MSHR 6625 Week 11 Training Program Proposal Example

Fund the Whole Package, Not Just the Sessions: A Training Program Proposal for Asset-Field Completion at a Water Utility, With Need, Design, Evaluation and Transfer Supports Costed as One Budget in Technician Hours

Student Name

Walden University

MSHR 6625: Building Human Capital Through Training and Development

Instructor Name

Month Day, Year

Fund the Whole Package, Not Just the Sessions: A Training Program Proposal for Asset-Field Completion at a Water Utility, With Need, Design, Evaluation and Transfer Supports Costed as One Budget in Technician Hours

Executive Summary

Leadership at Mill Creek Water District is asked to fund asset-field training for the 45 technicians who lack the skill, run in four waves across one quarter, and to make three workplace changes first: offline mode switched on, paper sign-offs ended and each order entered by whoever did the job. The package costs about 410 technician and crew-lead hours plus about $9,000 in materials and tablet replacements. The pilot with two crews raised correct asset-field completion from about 74 to 91 percent in the crew where the design worked as intended, and identified three design fixes for the other.

The Need

The program began with a request for tablet training for all 120 field technicians. Testing that request showed it was mostly misdirected. A needs assessment using organization, task and person analysis (Goldstein & Ford, 2002) found that most late and incomplete work orders came from equipment and process problems: dead zones that keep tablets offline, a camera app crashing on older tablets and supervisors still accepting paper tickets. One part of the gap, about a third, was a genuine skill deficiency: technicians, especially those with under three years' service, did not know where asset IDs are stamped on older hydrants and valves or how to tell similar pipe materials apart. The gap memo routed the equipment and process problems to IT, fleet and field operations and kept only the skill problem for training.

The Design

The program teaches six objectives, each with a performance, condition and criterion, following Mager (1997), and a terminal objective of near-perfect asset fields, 19 orders in 20, completed on site. Training is delivered in three in-truck sessions of about forty minutes, led by crew leads, on real equipment and the actual tablet. The facilitator guide follows the nine events of instruction (Gagné et al., 2005), so a crew lead can run the session without the designer present.

The pilot changed the design in three ways. Every training kit is now checked against a list before leaving the yard, after the main repair crew's kit arrived without the ductile iron sample. Main repair sessions add a scenario completed under time pressure and low light, because most main repair orders are closed during night emergencies. And every crew lead attends a one-hour briefing before running sessions, after a newly promoted crew lead skipped the steps that connect training to the next real job.

The Evaluation

Evaluation follows the four Kirkpatrick levels (Kirkpatrick & Kirkpatrick, 2006). Reaction is measured with a three-question card. Learning is measured with the session three checklist. Behavior, the measure that matters most, is the rate of fully correct asset fields on real orders a month and a quarter after training, compared with technicians in later waves who have not yet been trained. Results are asset register accuracy and field visits wasted by wrong asset data, audited at six months. A partial return on investment will be reported from avoided visits alone, stating plainly that it understates the program's value.

Transfer Supports

Baldwin and Ford (1988) showed that the work environment strongly shapes whether training is used on the job, and Blume et al. (2010) confirmed the importance of support after training in their meta-analysis. The package therefore includes three environmental changes as conditions of approval, not as follow-up suggestions: offline mode on every tablet, a date after which paper tickets no longer count and a rule that the technician on the job enters the order. It also includes a weekly report to each crew lead showing the crew's asset-field completion, and a reference module on the tablet with photographs of asset ID locations.

What Success Would Look Like

If the program works, a year from now asset records will need fewer corrections, crews will rarely be sent to the wrong valve and the weekly crew reports will show asset fields completed on site as a matter of routine. The evaluation plan will show whether that happened, and the six-month audit gives leadership a clear point to judge it.

Budget in Hours

Table 1

Program Budget

Composite utility. Offline mode is a settings change by IT and is not costed separately.

Risks

Three risks remain. Crew leads may still deliver sessions unevenly despite the briefing; the session three checklist results by crew will show this within the first wave, and a crew whose technicians fall short can repeat the third session. IT may not complete offline mode on time, in which case the first wave waits, as the transfer memo recommended. And improvement may fade once the program ends; the weekly report to crew leads is intended to keep attention on asset fields until the habit is settled, and it should continue for at least six months after the last wave.

Why Not Train Everyone

The original request was to train all 120 technicians on the tablet. Training only the 45 who need it saves about 150 technician hours, keeps the sessions focused on the skill that is actually missing and avoids sending experienced technicians to sessions on things they already do well, which would have cost goodwill the program needs from crew leads and senior technicians.

Schedule and Decision Requested

Wave one begins once offline mode is enabled and the paper-ticket end date has passed. Waves two to four follow at two-week intervals, each starting only if the previous wave's 30-day behavior measure shows improvement. Leadership is asked to approve the hours and costs above and the three environmental changes as conditions of the program, so that the training is not delivered into conditions that would undo it.

References

Baldwin, T. T., & Ford, J. K. (1988). Transfer of training: A review and directions for future research. Personnel Psychology, 41(1), 63-105. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1744-6570.1988.tb00632.x

Blume, B. D., Ford, J. K., Baldwin, T. T., & Huang, J. L. (2010). Transfer of training: A meta-analytic review. Journal of Management, 36(4), 1065-1105. https://doi.org/10.1177/0149206309352880

Gagné, R. M., Wager, W. W., Golas, K. C., & Keller, J. M. (2005). Principles of instructional design (5th ed.). Wadsworth.

Goldstein, I. L., & Ford, J. K. (2002). Training in organizations: Needs assessment, development, and evaluation (4th ed.). Wadsworth.

Kirkpatrick, D. L., & Kirkpatrick, J. D. (2006). Evaluating training programs: The four levels (3rd ed.). Berrett-Koehler.

Mager, R. F. (1997). Preparing instructional objectives: A critical tool in the development of effective instruction (3rd ed.). Center for Effective Performance.