UNISON: It appears that the trend in training is packing more and more training content into fewer and fewer large meeting sessions, both in the main meeting and the breakouts. How has UNISON™ helped you with this challenge?

PB: Time away from the job is money lost – that’s the mantra of clients these days.  UNISON allows me to accelerate the training time and to include more required content. UNISON makes the training much more interactive creating an environment that encourages participants to learn from and with each other. They learn faster, as a result. If the client wants to break out the training into smaller rooms, UNISON gives the training designer the capability to develop and work with presenters to deliver a consistent message yet allow for customized design and applications in those rooms, even in different buildings -- and every single participant(s) input is recorded for analysis, no matter where their location.

UNISON: How have the UNISON™ results helped you?  Helped the client?

PB: The onsite, real time results that UNISON™ records and compiles provides my clients an immediate return on investment, especially when it is discovered that a key message, selling tool or major content has been missed by a majority of the audience.  This happened a few months ago when we discovered that an entire district of sales people including the district manager misunderstood a key selling point.  We fixed it on the spot.   Without UNISON™, that misunderstanding wouldn’t have been discovered for months.

UNISON: What has been your experience with and without UNISON™ with regard to the effectiveness of your training design and outcomes?

PB: One of the measurement tools that trainers use is the Kirkpatrick Four Level Evaluation Model. For level 1 which evaluates satisfaction with the training, we use assessment sheets – the "smiley" sheets.  Level 2, we use tests and certifications conducted at the training site. Now when we look to level 3 – changed behavior  - and level 4 – organizational results – we have been a bit stymied because we needed to record test and certification scores and then track the participants back on the job. This takes too much time which translates into too much money. With UNISON, data collection, test scores and certifications are fully recorded in real time before, during and immediately after the training. I’m convinced that UNISON’s process and technology provide us trainers and our clients with level 3 data.  This is very exciting because clients will be able to evaluate the effectiveness of the training, where it really counts - in the results - comparing the organizational results before and after the training.  The time consuming part is done and fully recorded, thanks to UNISON.

UNISON: If you had one wish for one new UNISON process or feature, what would it be?

PB: I would like to have the capability to capture and build upon certification feedback from one reviewer to the next. A person is reviewed and/or evaluated by one reviewer and receives oral and written feedback, which is captured by UNISON™. When the person goes to the next reviewer, the information from the first evaluation is there, where the second reviewer can read it and identify what to look for in the evaluation. This person can then see if improvement was made following the first feedback or not, and if anything else was lacking along the way. This build-up of evaluations would not only provide a written record for the person being evaluated, but will offer clients a way to see how good their managers are at evaluating people and that there is a consistency among the manager/evaluators. (Editor's Note: UNISON can record scores and comments of assessments and reassessments instantly and cumulatively and then can be displayed immediately to assessors, senior management and trainers. This rich data provides a more complete record of Kirkpatrick Level 3 results.)