Various companies have learned that computer-based training is often better than classroom teaching.
Computer-based training is cheaper, more convenient, and better paced to the individual than the classroom kind. Increasingly, small companies are reaping its rewards
David Johnson looked around the Chattanooga Group's training center and sighed. Large, expensive physical therapy machines--those that the $40-million manufacturer of physical-rehab equipment sells for $35,000 to $55,000 each--lay in pieces on the wide stretch of carpet. Pulleys, cables, weights, and levers sat in motionless heaps beside large boxes. Just days before, the company's six-person in-house training staff had used the fully assembled machines to train a group of Chattanooga's customers--physical therapists and medical-supply dealers who'd been flown in especially for the two-day demo. Now, as Johnson stood and stared at what resembled the scattered wreckage of an airline disaster, a crew of workers abandoned their posts on the factory floor and began to cart the pieces away.
The scene was a familiar one. The Hixson, Tenn., company regularly assembled and dismantled six of its heavy machines when training customers. Because the big-ticket items represented such a large slice of inventory, the company simply couldn't afford to set them aside just for training purposes. The practice--along with Chattanooga's policy of paying for customers' airfare and hotel bills--cost the company at least $200,000 each year. "We were known as 'the education training company,' " Johnson says. "But the gratis education we were providing was drowning us in red ink."
Johnson knew there had to be a better way. Brought in as Chattanooga's new general manager of physical-therapy products and rehabilitation in 1994, he threw himself into both toning up the company's 18 outdated models and trimming down its costly training practices. "I'd had some experience in multimedia training," he says, "and figured that using computers was the only way we could afford to take our training to a new level."
He's not the only one who's come to that conclusion. Training by computer began as far back as the 1970s, when Chrysler launched computer-controlled interactive video disks to teach skills to assembly-line workers. Today, according to a study by SB Communications, in Hingham, Mass., most big companies--those with 3,800 employees or more--use computer-based training (CBT), primarily to train their staff in using software programs. But smaller companies are increasingly turning to computers, too, for everything from on-line employee manuals with clickable question-and-answer areas to step-by-step interactive training in sales negotiation and regulatory compliance.
In part, it's because they've had no choice. More small companies are selling complex goods and services that require customer and distributor training, and computer-based manuals are the most mobile and thorough way to do it. Speeding acceptance of computer training is the fact that even people with very little computer experience are becoming less intimidated by technology and are willing to put up with the learning curve required by CBT. Lured by the financial and logistical payoffs of CBT, small companies in a variety of industries are taking the leap--especially when training is central to their enterprise or when their employees are scattered all over the map.
Classroom Without Walls
Environmental- and safety-consulting firm Professional Analysis Inc. (PAI) knows how crucial the right training can be. "Regular training is part of our philosophy," says CEO and cofounder Doan Phung. Sometimes it's even government-mandated for the $16-million company because it has to adhere to myriad health, safety, and security rules and regulations as it goes about its business of, among other things, investigating toxic-waste sites and devising plans for their cleanup. But with 124 full-time and 200 part-time employees at eight offices across the country, getting everyone together at the same time for classes is impossible.
About a year ago, human resources manager Jeff Ginsburg, vice-president of development Richard Parker, and computer engineer Ahmad Elhaddad came up with the germ of a plan when they were discussing ways to hook the personal computers in PAI's four main offices into a wide area network. They realized that one way to leverage the investment, and also to ensure that everyone learned the same thing in the same way, would be to convert the in-house training into software and install it on the network. Employees could then conduct lessons on their own, walking themselves through text material and quizzes to make sure they were absorbing the information.
The trio already had a model. Three years earlier, one of their biggest clients, now known as Lockheed Martin, had introduced a computerized version of the general employee training it required all subcontractors to take every two years. PAI had installed the program in a training lab at its headquarters in Oak Ridge, Tenn. It's not a multimedia extravaganza--indeed, it's more like a book on a disk, with a test at the end. But workers can fit the training in around their customer commitments.
Six months ago, programmer Elhaddad began applying that model to PAI's in-house training and policies. He didn't have a budget for the project--in fact, he was squeezing the work in whenever he wasn't busy with official assignments. So he started with something relatively simple: transferring PAI's 40-page employee benefits handbook to disk. The new arrangement would not only keep employees up to date on personnel matters but also, Elhaddad hoped, eliminate the need for annual benefits meetings.
To create the disks, Elhaddad needed an authoring program. After testing four of them, he settled on Digital Trainer, from Micromedium ($279; 800-561-2098). Although it was more limited than some of the other programs available, it was cheaper and provided all the necessary features: it allowed him to create text, pictures, and lots of question-and-answer sections.
