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From Basic Competencies to Job-Specific Curriculums

Monday, August 14, 2006 - by Diane J. Krieger

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Curriculums benefit business in many ways. They are a major contribution to employee productivity and retention. Curriculums add value by reducing training costs and achieve performance goals by setting a true expectation for an employee to transfer learning to the job. Costs are controlled by training employees only on topics they need.

Learning professionals often struggle with developing curriculums within their organizations. Using basic competencies to create curriculums streamlines this process.

In the dictionary curriculum is defined as a group of related courses. Frequently in business this means a group of courses on a topic, such as sales, communication, or service. This configuration is often seen in companies with corporate universities or large multi-layered learning and development departments. In small to mid-sized companies, curriculums are often not implemented due to budgets, number of courses, or training structure. This need not be the case.

Competencies and curriculums go hand in hand

Using a simple approach to competencies, such as technical, cognitive, and behavior, learning professionals can create job-specific curriculums. Instead of basing curriculums on a group of related courses for a specific topic (sales, service), develop them to be a group of related courses for a specific job (teller, loan rep, phone service rep).

To begin, analyze your company's training content based on technical, cognitive, and behavioral competencies in order to break out distinct courses. Topics become stand-alone courses, such as customer service. Technical competencies are built out of your core computer application training broken down by functionality or transaction.

Example

XYZ Computer Sales Company includes all new employees in all training sessions. There are two main trainee groups: sales and service. Seeking efficiencies, XYZ trainers want to create job-specific curriculums to save training dollars and maximize training effectiveness.

Technical competencies

The first step is a high-level task analysis of technical applications. Both groups use the core application, XYZ S Application. Complete a transactional analysis, similar to a task analysis; break down the transactions and functions of each area. Overlapping transactions go into one course and distinct transactions are broken out into a separate course.

XYZ S ApplicationTransactions	Sales team needs	Service team needs	Course Name
Log in	X	X	Introduction
User options	X	X	Introduction
Sale set up, new client	X		Sales Set up
Sale set up, existing client	X		Sales Set up
Sale options	X		Sales Options
Sale creation options	X		Sales Options
Sales outline options	X		Sales Options
Sales tracking options	X		Sales Options
Service Outline overview		X	Service Outlines
Service outline, new client		X	Service Outlines
Service outline, existing client		X	Service Outlines
XYZ S Generation, V	X		Sales Main App.
XYZ S Generation - M	X		Sales Main App.
XYZ S Misc. - L	X		Sales Main App.
XYZ S Misc. - D	X		Sales Main App.
XYZ S Individual A/G		X	Service Main App.
XYZ S Individual R/L		X	Service Main App.
XYZ S Individual B/L		X	Service Main App.
Shipping set up	X	X	Shipping and Close Out
Close out " Day	X	X	Shipping and Close Out

This analysis results in seven distinct courses; five specific to the sales team and four specific to the service team. Two courses overlap the training needs of both areas: Introduction and Shipping and Close Out.

Sales Team	Service Team
Introduction	Introduction
Sales Set up	Service Outlines
Sales Options	Service Main App.
Sales Main App.
Shipping and Close Out	Shipping and Close Out

Cognitive competencies

Examine the training topics that include cognitive skills, such as thinking, reasoning, and remembering. These can become stand-alone classes. For example, there may be courses on topics like product knowledge, fraud, regulations, or sales training. Once the courses are broken out into specific topics, list them under the cognitive area of the curriculum.

Behavior competencies

This group of courses includes training topics geared toward guiding a learner's actions on the job. Some examples are business ethics, customer service, and diversity, among many others.

The analysis results in the development of two distinct position-specific curriculums with 12 classes for the Sales Team and 8 classes for the Service Team:

Sales Team Curriculum	Service Team Curriculum
Introduction	Introduction
Sales Set up	Service Outlines
Sales Options	Service Main App.
Sales Main App.
Shipping and Close Out	Shipping and Close Out
Product Knowledge	Product Knowledge
Sales Training
Regulations	Regulations
Fraud
Business Ethics
Customer Service	Customer Service
Diversity	Diversity

Measurement of success

Creating position-specific curriculums increases training effectiveness in many ways. An employee learns what is required for their job, the number of training hours is regulated, and learning professionals have the opportunity to develop cross training or learning development plans from one position to another.

Training hours equal dollars spent. The sample curriculum shows a tangible measurement of training hours saved per employee. Assuming in our example each course runs for two hours, then the sales team will have 24 training hours and the service team will have 16 training hours. That is a savings of eight training hours per service team employee. You can also drill down further to the compensation savings by multiplying salaries of each of the service team members by the eight hours, which is, of course, a great way to measure success: the bottom line.