Creating effective training courses and programs on irrigation for technicians can yield tremendous benefits, from developing more skilled and, thus, more valuable technicians to greater employee retention and greater company unity. But pulling this off isn’t just about the quality of the information in the training. It’s also about how that information is delivered.
Some trainers recommend writing a core objective for the training. This can be just one line. The objectives for individual pieces of the training can be defined as the script is crafted. Creating effective training scripts is about translating technical information into skills and knowledge that can be applied in the field once learned.
A little at a time
“The time of a single training session should be broken into five- to 15-minute presentations,” says Kurt Thompson, CIC, CWCM-L, CID-R, CID-C, CID-G, CLIA, CLIA-D, CHIA, CIT, director, educational programs, and instructor at IrriTech Training Inc., and owner of K. Thompson Associates in Lake Wylie, South Carolina. “It’s called ‘chunking.’ ”
Thompson teaches courses for the Irrigation Association’s landscape irrigation certifications. His company also teaches onboarding courses that cover technical and business topics for service technicians earning continuing education credits. “You should present the why and the how and then have practice time with the supervisor with evaluation and correction, then allow time for the learner to apply the new skills and knowledge into the job before teaching the next subject,” he says.
IrriTech Training doesn’t teach just the courses. “We teach a train-the-trainer course,” he says. “We teach how the adult brain learns in order to create effective instructional courses.”
When creating training courses, Thompson likes to have learning objectives for each piece of material, such as for each slide presentation.
Lori Palmquist, CID, CIC, CLWM, CLIA, QWEL, is an irrigation designer, consultant and professor in the Bay Area in California, with 37 years of experience in the field. She also teaches irrigation at Merritt College in Oakland and at Monterey Peninsula College. “I always think about how I can simplify the process as best I can,” she says. “I like to break irrigation into small topics.”
Know your audience
Knowing what your learners know — and what they don’t — is also critical when developing effective training scripts. Thompson says the less experienced the learner, the shorter the time block of information that’s presented.
Chad Sutton, CID, CIC, CLIA, CIT, national director of water management services at Sperber Landscape Companies in Westlake Village, California, starts training at the base level. “When I’m training a new team, I ask that everyone, regardless of experience, join us to see if we have a common level of understanding.”
Furthermore, Sutton says, the approach to a training course for a new team is different than for current technicians. “It varies quite a bit,” he says. “We want to see if there is a cultural buy-in. Our company culture we’ve created is committed to doing world-class work at a super-high level.”
For example, Sutton says it’s essential that new hires know how to program conventional controllers using a science-based evapotranspiration method that includes a maximum baseline and seasonal adjustments.
Palmquist says that she typically creates a survey for the learners and has them take it before class to gauge each person’s knowledge level.
In order to create an effective training program, it’s essential that everyone is on board, says Thompson. “The company has to embrace it from the top down. It has to permeate from the owner down to the lowest line guy,” he says.
He offers a scenario to illustrate why this is so important: A technician returns from training with new skills and knowledge, but he is slow in putting them into practice. The supervisor is impatient and unhappy with this. Thus, the technician won’t want to take future training as it upset the boss.
Knowing your audience isn’t just about information. It’s also about being aware of the psychological or emotional dynamics in play. Tom Kuhlmann is chief learning architect for Articulate, an e-learning service for product workplace training. He was tasked with training machine operators who could not meet 90-day production quotas. He initially planned on creating his typical course based on task improvement. But then he decided to go among them and see for himself what was going on in the workplace.
He discovered that the workers were scared to the point of paralysis. The supervisor was constantly telling them not break these million-dollar machines. This discovery caused a paradigm shift in his approach to the training. He devoted most of the time to how the machines worked, regardless of the job. This resulted in a huge increase in worker confidence. Within two weeks, nearly all of them had reached their production quotas.
Kuhlmann says that one of the pitfalls trainers need to be aware of is the tendency to teach learners as if they were fellow experts.
Thompson agrees. “You need to think about the learner,” he says. “Technical experts tend to teach at the expert level, and novice learners are unable to connect with the information.”
“We prefer live, in-person training and getting people into the field. PowerPoint helps explain the concepts, but hands-on experience is what truly makes the learning stick.”
— Chad Sutton, CID, CIC, CLIA, CIT, national director of water management services, Sperber Landscape Companies
Keep it real
Thompson emphasizes the importance of creating the opportunity for the learner to apply the new training immediately. “The learner needs to use what they learned, whether in class or in front of the computer, and then get it into the dirt right away,” he says. “The learner’s supervisor needs to know the course content so that he can help the learner get it into their job as soon as possible.”
Sutton shares a similar point of view. “We prefer live, in-person training and getting people into the field,” he says. “PowerPoint helps explain the concepts, but hands-on experience is what truly makes the learning stick. There’s a saying: ‘Tell me, and I’ll forget. Teach me, and I remember. Involve me, and I learn.’ ”
Sutton says that it’s usually a problem in the field that inspires new training. “Let’s say I get a call that a brand-new valve isn’t working,” he says. “New training is usually about new technology.”
Palmquist also encourages students to bring real-life irrigation problems into class. “I create curriculum that gets people engaging with hands-on exercises so that I’m not just a talking head,” she says. “You want to make it simple, understandable and applicable. I bring components into class — valves, for example — and pass them around. We take things apart and put them back together.”
Sutton says that effective training can also improve job satisfaction and increase employee retention. “People who do quality work don’t want to stay when low standards are accepted,” he says. “Training good technicians is key to keeping them, and, in turn, supports our revenue goals as well.”
Revising and improving
“There’s a lot of editing,” says Palmquist. “I will create training and give it once. While I’m giving it, I’ll see what’s working and what’s not. The next time, I do it a bit differently. The training courses evolve over time.”
If learners ask a lot of questions following the coverage of an industry topic, she takes this as evidence that the topic was not covered effectively. “If I don’t get any questions, or very few, I assume that the course was successful,” she says.
Sutton turns to multiple avenues when looking to improve training. “We do surveys, but I also bring in managers to get direct feedback after courses,” he says. “The best feedback is when people stand up in class and say, ‘Hey, I think we can do this better, and here’s how.’ ”
As of this writing, Sutton is updating his courses to be available in both English and Spanish. He is also developing a course on effective customer communication, which involves partnering with manufacturers. “You really need to understand the value of what you are upgrading to,” he says.
The bottom line
Ultimately, creating effective training is about much more than the technical information within them. Thompson recommends that anyone wanting to create irrigation training courses read the book Telling Ain’t Training. It emphasizes that training should be as interactive as possible.
“You need to keep it rewarding for the learner so they’ll come back for more,” says Thompson.
