Types of HPT Interventions (Required)

1. Communication

  1. Goals and objectives
  2. Conversations
  3. Listening
  4. Expectation
  5. Feedback
  6. Goal setting
  7. Manuals, reports, and memos
  8. Meetings
  9. Performance reviews

2. Incentives

  1. Rewards and recognition
  2. Salaries
  3. Performance alignment
  4. Positive and negative consequences
  5. Removal of unintended punishments
  6. Celebrations

3. Health

  1. Emotional health
  2. Physical health
  3. Substance abuse

4. Human Resources

  1. Coaching and counseling
  2. SMEs
  3. Collaboration
  4. Conflict management
  5. Diversity
  6. Leadership
  7. Teamwork
  8. Utilizing talents and strengths

5. Tools and Technologies

  1. Computer hardware and software
  2. Furniture and equipment
  3. Physical Environment
  4. Tools

6. Policies and Procedures

  1. Policies
  2. Schedules
  3. Job redesign
  4. Work processes
  5. Workload

7. Training

  1. Job aids
  2. E-learning
  3. ILT
  4. Opportunities for practice

Glossary of 20 HPT Interventions (Required)

  1. Assignment deals with the lack of alignment between performers and the tasks they are required to perform. This intervention involves placing round pegs in round holes by matching an employee’s competencies with job requirements. The recent emphasis on strengths-based approaches suggest that jobs should be re-designed to leverage the talents of each employee, resulting in increased productivity and personal fulfillment
  2. Balanced scorecard compensates for the lack of useful feedback. This intervention uses a framework for linking objectives, activities, and metrics at all level of the organization for managing the overall strategy. The scoreboard provides a comprehensive view of the organization’s performance in terms of several key indicators such as customer satisfaction, growth, learning, innovation, and financial returns.
  3. Coaching is an intervention that reduces the impact of performance problems due to lack of skills and knowledge. It may also be used to overcome a lack of motivation. In this intervention, one person improves the performance of another by questioning, collaborative goal setting, systematic observation, constructive feedback, and positive guidance.
  4. Computerization is a key element in reducing inefficiencies in work processes. This intervention supplements (or replaces) human performers with hardware and software to obtain improved, reliable, and consistent results. Specifically, computerization makes use of the latest microtechnology to process large amounts of information in a rapid and reliable fashion.
  5. Culture change is an intervention that compensates for problems related to inappropriate values and dysfunctional social norms in an organization. This organization-wide intervention involves large numbers of people at different levels. It typically requires planning and redefining working relationships. Most culture change efforts incorporate future vision, whole-systems thinking, dissemination of information, participation of all employees, and continuous processing.
  6. Electronic performance support systems (EPSS) reduce the impact of performance problems due to lack of resources and lack of skills and knowledge. This intervention is a computer or online resource that is similar to printed job aids. EPSS provide just-in-time, on-demand information, guidance, examples, and step-by-step instructions to improve job performance without the need for extensive training.
  7. Feedback systems reduce performance problems due to lack of information. This intervention provides timely information about an employee’s performance and its impact. Effective feedback should fit the type of performance and the preferences of the performer. Guidelines for improving the effectiveness of this intervention include these two key principles: Positive feedback (especially in a public setting) must be given soon after the performance in order to increase the frequency of the performance. Negative feedback (especially in a private setting) must be given as a piece of guidance immediately before the next opportunity to perform in order to increase the quality of performance.
  8. Goal setting is an intervention that deals with the lack of information and motivation. This intervention features all employees giving inputs to the organization’s mission and goals, and aligning the objectives at different levels with the organization’s overall strategic aims. The results of goal setting include clearer understanding of the organization’s goals and how each employee contributes to achieving them.
  9. Human factors interventions compensate for the lack of appropriate tools and resources. These interventions use facts and principles from human physiology and cognition to design equipment in such a way as to improve the productivity and comfort level of performers. Facility design applies similar principles and procedures to design lighting, temperature control, ventilation, and furniture to improve human performance.
  10. Job aids reduce the impact of lack of resources and lack of skills and knowledge. This intervention includes printed checklists, decision tables, recipes, directories, work sheets, glossaries, samples, and flowcharts that are available to remind, guide, and facilitate the performer during a work situation. Job aids decrease the need for training and memorization.
  11. Knowledge management is an intervention that deals with the lack of skills, knowledge, and resources. This intervention involves creating, retrieving, and distributing organizational knowledge such as best practices. Computer data bases play a significant role in this intervention.
  12. New hire orientation reduces the negative impact of unclear expectations. This intervention provides new employees with complete and uniform information about the company, its vision and mission, functions and policies, compensation and benefits, rules and standards, and work requirements and safety. The outcome of this intervention is an increase in the confidence, loyalty, trust, and productivity of the employees. Knowledge management is a critical element in creating effective learning organizations.
  13. Performance appraisal reduces the impact of lack of feedback and unclear expectations. This intervention is an ongoing management process that includes defining and developing performance goals, designing appropriate measurement methods, and implementing the appraisal system. This intervention produces many positive outcomes including feedback, recognition, and career development.
  14. Process redesign reduces problems associates with the use of inefficient procedures. This intervention begins the development of a map to graphically depict the current flow of work as a sequence of activities toward the achievement of organizational results. Beginning with the customer’s requirements as the final output, a process map identifies different inputs, decisions, activities, and outputs. The map is than reviewed and analyzed to remove redundancies, superfluous activities, and delays so that high-quality outputs are obtained at a lesser cost and a faster rate.
  15. Rewards and recognition are used in situations where human performance is negatively affected by lack of incentives. Typical recognition events include trophies, plaques, employee-of-the-month awards, announcements in the company newsletter, lunch with the president, certificates, personal notes from the CEO, gift certificates, and photographs on the bulletin board. Effective use of rewards and recognition require that they match with the achievement of business results and with the preferences of the performer.
  16. Salary and benefits (also known as compensation systems) are used to handle performance problems due to lack of incentives. This intervention includes policies and procedures related to payment made by organizations to individual performers for their work-related achievements. In addition to direct salary payments, compensation systems may include insurance, pension, stock ownership, and other such benefits.
  17. Selection is an intervention for reducing performance problems associated with misalignment of a performer with the required performance. This intervention involves gathering specific information about a candidate’s past experiences and behaviors in such a way that they act as predictors of future performance. The process also involves ensuring that the candidate possesses the competencies required for achieving job-related goals.
  18. Supervision is an intervention that reduces the impact of lack of information and feedback. Effective supervisors and managers are knowledgeable about the job functions they supervise. They establish clear goals and standards, assign responsibilities and authority, and provide guidance and feedback to those employees who report directly to them.
  19. Team building is an intervention that compensates for the lack of efficiency in collaborative activities. This intervention increases the effectiveness of intact teams whose members regularly work together to achieve organizational goals. The process typically involves analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of a team, building on current strengths, reducing ineffective practices, and preparing a plan for ongoing team effectiveness. Guided by a facilitator, team-building activities involve clarifying the goal, specifying roles of different team members, providing mutual feedback, and increasing the levels of cohesiveness and trust.
  20. Training is a familiar intervention designed to cope with performance problems caused by a lack of skills and knowledge. It is one of the most frequently used – and misused – interventions. There are several alternative approaches to training (such as accelerated learning, action learning, e-learning, on-the-job training, and experiential learning). Proven guidelines for effective training recommend active and interactive processes.

