The first questions I ask before I design training

I design training for employers with 10 to 150 people. The topics I am asked to cover are set by statute, so they do not move. What moves is whether the session I design will survive contact with the employer’s week.

A training plan fails in ordinary ways. It is scheduled when the closing crew is short. It is delivered in one language to a team that uses two. It assumes that staff drive. It sends remote staff a link and hopes. Those failures come from conditions, and conditions differ by setting, so my first questions do too.

I grew up in Oakland, I live in the community I serve, and I have worked with employers in urban corridors and in suburban settings. The lists below come from that work. They are my own questions, written as examples, and I offer them as a way to look at your own business, not as a test.

Five questions, each with what the answer changes in the training plan.

1. What time do you close, and who is on shift at that hour? The answer decides when a team session can happen. If the close crew is two people, the whole-team session moves to mid-afternoon and the close crew gets a make-up path.
2. What is on site that someone might want? Cash, stock, equipment. The answer shapes the workplace violence examples, because Labor Code 6401.9 asks for training on hazards specific to the job (Lab. Code 6401.9(e)(2)(D)).
3. How do your people get to work? If many ride public transit, the end time of a session has to respect the timetable. Part 3 of this series covers it in detail.
4. What languages does your team use? The answer decides whether the session needs an interpreter, a translated deck or a second session. I ask it as a question and record the answer, because I do not assume.
5. Who is the nearest help, and how long does it take? The answer changes what staff practice in the first minutes of an emergency, before help arrives.

Five more, with the same logic.

1. In which cities do your employees live and work? Different cities can set different minimum wages and sick leave rules. A pay and leave session has to be built for the cities on the roster.
2. Who works remotely or in a hybrid pattern? The answer decides the delivery format. A teleworker is outside the workplace violence section when working from a location the employer does not control, but still needs harassment prevention training (Lab. Code 6401.9(b)(2)(E)).
3. How far do people commute? The answer sets the start time, the parking plan and the late-arrival rule for an in-person session.
4. How many managers sit between the owner and the staff? The answer sizes the supervisor course. Supervisors get two hours of harassment prevention training under Gov. Code 12950.1, and a larger site has more of them.
5. How do you hire and onboard when the local labor pool is thin? The answer shows where onboarding training gets rushed, so I can build a path that fits the real first week.

Here are two hypotheticals, built only to show how the answers turn into decisions. They are not clients and not results.

Neither plan is more serious than the other. Each one is built from the answers, and each would have been wrong if it had been copied from the other.

Four questions apply anywhere. What prompted this request? Who has to approve the plan, and who has to sit through it? What do people already know, and how would you find out? What would make this a failure a year from now?

The last one is the most useful, and it is the question behind the training request is not the problem. People answer it plainly, and the answer usually points to a condition I had not asked about.

If the answers show a gap in basic planning, training needs analysis for a small team walks through a short version.

Yes, and you do not need me to do it. Copy the ten, answer them on one page and mark the ones where your answer would change a session on your calendar. Those are the ones to fix first.

If you want to size the whole picture, Part 1 of this series sets out the urban and suburban conditions, and Part 7 turns them into a ten-question audit. The questions and the audit are free to use.

This is part 2 of the Urban and Suburban Employer Series. The other six: Part 1: how training differs between urban and suburban employers, Part 3: scheduling required training for transit riders, Part 4: training in the language your employees use, Part 5: training records to keep, Part 6: what suburban employers need from training, Part 7: auditing training against your operating conditions.

Want a second read on your answers?

Bring your ten answers to a free consult. In twenty minutes we mark which ones should change a session on your calendar.