I’m not sure if anyone in the Learning and Development industry is really referring to Just in Time Training as JTT, but as a child of the 80s and 90s, I appreciate the reference (you know…to heart throb Jonathan Taylor Thomas of Home Improvement fame)…but I digress.
Just in Time Training (JTT)
JTT is just what it sounds like – training provided just in time. Or, training provided on an as-needed basis. Many employers view JTT as the key to their success – viewed as taking fewer resources than hiring and training someone new who may have the qualifications being trained. Often this is not so much a view as a means of convenience. In reality, it likely takes even more resources (human and monetary) to provide JTT as it takes 1 learner and a minimum of 1 trainer for however many hours required to complete the training. At a minimum, it takes 1 learner of the production floor (so to speak) to complete the required training. In the broader context, if self-paced training materials are available, it would have taken someone time and effort to create those materials.
So JTT is bad?
No. No. I don’t think that’s the takeaway here. JTT has its time and place. I think JTT can be extremely effective for low-level training. For example, at the university, we teach one format that requires some equipment setup. It’s very basic plug-and-play style equipment, but it can be confusing for some academic types as the last thing they have on their mind when preparing for a lecture is setting up equipment. In this situation, a handy job aid posted on lectern provides enough JTT to be effective for most faculty members.
JTT is also better than no training at all. I used to joke that I once worked for a training company that provided no internal training. We were often awarded a new contract that used a new technology, and it wasn’t strange to just have the new technology installed on your computer, be given some deliverable dates, and be told to figure it out. I mean, we were all pretty intelligent people, so it wasn’t the worst thing in the world, but some of us certainly struggled with some new products over others. This is a situation where spending the human resource hours to provide JTT would have been beneficial.
Where I think JTT does not have a place at the table is in any situation where it takes the learner more time and effort to receive the training than is necessary. For example, for a project that has a 4 week turnaround (or other short deadline), it seems unnecessary to spend 1 week receiving training. I experienced this once with a client who sent me to do data collection. Sure, the added context of sitting in on a week of training was great, but just having all of the client materials would have sufficed. I left the week of data collection feeling like I had received some JTT in an industry for which I would seldom use the information, and when I began working on the project, I found myself consulting the client materials more than I found myself consulting my own notes from that week of training.
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