 

Support Your Training with HPT Interventions

Rapid Design Assignment 2:
Support Your Training with HPT Interventions


Review

Check out these resources in the Library area:

Prepare

A list of HPT interventions that would support the training you are designing.

SUBMIT

Your list of supporting HPT interventions to thiagi@thiagi.com.

FOLLOW UP

When you design and develop your training, be sure to incorporate the HPT interventions you identified.

 

Goal and Objectives

Really Rapid Instructional Design


Goal

Rapidly and inexpensively design (and deliver) performance-based training materials that produce measurable business results.

Objectives

1.    ABCD: An Experiential Introduction to RRID

  • Experience a training activity that was created with the RRID approach.
  • Deconstruct this activity and apply its structure to produce your own training activities.
  • Relate this training activity to the RRID principles.

2.    Training as Performance Improvement

  • Specify the outcomes of a training package in terms of business results, on-the-job performance, learning outcomes (skills, knowledge, and attitude), and learning process.
  • Select suitable performance improvement interventions to support a training package.
  • Identify and apply RRID principles that focus on performance improvement.

3.    Step by Step

  • Identify, integrate, and apply best practices from design thinking, creativity processes, improv techniques, agile methodology, and cognitive science for the development of faster, cheaper, and better training. 
  • Combine, omit, modify, and rearrange the RRID steps, and apply them effectively at the lesson, module, and course levels. Identify the purposes and phases of evaluation and integrate evaluation steps with all other activities.

