Learning Is Not an Event

A class ends. The job does not.

Most training is built like an event. A session, a sign-in sheet, a quiz, a signature. Then the person goes back to the job, and nobody checks whether any of it made it there. The signature says they were trained. It does not say they can do it.

That is the gap. A person can sit through a class, nod at every slide, sign the sheet, and still do the job the old way, because that is how the person next to them does it. Without someone checking on the floor, the old habit wins. It has practice on its side. The class had an hour.

Training that holds runs as a loop, not an event. Show the step. Have them do it while you watch. Evaluate it against the standard. Retrain where it slipped. Then come back and check again on a later shift, because the first time somebody does a step right is not proof it will hold. If you are only training once, it’s not right.

Say you train someone on a changeover sequence. In the session they get it right. The real test comes a few shifts later, at the machine, with the line behind and someone waiting on them. That is when you find out if it held. Come back then and watch. If it held, sign it off then, and the signature finally means something. If it did not, you found the gap while it was still cheap.

Coming back also tells you about your training, not just the trainee. If three people all slip the same step, the problem is not the three people. It is how the step was taught, or how the job is set up. You only see that if you come back.

A signed sheet is not completion. Completion is someone doing the step right when you are not standing there telling them how.

This week, teach one step. Watch them do it. Come back on the next shift and watch again before you call it done.