Not Just “Nice”, But Necessary: Why Accelerated Learning is A Must Across Industries

Wouldn’t it be nice if everyone who sat through your training sessions actually remembered your training? Thing is, what people are supposed to learn during training often isn’t just “nice-to-have”, but in some cases, literally a matter of life or death. 

We’re not merely discussing training involving high-risk dangerous chemicals, hazardous minerals, or heavy equipment. When you train your staff to do any sort of work, everyone is affected—from the leadership to the chap in the backroom, from the customer-facing team to your customers, themselves. And that could literally mean life or death, or existence of your organisation. 

Accelerated Learning or AL is an approach to learning that ensures that people actually learn what they’re supposed to at every training session.

Now, we’re not just talking about being able to parrot back what a trainer says—AL is all about high-impact, high-engagement and results-focused learning that ensures trainees remember what they learn, and apply what they learned when they leave the classroom. And that’s something that applies to any industry, including yours. 

To better appreciate the vital difference Accelerated Learning can make in specific industries, let’s take a closer look at AL at work in training for some industries.

AL Enhances Compliance Comprehension

Compliance focuses on making sure that an organisation’s processes are in line with regulations—its own as well as the governing authority. Companies in every industry, in every country, have regulations they need to comply with.  This is very typical in some highly regulated industries, like finance or healthcare. 

Compliance training generally involves bringing teams up to speed not just with the legal aspects of their company’s operations, but also with the company’s own policies covering standards, conduct, security and ethical issues.  In some cases, Compliance training is a critical part of an organisation’s international certification bodies, such as the ISO or TUV. 

A key part of Accelerated Learning is its emphasis on connecting trainees to the learning and requiring them “teach back” what they’ve learned, AL in Compliance Training enhances the trainees’ understanding and application of Compliance in their individual roles.

Naturally, now that there is a connection, it effectively improves the way Compliance is observed during the trainees’ day-to-day.

AL has its roots in the Oil and Gas industry

Evolving environmental compliance regulations, high stakes, high-risk investments, and expansion into new markets, constant innovations in engineering and technology are all a part of the volatile oil and gas industry. AL was born in the oil and gas industry, because of the need to provide effective, efficacious and continual training for teams to ensure not just Compliance but Occupational Safety.

The BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill incident is a prime demonstration of the immense, and tremendous implications of a mistake, an error in this industry.  An oil spill because someone was careless when operating the safety system, the rig operator made a mistake, or a foreman missed a step in the safety practices.  Just the devastating environmental impact already meant more than 8000 species of living things were affected, and its impact 

Accelerated Learning is a critical approach to training in the oil and gas industry, and is an integral approach that is widely adopted in technical, and safety trainings.  

Michael Killingsworth first brought AL to American Airlines.  Having achieved significant business results, he moved to the Royal Dutch Shell to develop their learning strategy in 2002, eventually become VP of Learning and Organizational Effectiveness.  

AL has been embedded into the design and delivery of Shell’s safety learning processes ever since.  The company has now trained hundreds of safety professionals in AL and high impact facilitation around the world and has become a benchmark for safety across the industry.  

“Death by Powerpoint” can be literal

On 26 April 2016, a delivery of 1.5 tons of steel mesh makes its way to a construction yard in Singapore.  The load needs to be lifted from the truck using the truck crane and lowered to the ground. Two workers rig up the load which starts to buckle as it comes down.  One of the workers reaches up to straighten it, putting himself in the line of fire. The corroded lifting chain fails and the load gives way, crushes him to death.  The workers didn’t know how to lift safely.

When we talk about “Death by Powerpoint”, we snigger and generally compare notes on how boring the training sessions were.  In construction safety, however, “Death by Powerpoint” can be literal.

Imagine a team of folks struggling to stay awake as a presenter puts them through several hours of slides on rigging and lifting, confined space entry, chemical management, working at height etc, etc.

The next day they are in the field entering a tank …and if they cannot remember their training from the previous day, the results can be fatal. 

That is why the Accelerated Learning is a key part of the training approach where training isn’t just a must, but are often repeated at regular intervals, so trainees not only need to learn and apply but also need to be constantly, and consistently reiterated.  

AL uses physical activities, creativity, colour, images, creating a training environment that fully involves the learners in their own learning experience.  Tapping into our innate potential for learning in a way that traditional learning methods cannot, AL is an obvious and powerful learning approach for safety.

Reinforcing Training in Finance with AL?

It may not be so obvious that AL can be applied to money management. However, in recent years, financial and political scandals, compliance and ethical issues have dominated many headlines globally.

A recent and ongoing political scandal involving more than USD700m, a political leader, several global banks, a complicated, and tangled web weaved from compliance failures, ethical obligations, transparency and illegal dealings have further raised questions, and shifted the spotlight yet again on the importance of compliance functions in the international financial sector.

Financial training initiatives typically cover a range of regulated Compliance training, with emphasis on ethics, recognising red flags on money laundering, client verification or risk assessment.  These trainings are typically required by regulatory authorities to be repeated, refreshed and reiterated.  

The subject matter is very technical, often repetitive, and more often than not, guilty of “Death by Powerpoint”.

AL is a very effective tool, and skill to empower Compliance trainers with.  

AL is learner-drive, activity-based, and can be easily embedded into the delivery of very technical compliance programmes.  Content can be adopted, and adapted to be “learner-driven”, engaging, and highly interactive, and overall, to create a learning programme that is simulating, applicable, and that significantly improves memory and retention.  

Discover how AL can make a lifesaving difference in your organisation’s performance.

No matter what industry you’re in, or how insignificant it may seem, the work you do touches lives and changes them. Whether that change is for good or ill might well depend on how well you train everyone on your team. Why wait for the unthinkable, or unforeseen to drive that point home? The next avoidable incident or accident could happen to one of your own—staff, stakeholders, or customers.

Our trainers at Kaleidoskope have spent more than 20 years helping teams as well as the trainers who train them to enhance their professional facilitation expertise. David Turberfield, the lead facilitator for our AL course, is a certified Acclerated Learning Facilitator with 25 years of experience as a high-impact facilitator, professional coach and speaker primarily in Asia.

Get in touch with us to give your training initiatives the Accelerated Learning advantage, today.