Tip #73: Training a diverse group of seasoned and new employees

The Challenge: You have to train a diverse group of seasoned and new employees.

Possible Approaches: Begin the session by dividing the group into seasoned and new employees. Have the seasoned employees identify a fact they wish someone had told them when they were starting on the job. Have the new employees identify a question that they have wanted to ask a seasoned employee. Ask the new employees and seasoned employees to join in small groups to ask their questions and provide their facts. This now becomes the new employees "expert group." Ask the members of the new expert groups to sit together, thereby ensuring a mix of new and seasoned employees at each table.

Now that the groups have a diversity of expertise, the more advanced participants can facilitate the small group discussions and provide practical real life examples and applications of concepts presented.

Use the more senior staff to outline the basic knowledge or augment your presentation with examples. Since it is important to provide three examples, you can provide a general example and ask the seasoned employees to provide two field-specific examples.

Prepare both basic and advanced case studies or problems and divide the groups according to their degree of expertise or interest for application exercises.