Training Champions

The Training Champions strategy aims to achieve the following goals:

• Promotes expertise and knowledge of business processes within the workplace
• Provides a method to quickly train staff and commence their duties.
• Allows ongoing training self-sufficiency within the team.

Fundamentally, the Training Champions strategy is a collection of knowledge sharing, instructional skills and team structure design. This is matched with appropriate team member workloads, recognised duties and contingency and succession plans.
There are two aspects to the Training Champions: the team members themselves who act as "Local Training Champions" and any accredited and recognised "Champions" who are considered experts in a specific area and are capable of passing on knowledge to local teams.

Team Members As "Local Training Champions"

It is the responsibility of the team as a whole - and the team leader specifically - to ensure the team are fully and correctly trained for the tasks they are expected to perform. This means a personal responsibility (from the core tenant "Be Responsible and Accountable/expect responsibility and accountability") by staff members to pro-actively seek training/skilling/knowledge to support their duties, for team leaders to ensure their team members receive adequate training, and for fellow team members to pro-actively support other team members, especially when inducting new staff (following another core tenant "Openness, sharing and community").
There are four distinct members who make up the Local Training Champions, collectively hold the local business process expertise and knowledge, and play a part in making the Training Champions a success:

• End users: staff who impement the process within the team.
• Mentors: End users who have either received more instruction from power users or are senior staff with a wealth of experiance, and provide some support and mentoring to fellow end users.
• Power Users: who may also be end users but have deep knowledge of the business processes, underlying logic and detail. Power Users are responsible for actioning training to end users to ensure they are sufficiently skilled and knowledgeable in the business processes, with assistance from Mentors as necessary.
• Team Leaders: are decision makers for the day-to-day implementation of the process they are Team Leader for and have the responsibility of ensuring the process and surrounding policy is implemented correctly. They have extensive knowledge (both in depth and width) of that process. Team Leaders do not necessarily have all the specific detail of implementing the process but can confer with Power Users to provide this (making up the "Local Business Experts"). They are the official representatives for communication between the system administrators/support and their team. They also have the responsability to ensure their team are correctly trained in the process, although the deilvery of training to new and existing staff is often (although not exclusively) done by the Power Users, assisted by any mentors as required.

More information

"Accredited Training Champions"

Staff who are "subject matter experts" and who have been authorised to provide system and process training and assistance within their area of expertise. Their role as as accredited training champion, and the overhead of performing that role, is formally recognised within their individual achievement plan.
More information on Accredited Training Champions

The "Assessment and Accreditation in the Workplace" model

This advanced model is where approved assessors provide accreditation of competency by assessing staff that have been trained and mentored within the division. Accredited Training Champions are well placed to be an assessor.
Related information regarding the Assessment and Accreditation in the Workplace model

Succession Planning

To ensure knowledge collapse is prevented, succession planning of team members is critical. This includes esuring there are no knowledge gaps (especially in critical areas) as well as ensuring all functions of Training Champions are covered.
This is to ensure team changes have minimal impact on both the short- and medium-team productivity and quality.
More information on Succession Planning.

Process - Training Local Experts

Below is a process to train local experts when a skills gap has been identified, both when there is an accredited Training Champion available and when there isn't.

Process - retraining process and system upgrades

Very few process are static so some amount of retraining or updating of knowledge is required when processes and systems change. Below shows the process for retraining under these circumstances.