Assessing the way training is used in the change process

Assessing the way training is used in the change process
Reflect on either an organization-wide change or a change targeted at a particular department or unit in your organization.

Below are three students' responses to the scenario from above. Provide a response to each of the students' examples.
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First Student Response: C.M.
Situation: My office, the criminal division of the County Attorney's Office, recently implemented an electronic charging (e-charging) module that worked with our case management system. The purpose of the module was to electronically route criminal complaints through the system to increase efficiency and minimize errors. This module involves multiple agencies, routing an electronic copy of a criminal complaint from the clerical staff, to the prosecuting attorney for e-signature, to the law enforcement officer for e-signature, to court administration, and eventually to a judge for review and approval.
Evidence indicating the organization / change managers were prepared to invest in training to support change?
The mid-level managers of our office have been involved with the implementation of the e-charging module since its inception ten years ago. They have worked with the other agencies and the software companies closely to ensure that all parties' needs were addressed before "going live".
Attention given to training
Attorneys, law enforcement officers, and judges were merely given their login IDs and passwords and told to ask the clerical staff how to use it. Clerical and court administration staff were given the most training, but still bordering on inadequate. Much of the training after the official training has been on-the-job by trial and error.
Training targeted at the individuals / groups most in need of training?
As stated above, the clerical and court administration staff received the most training. Since these employees initiate the process and the inputs are vital to the correct output, it was appropriate that they receive adequate training. If an incorrect statute or defendant information is entered, an innocent person can be charged, or a guilty person can be incorrectly charged. The attorneys, officers, and judges only need to know how to access the information, review it and sign off on it. Therefore, their technical training needs weren't as high as their essential function didn't really change.
Training compatible with training requirements and delivered in a way that maximized the transfer of learning to the work situation?
The training of the clerical staff started with a one hour in-house demonstration of the system in a training module. While this was a good introduction to how the system would look, there were many issues later with the different functions of the module that weren't addressed in the training. We were all able to transfer the basics taught to our work environment, but the more we worked with the system, new issues have had to be addressed daily. Some of the statutes weren't transferring properly, appropriate level sentences would not accompany the charges, in some situations the system would reject complaints for unknown reasons and we would have to revert to the old way of handling them.
Ultimately, it was a common situation of having to work the bugs out of something new. While training could have been more comprehensive, there would still have been technical issues to deal with after implementation.
Response:

Second Student Response: E.O.
The change that I will be describing is one that I helped implement which was a new form that teams at my company use to direct the work for projects. The idea was to standardize the process to ensure that certain steps that we had seen been missed are no longer missed. By listing out, even at a high level, all of the steps that need to be completed teams wouldn't lose sight of these.
This was an Excel based project plan that took into account the scope of the project, timelines, interim deadlines and the number of team members. Because of this robustness the Excel based plan is a bit complicated to use, especially if you haven't had any instruction.
Unfortunately teams were not adequately trained and so the plan was complicated to use and people didn't see the benefit, because they had to spend so much more time project planning than previously. In my opinion, leadership should have dedicated specific time to explain the reasoning behind the plan, how it was to be used, the specific fields needing to be maintained and what the new tool specific did not cover. Since the tool was introduced in an email only it was hard for people to fully understand what it was to be used for, or instead of, and there was no clear path for getting answers to questions that arose in the usage of the tool.
Ideally teams who would begin using the tool could be educated in a large group and then specific deputies could have been available to answer project specific questions that arose. This would also allow feedback to make its way back to me, the tool developer.
By providing large group training questions could be heard and answered by all. Ideally this would be done a mock usage way. For example: the trainer could introduce the tool and then, as a group, the trainees could begin to fill in and use the tool. The trainer deputies would be able to answer specific questions and then follow one of three paths. Ensure that information is distributed to other deputies to ensure that everyone is learning, feedback for tool improvement is given to the developer, or feedback is given to the trainers to ensure that initial training covers the topic.
Since training was not adequate, in either depth or breadth, the tool is not in use fully and there is still room for improvement. Unfortunately even adding training at this time may not be enough since there is already a negative opinion of the tool.
Response:

Second Student Response: E.O.
We recently got a new phone system installed at work. The upgraded phone system is much more complicated to use then our old system. Due to the complications and all of the new features of the new system, our contract with the new telephone company included training. An outside trainer came to our site for one and one half days to train all of the employees. Since everyone in the company needs to know how to use the phone, everyone was invited to a training session. There were two different sessions we could sign-up for, regular or advanced. The advanced training was geared towards the receptionist and those who back her up.
The regular training session was scheduled for one hour. The training was very informative and taught us about all of the features of the phone along with how to use it. After the hour long training, we had a lot of confused people. These people were confused even about the basic operation of the new phone system. The trainer did hand-out instructions on how to use the phone, we followed along with the trainer as she went through them. Since each group consisted of only about ten employees, I feel as though we should have had actual phones that we could learn on. I think this would have helped more people retain what we learned in the session.
I know for myself, I am able to use the basic functions of the phone. There are many functions that I don't use, but hope to have time to figure them out in the near future. On a daily basis people are still learning how to use the paging system. Maybe the employees could email questions to the IT department and then the IT department could compile a list of all of the questions with answers. Another idea would be to have the trainer come back for a couple of hours and employees could ask question about the system.
Response: