Professional services training specialist Point of Action offers these tips for multi-purpose training:

Once you identify your organization's training needs, and create an enterprise-wide strategic training plan, it's time to design and deliver training programs. Rather than creating individual training sessions for each skill or competency that you want employees to attain, consider developing multipurpose training sessions.

Perhaps you have identified a need for advanced training on job-specific technical skills, such as regulatory requirements, compliance procedures or software applications. And, you also have identified the need for these employees to learn communication and client service skills. Instead of creating several different training programs to address these three distinct training needs, consider tackling all of these competencies in one session.

For example, a training session on new regulatory requirements for your industry could begin with a lecture and interactive activities to help participants learn the new content. Then, to help them apply this new knowledge and master other skills, ask participants to prepare a client presentation on how these new regulations could impact their client.

By learning new technical content, thinking about client needs and preparing a mock client presentation on new regulatory requirements impacting the client, participants would learn job-specific, communication and client service skills all in one training day!

Source: Excerpted from the Summer 2004 issue of Point of Action TrainingTips Newsletter, published by Point of Action, a Boston training consulting firm.

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