Amplify Your Training Impact: Experts Share 3 Key Insights to Use Now

When you have more engaged, competent, and confident technicians, your business is more profitable. Designing a training program that gets you and your team there may feel challenging, but it doesn’t have to be.

In a recent webinar, Interplay training experts and trade industry veterans Dan Clapper and Ken Midgett, along with senior learning strategist Rachael Hayduk, shared best practices, critical insights, and real-world stories to help design a training program that elevates your people and your business.

Here are three key insights shared during the webinar:

1. Connect Training to Personal and Professional Goals

It is critical to align training programs with each technician’s aspirations, both personal and professional. By emphasizing how training contributes to financial stability and career development, you can foster technician buy-in and allow technicians to feel a sense of ownership—and thus responsibility—for the training assigned to them.

Ken Midgett, Interplay Learning Plumbing Marketing Director, notes that not all technicians will immediately see or appreciate how training benefits them, but creating that sense of ownership exponentially increases training engagement. Leaders need to really know their technicians, understand their goals, and use that knowledge to establish the benefits of the training, as each technician will be different.

Some technicians may be motivated more by immediate financial goals, such as making a larger principal payment on their mortgage, taking a family vacation, or buying a hunting cabin; while others will want to understand longer-term opportunities for career advancement. Regardless of their unique motivations, it’s important to share the career vision that training will help unlock for them—help them see and imagine where their career could go in the next 1, 5, or 10 years—and let them know they’re increasing their technical net worth and providing career stability.

2. Conduct a Needs Assessment for Effective Tailoring

Leaders need to conduct thorough needs assessments from both an organizational and learner perspective to ensure they have a meaningful training program with shared goals. Understanding the goals, challenges, and skill levels of technicians enables the design of tailored training programs that address specific needs effectively, but it needs to be balanced with establishing organizational needs.

Dan Clapper, Interplay Learning HVAC and Facilities Maintenance Market Director, explains that focusing too much on the organizational side can make learners feel disconnected, while focusing too much on the learner perspective can make it difficult for the organization to see the return on investment of training.

Clapper recommends using training to uncover the needs of your technicians, including what mistakes are being made, what types of equipment they want to learn, skills they want to develop, and how they’re managing time. Up-skilling competency can increase on-site efficiency. Defining organizational needs can be as straightforward as open conversations with leaders across the company.

Rachael Hayduk, Senior Learning Strategist, underscores the importance of aligning needs with goals that define success when it comes to training. If there’s no shared language among your organization or technicians, channeling motivation will be tough, so the more specific, measurable, and time-based your goals, the better.

3. Foster a Culture of Training Based on Habits

Creating and nurturing a culture of continuous learning within organizations starts with involving leaders, but the most successful training programs are developed by companies who create an environment where training is valued and integrated into daily operations.

Clapper describes the concept of "before the job training" versus "on the job training." Profitable companies often have technicians engage in micro learning—just five minutes of virtual training each morning before they show up on the job. Training becomes part of their routine, creating a more direct connection with the training and the day’s work. When a technician starts their day developing a new diagnostic skill, testing and validating technical knowledge, or exploring the inner workings of a piece of equipment, that learning builds confidence—in themselves and in front of the customer.

Building training into your technician’s daily routine is key to making training not a chore, but a habit. Hayduk explains that the power of repetition and information recall keeps us sharp, where five minutes each day has much more positive impact than eight hours once a quarter. Inspiring training habits and lifelong learning at the leadership levels is likely to produce similarly minded technicians.

Additionally, there are various strategies to enhance learner engagement and motivation. Incorporating incentives, games, and competitions, as well as providing regular feedback and recognition, can create an environment where training is seen as a tangible opportunity for growth and development.

By understanding technicians’ motivations, tailoring training to individual needs, fostering a culture of continuous learning, providing personalized learning paths, and implementing engagement strategies, organizations can elevate their training initiatives and empower technicians and their business to reach their full potential.

Want to learn more? Watch the full webinar: The Path to Profitability: How to Design a Winning Training Program, featuring Clapper, Hayduk, and Midgett. In the recording, you’ll get a comprehensive overview of best practices for designing and implementing effective training programs.