Why Create Training When A Job Aid Will Work?
Sometimes as trainers, when we see the need to help people perform part of their job, we automatically think of training. That could be eLearning, live virtual training or face-to-face training. But are any of these really necessary?
Training takes a long time:
- Time and effort to design
- Time to test and roll-out
and often involves many people:
- Subject Matter Experts
- Training Designers
- Trainers
- Managers
- Sponsors
and our learners of course.
In some instances, we do all of the above when maybe a simple job aid is all that's required.
So what is a Job Aid?
A Job Aid is tools or device that help people do their jobs ie a step-by-step guide, checklist or resource that provide the right amount of detail to help complete a task by clearly detailing how it's done. In the workplace, Job Aids go by names such as:
- Performance Support Tools
- Cheat sheets
- Checklists
Examples of everyday Job Aids
Maps eg for the London Underground
Recipes
Assembly Instruction
What these everyday Job Aids have in common
- Often visual rather than text based
- Easy to locate when you need them
- Precise and succinct
They provide you with what you need rather than you having to learn and remember it - especially for complicated or infrequently used information.
Examples of when a job aid might work as well if not better than training
- Infrequent tasks - yearly appraisal preparation, budget process, review processes, using fire extinguishers etc
- Complicated data - product specifications, complex pricing structures, product comparisons.
- Lengthy instructions - Customer call scripts, troubleshooting, maintenance process
Tip - Listen out for, 'Well, it's very important to be able to do this for their yearly, quarterly ....'. When you hear words such as 'yearly' (or something that means infrequent) consider creating a Job Aid.
Call to action
Albert Einstein was once asked: “What is the speed of sound?” Without batting an eye he answered cheerfully: “I don’t know. I don’t burden my memory with such facts that I can easily find in any textbook.”
In other words, use training for tasks that learners will perform regularly, but consider Job Aids for those infrequent tasks and make them easy to find and access.
