Build an LMS

Think of your transit system as a human body, overseen by a brain. Now, think what would happen if that brain had no memory. Every problem would be brand new, even if it had already happened and been solved before. Think of all the wasted time and frustration as this Groundhog Day happens over and over.

An LMS – Learning Management System – ensures that won’t happen to you. It’s a central repository of trainings, recordings, tips, tricks, and logs of problems solved that anyone can reference before tackling a problem from scratch. It’s like your transit system’s memory.

One resource to check out:

• CTAA LMS Resources from AccessTech

Give your training system an owner

The next step is always a tough sell: assign someone to be the manager of this fancy new LMS, and the overseer of your training system in general. Because I don’t have to tell you that if no one’s in charge, everyone will think someone else is. And as a result, your training systems will languish, new hires will stumble into their jobs unprepared for their roles, and undocumented problems will keep happening over and over.

Train to the role

We tell our clients: be strategic about who gets trained on what. Don’t make managers sit through trainings on the daily use of on-bus tech that should be focused on operators. Don’t make operators sit though system performance overview training when that’s what managers need to know.

Everyone’s time is already limited: make the most efficient of it by training to what each member of your team will actually face.

One great resource to check out:

• Access Tech’s Learning Preferences Guide

Record everything

Think of how much precious knowledge you’ll accumulate record vendor trainings, support calls, internal troubleshooting – any bits of wisdom and know-how that might be useful in the future. Otherwise, you’ll see the same problems escalated repeatedly to vendors (and at a price each time) as staff rely on dim memories to solve problems.

Turn problems into training

And that leads me to my final tip: make a special point of recording or making records of the problems you solve. Every recurring issue, every support ticket, every failure: They’re all future solutions – and future trainings – ready to save you time and money if your folks can access them.

It’s that or watch the same issues to pop up again and again across shifts, teams, and locations, and your staff waste precious resources solving the same problems over and over. “Why does this keep happening?” is not the sound of a happy, productive and efficient team.

Luckily, since you invested in that LMS I mentioned in Tip One (ahem!), you won’t have to hear those plaintive cries. The discipline of documenting problems and their solutions, then training with them, is not only how organizations get more efficient and their people more empowered, it’s how you prevent problems from happening in the first place.