Performance Education: How Targeted Learning Drives Workplace Success
Teaching employees might sound like a simple exercise, but depending on the organisation, it can be a much more complex task. Fortunately, there are several ways to optimise learning, and performance education is one of the best.
What Is Performance Education?
As simple as it may sound, performance education refers to a style of learning that is focused on specific tasks, roles, or outcomes for a business so that employees can more effectively perform.
This differs from regular training content as it’s extremely targeted to the needs of each different business rather than just covering a broad range of topics related to employee training. Ideally, once an employee has completed their performance education, they should be fully equipped to dive into their tasks primed for success.
The Benefits of Performance Education
The greatest strength of using performance education over a more “one-size-fits-all” training approach is that it allows businesses to drive measurable improvements from the outset. There are several key outcomes you can expect to see from this training, including the following:
Faster Task Completion
Fewer Errors
Higher Quality Outputs
Overall, this style of learning is going to provide employees with the tools they need for their specific tasks, as the education is baked into their typical workflow.
Choosing this training model will also improve the confidence of employees, and it can even promote better employee engagement. Instead of losing interest in practising unrelated training techniques, workers will be immersed in their typical workflow while gaining skills for the job, which makes the training feel more valuable and engaging to complete. Another plus is that training in key tasks equips workers with stronger problem-solving skills when issues arise.
If you aren’t sold on performance education for your team, then you might not be looking at the whole picture. This style of learning can be optimised to promote key business goals and can even be changed as things progress. This means if you’re looking to improve sales, customer satisfaction, operational excellence, or any other outcome, then you can truly create a learning situation that is hyper-focused on achieving just that.
How to Implement Performance Education in Your Organisation
How performance education is implemented in each organisation will differ, but the process for getting the ball rolling remains the same. If you’re considering this style of learning for your organisation, here’s a five-step plan to get you started.
Identify Performance Gaps
The first step to crafting a performance education plan is to think about exactly where your organisation needs training, and typically, this is going to fall right where there are gaps in performance.
Consider these three questions:
Where are the biggest skill and knowledge gaps?
What tasks or processes aren’t being executed effectively?
Where are KPIs falling short?
Now that you’ve dug up this information, you can move on to the next step.
Define Desired Outcomes
If you’ve diagnosed the issues, then it’s time to think about what the solution could be. Without clear objectives, tailoring an approach to learning is not going to be easy, so now think about what your business looks like with these performance gaps filled.
An example of this may be to improve sales by X amount, or to reduce errors in business processing by X percent. Of course, this will look different depending on the issues you’re attempting to solve, but the idea is that you’ve now got the goals you need to design your training plan.
Design Targeted Learning Pathways
Now’s the time to craft your learning pathways. This is how the education is delivered to your employees, and there are three traits that you need to ensure are maintained when charting your plan.
Relevant: Make sure that the learning pathways are all relevant to the job role and performance outcomes that you’re seeking.
Flexible: If learning resources are available when and where employees need them, you’re going to have the best results.
Integrated: Embedding training into the workflow is the key aspect of performance education.
The best way to maintain these three key traits is to use a mix of different formats to facilitate learning, which can include workshops, job aids, coaching, and more.
Leverage On-the-job Learning and Support
It shouldn’t be any surprise that not all learning takes place in the classroom, so it’s important to provide further opportunities for employees to learn after the core performance education is complete.
Some of the best methods to do this include job shadowing, providing skilled coaches and mentors, and using performance support tools. These don’t have to be anything outlandish; a simple checklist or digital guide should be enough to assist with on-the-job support.
Measure and Continuously Improve
Remember, even once the core training is complete, it doesn’t mean it’s over. Now you’ve completed the above steps, it’s time to measure the results and see how they align with your desired outcomes.
If things aren’t quite where you expected, then there’s no reason to panic! That’s totally normal, and the best part is that you can use this information to improve your performance education plan and continue training your staff towards desired outcomes until things end up exactly where you want them.
If you’d like expert help designing and implementing a performance education program for your organisation, contact Corporate Learning Solutions. We’ll help you get the most out of your team.
Real-World Examples of Performance Education
If you’re still having a hard time understanding the approach to performance education, then here’s a real-world example that can help to put it all in perspective.
Example Sales Business
Performance Gap: Sales are inconsistent across stores.
Desired Outcome: Increase average transaction value by 12 percent in the next six months
Learning Pathways: Digital learning modules and coaching sessions.
Ongoing Support: Short coaching sessions during daily meetings focused on teaching key skills in line with those used by top-performing stores.
Measure and Adapt: Measure what impact this strategy has had on sales and adapt the ongoing approach to suit.
Now that you’ve seen a basic real-world example of this teaching model, you should have an idea of how it can be implemented in your business.
According to LinkedIn Learning’s 2024 Workplace Learning Report, 94% of employees say they would stay longer at a company that invested in their learning and development, particularly when that learning is directly tied to their job performance.
Performance education is a powerful way to build a thriving, high-performing workplace. If you’d like expert support in implementing it, get in touch with Corporate Learning Solutions today.
