Case Studies

• Case Study 1  |  Financial Services

  FAIS compliance requirements and the qualification requirements as spelled out in the various board notices issued by the FSB places enormous pressure on financial services organisations. The mistake that many financial services providers make is to follow the path of least resistance, by sending people on training, irrespective of the qualifications they already have.

  When requested to provide training services to this particular client, we asked for a list of the individuals who would be registered for the learning programme, together with their existing qualifications. This is standard practice for us since this is information we capture onto our learner management system. In reviewing the list of people and qualifications, it became clear that not everyone needed to go on the training. Some individuals’ existing qualifications far exceeded the required FAIS qualification level. We suggested that an equivalence matrix be developed and submitted to the FSB to motivate for inclusion of these qualifications onto the list of qualifications as presented by the FSB.

  The client declined and went ahead with the training. The result was a 70% failure rate, thousands of Rands worth of wasted budget, and disgruntled employees forced to do training they didn’t need.

  Forcing people to train at a level that is below that of their existing qualifications is demoralising and has the effect of demotivating rather than inspiring learners. As a result, they fail to obtain the required number of credits, thus thwarting the organisation’s stated intent.

• Case study 2  |  Production Environment

  The client noticed that its E & I Engineering team presented the following symptoms and asked for our assistance in determining the reasons for this scenario:

  • Maintenance and first line support took much longer than it needed to, resulting in compromised production targets.

  • Higher level resources were being used to complete tasks at the inappropriate level, i.e.: an engineer being used to address issues that a technician should be able to resolve, resulting in increased costs to the organisation.

  • The team struggled to integrate the numerous and varied technologies that they are exposed to and which they are expected to manage.

  • The increasing computerization of the technicians role — the technician was becoming a computer technician, rather than the artisan that he was trained to be.

  • An over reliance on external consultants, and the price tag attached to this.

  The management team was convinced that project management skills together with refresher training in each of the technologies would suffice.

  We conducted a detailed needs analysis and found the following:

  • The fundamental training need was to convert artisans into computer technicians. They needed to understand computer networking and in so doing would be able to understand how the various pieces of technology worked together and therefore how to trouble shoot when issues arose.

  • We found that the language in which computer programmes were coded differed from the language that the technicians were experienced in. In addition, many of the technologies used were programmed by companies from Italy and Belgium and their use of the English language in their coding presented additional problems.

  • We found that advanced Excel skills were an essential skill in troubleshooting the various programming languages used.

  • We found that they understood each individual technology very well, but could not integrate them. Understanding computer networking was essential.

  • The result was targeted training that clearly addressed the training needs. The return on investment was directly calculable: shorter down times meant minimum impact on production and minimum impact on revenue targets. Most satisfying was the development of a motivated and high performing team .

• Case Study 3  |  Proactive Risk Management

  Our client has an established operational training team: the team that trains the people responsible for the daily operations of the business. The business repeatedly questioned the effectiveness of the training team as a result of the high incidents of losses due to poorly executed procedures. The training team asked us to redesign the assessments used in the training environment as a means of addressing this criticism from the operations. On reviewing the assessments, we realized that the entire learning programme needed to be re-designed. If we did not do this, the assessments that were being redesigned would be useless. Redesigning the assessments without redesigning the learning programme is analogous to icing the proverbial bad cake!

  The entire learning programme was redesigned, including the integration of information system applications (the information system application component had been taught separately), the redesign of all assessments; the integration of key organisational messages including messages about service, risk management and the overarching strategy of the organisation. This redesigned process has enabled the training team to make commitments to the operational environment in terms of the level of competence they can expect from staff who have attended these operational learning programmes.