4.    Content, Activities, and Objectives

  • Adopt and adapt different types of existing content resources. Incorporate the content inside appropriate training activities and objectives. 
  • Use validated templates to rapidly design effective and engaging training activities. 
  • Rapidly modify training activities to suit the local resources, constraints, and preferences.

5.    E-learning and Virtual Classrooms

  • Select and adapt a suitable LOLA (Live Online Learning Activity) template to increase and improve interactivity in your virtual classroom sessions.
  • Adapt and apply the 4-Door ™ approach to rapidly design e-learning modules that are effective and engaging.
  • Blend instructor-led training, virtual classroom training, and e-learning to speed up the design process and improve learning outcomes.

6.    Changing the Roles

  • Enhance mutual learning by designing activities that transform the participants into trainers, coaches, evaluators, instructional designers, and subject-matter experts.
  • Improve the effectiveness of the instructional design and delivery by transforming trainers into facilitators and co-designers.
  • Change your role into subject-matter expert, author, evaluator, and project manager to speed up the design process.

Sample Outcome Chains


Course: Smarter Meetings


Business Results (for the entire course)

  • Fewer complaints about meetings.
  • Less time spent on meetings.
  • More decisions made at meetings.

Job Performance (at the end of the entire course)

  • Use flexible thinking modes during meetings.
  • Focus on the outcomes of the meting.
  • Get all participants involved in the meeting.
  • Give constructive feedback to each other during the meeting.

Learning Outcomes (for Session 1)

  • Skill. Change personal thinking styles to suit the desired outcome for the meeting.
  • Knowledge. Different thinking styles
  • Attitude. Collaboration and flexibility

Learning Process (for all Sessions)

  • Engagement
  • Relevance
  • Continuity

Course: Change Management


Business Results (for the entire course)

  • Implementation of new policies without too much disruption and too many complaints.

Job Performance (at the end of the entire course)

  • Analyze characteristics of the change.
  • Analyze characteristics of the end users.
  • Use the results of these analyses to select appropriate strategies to manage change.
  • Implement the selected strategies

Learning Outcomes (for Session 1)

  • Skill. To rate the characteristics of a change initiative on the seven key factors.
  • Knowledge. Seven key factors that define the characteristics of a change initiative
  • Attitude. Trusting the process and serving the end-users.

Learning Process (for all Sessions)

  • Engagement
  • Relevance
  • Continuity

Course: How To Be Happy


Personal Results (for the entire course)

  • Increased measures of happiness as measured by validated tests

Job Performance (at the end of the entire course)

  • Express gratitude to everyday occurrences
  • Redesign your work to make better use of your strength
  • Bounce back from failures and set backs
  • Spread happiness and enthusiasm
  • Align behaviors toward a self-selected purpose
  • Use (and share) evidence-based techniques for increasing happiness

Learning Outcomes (for Session 1)

  • Skill. Maintain a gratitude journal
  • Knowledge. Emotional and physiological impact of gratitude
  • Attitude. Gratitude and self awareness

Learning Process (for all Sessions)

  • Engagement
  • Relevance
  • Continuity

 

 

Do It Anyway: Level 4 Evaluation Design

At the beginning of all my training design projects, I quickly and carefully prepare a Level 4 evaluation plan. (his is the type of evaluation that relates training to business results. I know that conducting Level 4 evaluation is tricky, expensive, and time consuming. Few clients are interested in this type of evaluation, but I plan for it anyway.

Why do I do this? I will explain my reasons after I give you details of a recent Level 4 evaluation design.

Evaluating a recent training design

Recently I did some training for Customer Service Representatives (CSRs) for an insurance company on how to show concern and empathy during telephone conversations with customer. Let me describe my evaluation plan.

We will use an interview protocol to collect information from customers who had a conversation with a specific CSR during the previous 48 hours. This protocol will contain a set of standardized instructions on how to ask a series of open-ended questions that begin with “Tell me about your conversation with the CSR”. There will be additional follow-up questions. The interview will end with a request for the customer to rate the CSR’s performance along the dimensions of courtesy, friendliness, competency, and promptness.

All interviews will be recorded. They will be analyzed by a trained group of listeners who will rate the CSRs’ performance based on the customers’ comments.

Evaluation design

The evaluation will use a time series design with the interviews being conducted at three different times. We selected this evaluation design because the training workshops will be offered to different groups of employees, 20 employees at a time, once a week during a 10-week period. Customers who spoke to the same 10 CSRs will be involved in each of the three sets of interviews.

