Your training and development challenge may be formidable and daunting or small and straightforward.
Maybe you want to build a completely new sales university, with comprehensive hire-to-retire talent management for every member of your international sales organization. Perhaps all you need is a one-screen, mobile job aid or content updates to a specific module in a single course.
Either way, Communication by Design (CbD) training professionals are eager to contribute the exact talent and services you need to elevate performance within your organization.
Only the Training Services You Need
We can bring the full force of our extensive learning and development capabilities to your challenge, or we can complement your current resources in specific and limited ways, quickly stepping in and then out again.
Which phases or facets of learning and development do you need assistance with? You’ll find more information about these services below.
↓ Needs Assessment
↓ Instructional Design
↓ Development & Production of Materials & Media
↓ Train-the-Trainer & Onsite Coaching
↓ Pilot Administration
↓ Coaching, Clinics & Contracts
↓ Evaluation
↓ Program Conversion
↓ Competency Modeling
A needs assessment ensures that the training you deliver is the training that your people need. Specific services include:
- Questionnaire design
- Scripting
- Focus group facilitation
- Response analysis
Intentional learning experiences—e-learning, seminars, webinars, workshops, blended learning programs, mobile learning, and multicourse curricula—all start with an instructional design plan.
The instructional design plan specifies:
- Content
- Audience
- Performance objectives
- Instructional methodologies
- Technologies
- Media
- Skills transfer / Job integration
- Evaluation
- Coaching
- LMS integration
Development & Production of Materials & Media
Virtually every intentional learning experience requires some media.
The instructional material might be as simple as a one-page checklist.
Or the learning experience could be highly sophisticated and complex—say, a three-day executive leadership retreat, calling for every conceivable medium, from print, Internet games, and mobile applications to Outward-bound-type experiences and live simulations with professional actors playing client, colleague, and employee roles.
Communication by Design and our strategic partners offer many decades of professional experience designing, developing, and producing training materials in every medium.
- Primary research, including interviews, focus groups, surveys, mystery shopper reports
- Secondary research into publications, imagery, copyright records
- Creative concept development
- Scripting
- Storyboard development
- Writing, editing
- Graphic design, illustration, cartooning
- Photography
- Videography, including producer, director, camera operator, editor, talent
- Programming, application development
Every training project calls for different deliverables. CbD has experience with all of them.
- Creative treatments
- Storyboards
- Scripts
- Videos
- Audio recordings
- Power Point slides
- Multimedia modules
- e-learning programs
- Mobile learning modules
- Virtual classroom courses
- Instructor-led training
- Blended courseware
- Games
- Facilitator guides
- Participant workbooks
- Announcements/invitations
- Posters
- Prework assignments
- Tests
- Post-training application exercises
- Job aids
- Reference manuals
- Just-in-time mobile reviews
- Coaching plans
- Evaluation tools
- Newsletters
Train-the-Trainer & Onsite Coaching
If any of the instructional techniques incorporated into your training program are new to your staff, CbD instructional designers will train your facilitators or managers in the new approaches, provide performance feedback, and ensure their effectiveness.
CbD can also supply professional facilitators to supplement your training team.
A dry run gives us an opportunity to fine-tune your program before you “go live.” Beta testing is critical for e-learning and other media-intensive courses.
As much as 85% of classroom learning is never applied to workplace tasks … because there is no follow-through after the class ends.
Communication by Design can help you structure and implement follow-through strategies and mechanisms to ensure skills transfer and a healthy ROI on your training investment. For example:
- Onsite ”clinics” to troubleshoot skills application
- Peer-to-peer “contracts”
- On-the-job support teams
- Mobile refreshers, job aids, checklists, quick reviews
- Blogs and threaded discussion forums
- One-on-one coaching
- Parallel training and support for supervisors
The four levels of evaluation defined by Donald L. Kirkpatrick are the de facto standard in the training world:
- Level 1: Reaction
- Level 2: Learning
- Level 3: Behavior
- Level 4: Results
A “smile sheet”—the ubiquitous Level 1 evaluation—doesn’t take you far enough. When management starts asking about ROI, you need a rigorous evaluation.
Communication by Design can help you identify existing performance indicators and devise new mechanisms for measuring the impact of your training at Levels 2, 3 and, ideally (although it’s much harder) Level 4.
Like most decision-makers, you are probably taking a long, hard look at travel, lodging, and the facilities expenses associated with traditional seminars and workshops.
In recent years, various trade associations and companies have relied on Communication by Design to convert their instructor-led seminars to online, multimedia courses.
Competency modeling defines the ultimate training and development target.
What does an account executive, first-line manager, customer service supervisor, IT systems engineer (name any position) need to know and do in order to succeed?
A competency model defines the knowledge and skills (and sometimes the attributes) required for success in a specific position.
Developing competency models and position profiles is the work of an Organization Development (OD) specialist.
Click for more information on CbD’s Organization Development (OD) services and successes.