The Need for Effective Training and Assessment Plans

Question:

Discuss about the Effective Training and Assessment Plan.

Australia has a large number of migrants from across the world, each one coming with their own culture, customers, and language. Many come from countries where English is not used as the first language resulting in a serious communication gap. Despite being highly qualified and having the best skills, knowledge, and experience, communication is the key to smooth operations and maintaining of high safety (Harrington & Lewis, 2013, p.146). This makes it a priority for every organization to perform Training and Assessments of their employees and team members and partners to determine their English communication skills. This would ensure all employees have a clear understanding of basic visual and verbal English commands which ensures all employees are communicating in a common and understandable communication (Hill et al., 2013). The language training and assessment time frame cannot be accurately plotted due to each individual having a different learning capability towards new language thus the training programs require to be flexible and based on the individuals learning capability and their job role. This report shall explore on the development of visual and verbal communication training and assessment plans to be utilized for civil engineering construction site so as to avoid communication gaps which could cause serious accident leading to injury and even death.

The first Step linked to developing an effective Training and Assessment plan it related to determining the candidates who may require training. This is categorized on the basis of their command over visual and verbal communication, culture and background (Shipley & McAfee, 2015). It’s also important to identify the purpose and context of undertaking the training and the target audience who the training and assessment shall focus on. The following criteria and areas must be discussed while developing a training and assessment plan.

To develop an effective training and assessment plan one must first be able to evaluate the team and identify candidates who may require training as well as determine the purpose and context of the training and assessment.

Communication should not be limited to language and should include groups of individuals who may lack effective communication skills despite being good at English. Certain individuals lack a load voice and may have nature whereby they prefer never to shout thus it’s critical to ensure candidates are selected based on both their communications skill rather their command over a specific language.

Criteria and Areas to Consider while Developing a Training and Assessment Plan

It is also vital to determine the purpose of the communication training and assessment. It is vital to identify the purpose for training and assessing certain individuals on communications skills and how those skills expect to be implemented. The communication skill will require to clearly defining the individual’s role and how they are expected to communicate with their team mates using a universal communications language (visuals and verbal).  The purpose of establishing a common communication platform is to improve efficiency and reduce instances of miscommunication which could result in serious accidents, injury and even death. It’s also important to identify the context or setting an individual will be working in so as to determine the most effective mode of communication.

The training and assessment programs must also be aligned to the legal, organizational and Ethical standards and guidelines. This makes it important for the human resource manager to review the Legal, Organisational and Ethical factors before developing any plan. It’s important to understand that staff will come from different cultural backgrounds. The policy would require for consideration and development of a universal training and assessment plan which upholds government laws, adheres to organizations terms and conditions and recognizes cultural and ethical values.

Setting Benchmarks plays an important role towards the development of an effective training and assessment plan. The HR and QA managers must be able to determine training and assessment benchmarks which the trainees must achieve to pass. It also important to develop a plan related to re-training and re-assessment of candidates who may not achieve the target marks. Action on candidates who do not meet this mark must also be clearly defined to help encourage participant focus towards the training and assessment program

The Second step of developing an affecting training and assessment plan involved the preparation of the actual assessment plan. This is once again broken into sub-sections which help concentrate and focus the information’s and criteria to determine the best approach to develop an assessment plan (Freeman et al., 2016). The assessment must first be done at an individual level after which the assessment can be categorized in groups clubbing multiple individuals to the same group and delivering prescribed training programs to the group as a whole rather than individual.

Competency evolution requires being done at the individual level as this helps determine individual staff member’s skills and communications levels. This assessment also helps identify their interests and other cover values which allow for the HR and QA managers to categorize the employees based on their competency levels into groups. Plans would then be developed to train each group regarding communications skills which would later be focused towards specific communications needs thus further enhancing communication.

Importance of Aligning the Plan to Legal, Organizational, and Ethical Standards and Guidelines

Assessment plans must be developed based on defined Evidence thus it’s critical to collect specific information related to the need for the training and assessment before the training programs are developed. This complies with individuals who require training and assessments for specific needs or qualities which will require defined evidence to determine appropriate plan development. Evidence would determine the need for the special training based on documented evidence of the requirement at the workplace

Each step of the assessments must be clearly documented and individuals participating in the assessments mentioned. This would act as a database which the Trainer and assessor can return to at a later stage to determine and evaluate their performance. It also helps identify recurring issues during the training and assessment process which can help the HR and QA develop alternative assessments plans to improve training and assessment. The data also allows for the management to monitor and evaluate an individual or teams progress thus helping plot their development and training needs.

On competition of training, it becomes critical to assess the trainees to determine how much knowledge they have grasped from the process. This is very important as it also helps determine individual employee’s perceptions towards the training sessions and the process. Some individuals will take the training sessions and process very seriously while others don’t and the assessment evolutions help determine individual and groups perceptions and performance for further training sessions to be developed (Oakland & Hambleton, 2012, p.80). To help improve the assessment criteria and results in the following approaches much be considered.

Assessment instructions must be kept simple and clear so as to gain all trainees understanding. Once again it’s important to reiterate the training and assessment are delivered and done on employees who come from a diverse cultural background. Each may have different levels of perception and level of understanding. The Instructions require being delivered in common language preferably English unless all participants agree on another language. Instructions points must also be short and very clear with the objective of allowing each individual to understand, complete and pass the assessment.

Assessment instructions should also be analysed and evaluated to ensure universal understanding. Only the assessment Instructions can be shared among the staff of team to determine their level of understanding and feedback taken which can be used to modify areas which may be complex. A universal set of instructions should then be related and used in all future assessments.

It is also important to map the correlations and cohesion of the assessment and the course or unit to ensure the assessment meets the unit’s criteria. It’s important that the questions provided on the assessments fall within the unit or curriculum and require to be evenly distributed so as to give every individual an equal chance of passing the assessment.  Questions must, therefore, be evenly distributed between Easy, average and complex but should all be from being covered in the unit or curriculum.

The assessment also requires a recognized and valid answer key and instructions related to the assessments evolutions and validations. This involves the individuals who would be responsible for the evolution and the criteria which they would be following while evaluating the assessment s. Factors such as negative marking, assessment calculations, and resists should be clearly mentioned. It is also important to clearly mention the evolutions applicability to avoid misuse or accidental training and assessment of the wrong candidates leading to low turnout of low marks. Assessment evaluations results must also be properly recorded and one individual would require taking ownership of this responsibility to avoid loss of the evolutions records which could lead to further complications.

Conclusion

The HR and QA departments and managers are responsible for coordinating to evaluating and training an organizations staff so as to secure a uniform level of communication and understanding. This is very important in countries with a diverse cultural background due to the skilled professional having a communication gap. This can result in increasing the number of accidents, injury, and death which is a major concern among businesses and industry. This makes assessment and training of basic universal communication skills a basic requirement for every business which has skilled professionals from a diverse cultural background.

Freeman, R & Roge, L., 2016. Planning and Implementing Assessment. Oxon: Routledge.

Harrington, H.J. & Lewis, R., 2013. Closing the Communication Gap: An Effective Method for Achieving Desired Results. Buca Roton: CRC Press.

Hill, T., Hill, D. & Perlitz, L., 2013. Professional Training and Assessment. McGraw-Hill Education Australia.

Oakland, T. & Hambleton, R., 2012. International Perspectives on Academic Assessment. Springer Science & Business Media.

Shipley, K. & McAfee, J.G., 2015. Assessment in Speech-Language Pathology: A Resource Manual. Boston: Cengage Learning