Easy Level 3 – You Can Do This!
Getting to Kirkpatrick Level 3 is not as difficult, expensive or time-consuming as some people think. Even if you are struggling to get buy-in and participation from stakeholders, here are a few practical things you can do:
- Have a pre-training conversation with the managers of the people who will attend training. Jointly determine the critical behaviors that need to occur on the job for them to view the training as time well spent.
- Design learning objectives around critical behaviors. Often, it just requires changing one word.
For example, if the critical behavior is to use the conflict management steps to resolve differences of opinion, the learning objective could be, use the conflict management steps in a role-play situation.
3. Create job aids that assist training participants in performing the critical behaviors on the job. Introduce the job aids during training, and use them during hands-on activities.
For example, there could be a card listing the conflict management steps that participants can have in front of them during the role-play exercise.
4. Design post-program follow-up as you design the training materials. This will ensure that this task gets accomplished. Take advantage of technology to schedule and automatically send reminders, refreshers and encouraging messages.
Elevate your follow-up messages from delivering more Level 2 Learning, to supporting Level 3 Behavior. Instead of repeating training content, or adding more content, focus on reminding training graduates to do what they learned during training, and offer support and resources to assist them in doing it.
For example, you could schedule a message to be released a few weeks after training asking graduates if they have encountered a conflict in the workplace that would benefit from using the conflict management steps. Ask them if they referred to their job aid and used the steps. You could also ask them if they have a story they could share with you, or if you could assist them in any way.
- If possible, personally check in with some of the training participants after they have had a reasonable amount of time to try the new behaviors on the job. Ask them how it’s going and if they need any additional resources or support in order to be successful.
Make it part of your training design and development process to create the post-program implementation and support plan. Building this structure increases the likelihood that the resources that go into training actually will produce a measurable increase in performance.
https://www.kirkpatrickpartners.com/certifications/bronze/If you want to learn more about implementing Level 3, read Transferring Learning to Behavior or attend bronze level certification.
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