Task, policy and procedure analysis are vital parts of a thorough Discovery and should be incorporated into the Training Plan of any Kronos implementation or upgrade.
We spoke about the Training Zen Discovery, or task analysis briefly in the last post. When building your list ensure that you take you include every possible task. Remember that your organization might roll out tasks in the near future that aren't used now. For example, you may want your organization to use daily approvals in the near future but currently you only approve on a pay period basis. It might be a pay period, a month or a quarter before you start using this feature, but by taking it into account now you will ensure these tasks will be included in your training materials at the appropriate time.
A huge benefit to the Training Zen approach to your training plan is the ability to incorporate not just specific training tasks into your training curriculum, but also to include important organizational policies and procedures that dovetail into the Kronos WFC implementation. By incorporating these policies and procedures we take advantage of a large and captive audience and we can relate to these to specific tasks in the new application as well as the specific tasks employees undertake. This will increase the relevancy of the training. These policies and procedures will mean much more to the learners because they will be able to relate them directly to the Kronos WFC application, and by extension, their jobs. A good example is the use of comments in the timecard. If employees are taking a standard or "canned" training class, they will see comments that don't relate to them. Using the Training Zen approach, a customized training database is used so employees will only see comments that relate to them. They are more likely to notice a comment that isn't clear, or omitted completely, and ask about it. You can be one step ahead by noting the policy for having new comments added to the application.
This brings up another important point. Make sure your policies and procedures are built into a relevant section of the course material; and that they are mention when necessary, even if it means they are listed in multiple areas. In the comment example above, the policy may be mentioned in the timecard module, the genie or group edit module as well as a scheduling module. When building your curriculum, make sure that your policies and procedures stand out from the regular curriculum. They need to be easy to find so learners can refer to them after the training event. Obviously, make sure they are correct and ensure the policy you publish is updated.
Often, organizations will use training to announce new policies or procedures; heck the Kronos implementation may require you to create a few! When this occurs, make sure to note the effective date of the policy. When learners see a policy they are not familiar with, they will want to know two things:
When did this policy come into affect?
Who to contact with questions?
It may be tempting to have learners contact a specific person when asking about these policies and procedures. Best practice is to simply note a department or team, followed by an extension. This will save a lot of headaches for the individual who had to explain these policy changes!
Finally, remember to incorporate as many policies and procedures as possible. It is the rare organization that overloads their courseware with this information. This is your chance, take advantage of it!
Until next time, good training!