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Job Aids & Performance Support
January 15, 2008
Moving from knowledge in the classroom to knowledge everywhere (By Allison Rossett & Lisa Schafer, Pfeiffer, 216 pages, $55)
By Jane Bozarth
Overall Rating: 4 Stars
"The best way to appreciate performance support is to look at examples showing how performance support solves problems and elevates practice."
Finally, after a 15-year wait, Allison Rossett (this time with coauthor Lisa Schafer) presents the update of her classic "Handbook of Job Aids." And it's just in time for me, for I now have a new weapon in my arsenal. In working with subject matter experts (SMEs), managers, and trainers who should know better, I struggle to communicate the distinction between information that must be memorized and information that only needs to be found. From speed-dial features on telephones to TurboTax to the emergency procedures chart found in the seat pockets on airplanes, job aids make life easier, safer, and more manageable for us all. As training shifts (I hope) from instruction-centered sessions to results-oriented performance improvement solutions, training practitioners' understanding of why and when to use job aids, and how to develop them, likely will make the difference between successful, sustained initiatives and those that are only training "events."
Rossett and Schafer take readers on a pragmatic, readable walk through the many facets of job aids and performance support tools, from indicators to types and formats. There's fun stuff, such as the delightful new e-suds technology (go Google it if you don't know already), and there's perfect, low-tech stuff, such as the reminder poster for Mike’s Car Wash staff.
In a piece often missing from job-aid discussions, the authors devote an entire chapter to strategies for implementation. The aid won't work if people don't use it, and getting them to use it goes back to getting it right in the first place, and getting it right depends on good up-front assessment, and—well, you get the idea. And I've never been much of a reader of forewords, but comments here from performance-support pioneer Gloria Gery are touching and make the perfect lead-in to the rest of the book.
Buy Job Aids and Performance Support: Moving From Knowledge in the Classroom to Knowledge Everywhere (Essential Knowledge Resource).
Jane Bozarth is learning coordinator, N.C. Office of State Personnel/HR Development Group, Raleigh, NC.
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