Peer to Peer Training

Why does it not work? Most of us played ‘Chinese Whispers’ growing up, this is part of the problem to do with Peer to Peer training. As a company your methods and procedures become hazed and washed by the fact there is no longer a structure and standard in place; this then creates issues in keeping consistency.

In many companies and organisations management have moved away from a structured training environment and rely on Peers to train the staff ‘on the go’. The issues this a rise are enormous because there is no overall structure or plan in place and the learning peer will only obtain the knowledge and methods of that peer they are learning from. In turn after a few cycles there are core elements which are no longer in ‘production’ and being taught, this could be because the teaching peer doesn’t do work in that area or they were never taught it themselves.

Who’s Issue is it?

Management and HR often look at a trainer as an expense rather than as an asset, there are core elements that as a company improve your Quality Assurance and the impression your company makes on the client/s. Too often these ‘support roles’ are closed up when things get tough, nobody fights for them to remain and as a result the efficiency drops often include team morale.

Why does morale drop?

Employees begin to feel like they are not provided the support, knowledge and training from management; but are expected to work at the level of a trained individual. The aspects which make team members feel valued and appreciated, when changes take place there is nobody there creating the support documentation and providing the on-site support and training.

Morale is important to team productivity, when the team members feel supported and equipped for their job and the changing environment they work better. Your team will be more productive and will feel like management are taking actions to support them and their daily duties ensuring they are aware of changes and how they can best resolve these changes.

Getting the results

Training like Management is a specific skillset of an individual; it’s not always something that everyone can do. It is important sometimes to hire a ‘contractor’ to this role because with an outsider’s view they can often see ways of improving the processes of the team overall. Many times even managers don’t see the outside view, and this is obvious because you are seeing everything daily.

Look at family for a minute, uncles and aunts who don’t see your kids all the time say things like ‘they have grown so much’. They are not seeing their nieces and nephews daily to see their growth; likewise managers are like parents, they are seeing their children daily and don’t realise their growth or change. This brings to like the importance within a business to have a performance assessment every so often; some choose 3 months which I think is the perfect time-frame. Monthly is too frequent and every 6 months is too long to correct things which might need attention and could become a habit.