Here are additional details about the timing of these interviews:

Baseline interviews. These interviews will be conducted with two customers each who had talked with each of the 10 CSRs. This interview will be conducted before any CSR received his or her training.
Mid-course interviews. These interviews will be conducted with two new customers each who had talked with each of the 10 CSRs. Of these 10 CSRs, five would have received training and the other five would not have received training.
Final interviews. These interviews will be conducted with two new customers who had talked with each of the 10 CSRs. At this time, all 10 CSRs would have received training.

Analysis

At the end of all three sets of interviews, we will have a total of 60 recorded conversations, 20 each from the baseline, midstream, and final interviews. The analysts will listen to all interviews and rate the CSRs’ performance as reflected in the customer’s comments. The recordings will be randomly presented to analysts and they will not be told whether or not the CSR had received training before the interview.

Here’s what we hope to learn from the analyses:

Comparison between the baseline and the final interviews. Positive differences will show the probable impact of training. If there is no difference (or if there is a negative difference), we will have to question the validity of the training.

Comparison between the trained and the untrained CSRs during the mid-course interviews. The trained group scoring higher than the untrained group suggests the effectiveness of the training. If there is no difference (or if there is a difference in the opposite direction) we will have to question the validity of the training.

Comparison between the mid-course and final interviews. If the first group shows an improvement in the score, we may attribute it to the impact of additional real-world practice. If there is deterioration in the scores, we may suspect that the novelty effect is wearing off or that there is not enough incentives or management support to sustain the performance improvement.

If the client is willing to provide the resources and time, we will implement this Level 4 evaluation plan. However, in my experience, less than 5 percent of the clients are willing to support this type of evaluation.

So why am I doing it?

I don’t think that planning a rigorous Level 4 evaluation is a waste of time, even if it never gets implemented. In the long run, I think that this planning enables the training design to proceed at a faster, cheaper, and better fashion by focusing our efforts on business-related outcomes and reducing the need for revisions.

Planning Level 4 Evaluation provides a concrete goal for the training design team. It helps the SMEs and writers to better understand the rationale for the training project. We can align our training content and objectives to the business results by repeatedly asking ourselves, “How would this help us perform better on our Level 4 evaluation?”

We can share the interview and the analysis procedure with participants in our training session to concretely explain the overall training goal. We can create training activities that prepare participants to get ready for this type of evaluation. All of these activities  speed up our instructional design process.

Why not Level 3?

Why don’t just plan for Level 3 Evaluation (measuring transfer of training to the workplace) that has a greater probability of being implemented? Why not just record actual CSR conversations with customers and analyze them to the see how the CSRs are applying their new skills and knowledge? To me, this approach appears to be the instructional equivalent of inviting the fox to guard the chicken coop. Using Level 3 data to predict business results assumes that the behaviors that we are training for will produce desirable business results. By planning for Level 4 Evaluation, we go beyond just what we taught our trainees and actually validating the training content.

Let me repeat

Here’s my main message: At the beginning of all training design activities, plan for a rigorous Level 4 Evaluation. Even if your plans do not get implemented, you can use it to align, improve, and speed up your training design activities.

 

