Human Performance Technology: 5 Ways to get the Most Out of Your Team

By Jessica Gutierrez

Human Performance Technology – sounds pretty sophisticated doesn’t it? It’s okay; no need to psych yourself out, I’ll explain. What it means is a better end result for all the work you and your staff put in.

Even if you think your business is meeting its goals, it never hurts to take a second look at how you’re achieving them. Essentially, HPT would make your team perform better, not work harder, in making your expectations reality.

What is HPT?

Human Performance Technology (HPT) is a widely-used systematic approach to improving the performance, productivity and overall competence of employees. It can be applied to an individual or to departments within a company. HPT uses interventions that are drawn from other disciplines such as behavioral psychology, organizational development and human resources management. The discipline is used within businesses to realize where an opportunity for improvement lays – be it in the process of designing a project, strategies for giving out tasks, tools needed to perform tasks or even in the behavioral tendencies of employees.

So, where do you begin? You start with Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation and Evaluation or ADDIE. Here is ADDIE in simple form:

Analysis, Analysis, Analysis

First consider all the factors needed to complete a given project: what tools are needed, the people needed to complete it, who manages the project and what the typical outcome is. Analyzing all of the steps, and factors affecting the project should illuminate the problem areas creating the performance gaps within the individual, department or organization.

Next, ask yourself why a gap in performance exists and determine what area needs your intervention. This step requires you to think fully about the task, as well as the knowledge and skill required of your employees. After you have assessed this, create an objective and think about what the criteria is for your optimal performance.

  

Design Intelligently

 The design portion of ADDIE is all about identifying pivotal characteristics that will guide your employees to reach your expectations. This phase is essentially the blueprint to your success – strategizing training techniques for your employees and ensuring all tools are available for them to succeed. After you’ve created your ideal solution, design how you will present it in the Development phase.

Develop It!

Development is all about creating a teaching plan for the solutions identified in the design phase. Examples of this could be instructing your employees on a new or upgraded process, instruction on using new tools, or even creating handouts on changes being made. 

Now that you’ve identified your problem areas, assessed what changes could be made and developed a lesson plan, it’s time to implement it.

Implementation Your Creation

Now it’s time to teach the lesson plan you created, then manage and sustain it. This part is all about testing your solutions and (hopefully) teaching your employees new behaviors beneficial for future projects. This part sounds easy, but it requires a hands-on manager ready to reinforce new, positive behaviors, and intervene when regression seems to be occurring. The final phase should be done at the end of the project, but should also be done throughout the process of ADDIE as well.

Evaluate

This phase is about quantifying the effectiveness of your changes, the processes it took to implement it and how well the solutions you identified met up with your goals. Ask yourself if the employees are behaving differently in carrying out their tasks and if further changes can be made. Scrutinizing your solutions, analysis and implementation process will allow you to make more informed decisions on where more opportunities may lie that can ultimately reach your goal. A thorough, continual evaluation will inevitably mean continual performance enhancement. 


Here are some useful tips to help you along your path of implementing HPT:  

Tip #1: Peer Check

Everyone makes mistakes; in fact the average person makes 5-7 an hour. An easy way to get past this is to have a colleague knowledgeable of the task, or have a member of a group project check their work. Not only does this correct careless mistakes, but it also illuminates problem areas.

Tip #2: Communication

Not everyone is an auditory learner. A work around for misunderstandings is adopting the three way method of communication. If you’re a manager, make sure you have the full attention of the person you’re giving the task to, then clearly give your employee the task and instructions. 

Have the employee repeat the task and instructions back to you in their own words. At this point if there is a mistake in their understanding, you can clarify and repeat the task. Once the employee understand the task and instructions, confirm their understanding.

Tip #3:  Stop the Blame Game

Let your employees know the best, most competent professionals create errors in their day to day life, so a concerted effort to move past judgment and start with improvement. Have your employees create a sheet with mistakes and reasons for making them. Not only will this create self-awareness within the employees, it will foster an environment of learning from others mistakes as well as their own and allow for manager job coaching.

Tip # 4: Use Better Tools

Sometimes it’s better to use technology instead of re-vamping processes or your infrastructure. For example, if manager training is needed, instead of using time to create a training process, scour the net for training software that specializes in this area. The upfront costs will be high, but quality software pays for itself and the company can invest in areas technology cannot assist in.

Tip #5: Don’t Always Trust Your Gut

Trusting your gut when it comes to business isn’t always the best solution. Lacking concrete data can sometimes lead employees to risky territory,leaving them susceptible to errors, or worse – a costly mistake. It’s always best to choose facts over assumptions.