also use a Return on Investment or ROI

to evaluate whether the training was worth the money spent on it, that is, were the costs of the

training program worth the financial benefits?

According to Entrepreneur.com (2016), return on investment is defined as “A

profitability measure that evaluates the performance of a business by dividing net profit by net

worth”. Even though this article is describing it for evaluating a business’s performance, an ROI

can be adjusted to evaluate employee performance.

Although Formative Evaluation is an excellent way of evaluating a training program, I

would not utilize it for evaluating my training program due to the fact that Formative Evaluation

is better utilized during the development of a training program. According to Noe (2013),

Formative Evaluation is best used “during program design and development. That is, formative

evaluation helps to ensure that (1) the training program is well organized and runs smoothly,

and (2) trainees learn and are satisfied with the program”.

Conclusion

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In conclusion, leadership and conflict resolution were the topics for this training program

for CapraTek as those were the main issues affecting the managers and team leaders. This

training program also went over the specific objectives that should be met by all of the trainees at

the end of the training program, as well as a few of the specific questions that I will be asking

them to see what they already know and how they typically handle issues amongst their

employees.

The trainer that is being used for this training program is an external vendor due to the

fact that an internal employee may not be the best pick for a variety of reasons. The training

program will be an on-site training, though the material will be readily available via Blackboard

for the employees that are not able to make it to the on-site training session and they will be able

to Skype with the trainer in order to ask questions or perform the live action role-playing at the

end of the training session.

The training program is an interactive lecture where the trainees can ask questions during

the lecture, just as they would in a traditional college classroom. The training program will be an

hour long, with a ten minute break for the trainees to get something to eat or drink, or use the

restroom and when they come back from the break, they will be broken into groups of five and

will be given thirty minutes to perform the live-action roleplaying scenarios that were created

specifically for the training program.

I will be giving the trainees feedback in several ways including the Likert scale, which

will be used directly after the live-action roleplaying is concluded, as well as interview and

observation to see how much the trainees learned during the program. I will also be evaluating

the trainees a few times a month for at least a quarter, so I can see how much they learned during

the training and whether any of them need further training. Finally, I will be using a variety of

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methods including the Kirkpatrick-Phillips triangle, Summative Evaluation, and Return on

Investment, to evaluate the training program to see if it was successful

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References

Bandura, R. P., & Lyons, P. R. (2015). PERFORMANCE TEMPLATES: AN

ENTREPRENEUR'S PATHWAY TO EMPLOYEE TRAINING AND

DEVELOPMENT. Journal of Business and Entrepreneurship, 26(3), 37-54. Retrieved

from http://search.proquest.com.library.capella.edu/docview/1679959239?

accountid=27965 on December 8, 2016.

Basu, E. (2012). How to Train Your Managers –Leadership Training for Employees. Retrieved

from http://www.forbes.com/sites/ericbasu/2012/08/23/how-to-train-your-managers-

leadership-training-for-employees/#73e8a62d5da4 on December 9, 2016.

Entrepreneur.com. (2016). Return on Investment (ROI). Retrieved from

https://www.entrepreneur.com/encyclopedia/return-on-investment-roi on December 9,

2016.

Figueroa, E. (2016). Objective of the Training for Supervisors. Retrieved from

http://www.betteremployees.net/objective-of-the-training-for-supervisors/ on December

9, 2016.

Gist, M.E., Bavetta, A.G., and Stevens, C.K. (1990). Transfer Training Method: It’s Influence on

Skill Generalization, Skill Repetition, and Performance Level. Personnel Psychology,

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http://search.proquest.com.library.capella.edu/docview/220137280?pq-

origsite=summon&http://library.capella.edu/login?url=accountid=27965 on December 9,

2016.

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HR Guide. (2015). Needs Analysis: How to determine training needs. Retrieved from

http://www.hr-guide.com/data/G510.htm on December 8, 2016.

Noe, R.A. (2013). Employee Training and Development: Chapter Six: Designing Training, p.

235. Retrieved from

https://online.vitalsource.com/#/books/0077781732/cfi/6/10!/4/2/12/10/4/2@0:100 on

December 8, 2016.

Northwest Center for Public Health Practice at the University of Washington. (2016). Five

Stages of Training Evaluation. Retrieved from https://www.nwcphp.org/evaluation/tools-

resources/training-evaluation-tips on December 9, 2016.

Washington State University. (2016). Distance Education: Expanding the Classroom. Retrieved

from https://ucomm.wsu.edu/distance-education-expanding-the-classroom/ on December

9, 2016.