Human Performance Tecchnology (HPT) Tips

  1. To improve human performance, ignore the performance (as busyness).
  2. Focus on the results you want to produce.
  3. Use these systematic steps in human performance technology:
  4. Analysis, design/development, implementation, evaluation, and revision.
  5. Use these initial steps for improving human performance:  Analyze the problem, identify causes, and select suitable intervention.
  6. First step in improving human performance: Define the ideal situation. Discover the actual situation. Find the gap between the two.
  7. Define desired results in terms such as speed, accuracy, products, efficiency, profit, quality, customer satisfaction, and value.
  8. Analysis is the essential first step in performance improvement. However, don’t equate it with paralysis.
  9. Interventions are planned activities for improving human performance. Choose among hundreds of effective interventions.
  10. Remember that in a given context, some other human performance intervention may work more effectively than the one you specialize in.
  11. Key to performance technology: Select an intervention that is targeted to eliminate the root cause of a problem.
  12. If a performance problem is caused by lack of skills and knowledge, use training, education, or coaching as the appropriate intervention.
  13. Don’t use training as an intervention if the problem is not caused by lack of skills and knowledge. It will backfire.
  14. Replace training with the use of job aids and performance support. These interventions could be more cost-effective.
  15. Use job redesign, process re-engineering, and job crafting as interventions if an inefficient work process causes a problem.
  16. Use human factors interventions (like facilities design or ergonomics) if inefficient facilities and tools cause a problem.
  17. Use feedback, coaching, or performance review as interventions if a lack of professional and personal development caused a problem.
  18. Use staff selection, task assignment, or retention as interventions if you are faced with personnel problems.
  19. Adjust compensation, benefits, and other financial incentives if inefficient or unfair salaries cause a problem.
  20. If interpersonal clashes create performance problems, use team-building activities as suitable interventions.
  21. Is the lack of engagement causing problems? Use job crafting as an intervention: Find employee's strengths and redesign the job to utilize them.
  22. Problems caused by discrimination and harassment? Use diversity and inclusion interventions.
  23. Problems caused by suspicion, fear, betrayal, excessive caution, duplication, and micromanagement? Use trust building interventions.
  24. Problems caused by general unhappiness? Use positive psychology interventions.
  25. Before selecting a performance intervention, conduct gap and cause analyses. After selecting the intervention, conduct other analyses.
  26. Avoid arrogance. Understand the client’s perceptions. Listen mindfully to the client’s analysis of the performance problem.
  27. Persuade the client to delay starting the project until gap analysis and cause analysis are completed.
  28. Ask tactful questions to tease out political reasons for a particular intervention or focus on a particular aspect of the problem.
  29. Don’t collect too much data. Use as much of the available data as possible to rapidly identify the gap and the root cause.
  30. Performance analysis, gap analysis, needs analysis, front-end analysis—all of these mean approximately the same thing.
  31. You can—and you should—conduct gap analysis and cause analysis at the individual, team, and organizational levels.
  32. Make analysis a participatory activity. Use cross-sectional focus groups for conducting analyses.
  33. Use various techniques, types, and sources for collecting and processing performance analysis data.
  34. Always remember that the ultimate goal of collecting performance analysis data is to select the most appropriate intervention.
  35. Use interviews, observation, surveys, tests, critical incidents, mapping, brainstorming, and other techniques to collect analysis data.
  36. During the initial performance analysis phase, collect and review the vision, mission, goals, and policies of an organization.
  37. Analysis is addictive and paralyzing. Discipline yourself to just-enough and just-in-time analyses.
  38. After you have selected an intervention through basic analysis, you are ready to conduct targeted analyses associated with the chosen intervention.
  39. Conduct an environmental analysis of external factors such as government, politics, economy, social trends, and markets.
  40. Remember—and apply—the four Ws in conducing analysis: worker, work, workplace, and world. Analyze at all four levels.
  41. Problem: Gap between what should be and what is. Opportunity: Gap between what could be and what is. Look from both perspectives.
  42. Conduct an organizational analysis to review the vision, mission, values, goals, and strategies. Also discover the links among these elements.
  43. Conduct an organizational analysis to audit the climate, standard practices, interpersonal relationships, and cultural norms.
  44. Conduct a workflow analysis to identify the inputs, activities, outputs, outcomes, and feedback loops.
  45. Conduct a communication analysis to review the clarity of job specifications, expectations, policies, procedures, and marketing materials.
  46. Conduct an incentives analysis to review salaries, benefits, bonuses, promotions, rewards, and recognition.
  47. Conduct a cultural audit to identify the organizational values, norms, diversity, and inclusion.
  48. Conduct a diversity audit to determine how employees differ in gender, age, nationality, culture, language, personality, and other factors.
  49. Conduct a learner analysis to identify the participants’ entry knowledge, learning preference, language level, and aptitudes.
  50. Different interventions use different design procedures. But some universal design strategies apply to all interventions.
  51. During design/development, make sure that objectives, procedures, tools, content, and evaluation are aligned to each other.
  52. Periodically align different elements of your intervention package to each other—and the desired business results.
  53. Contextualize the intervention. Design the intervention for use by a specific target user in a specific work setting.
  54. Design the intervention package in a modular fashion. This speeds up the design and permits flexible usage during implementation.

HPT Interventions that Support RRID Training

Conversations. Maintain a conversational tone in webinar presentations and in the website resources and memos

Expectations. Clearly specify the objectives for RRID training and what is expected in the assignments. Provide examples of assignment submissions.

Feedback. Provide feedback to the participants. Invite (and make use of ) feedback from the participants.

Incentives. Recognize exemplary work from the participants. Give participants autonomy in the choice of training topics and level of participation.

People. Have two subject-matter experts (Matt and Thiagi) available for support and coaching. Have an experienced producer (Gary) available for troubleshooting and fixing technological problems.

Technology. Use an effective platform for conducting the webinar sessions. Make recordings of the webinar session archived for immediate use. Use an effective platform for hosting the RRID website..

 

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