Understanding Generations to Create Effective Training

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In this episode of Powered by Learning, award-winning Certified Master Trainer and Speaker Amber Aziza talks to d’Vinci’s Angeline Evans and host Susan Cort about training across the generations. You’ll hear how to make sure your training is hitting the mark with all of your team members – regardless of their age and experience.

Show Notes:

Amber Aziza talks about the training preferences and characteristics of the different generational groups and what you can do to improve your training programs for every learner on your team. Some of Amber’s key points include:

• Develop training that is incredibly interactive and entertaining to retain attention of your team, regardless of their generation.
• Build a diverse training team of people from different backgrounds, ages and experiences to make sure your training resonates across your workforce.
• Create generational checklists to make sure each training initiative will be well received by your workforce, regardless of their generation.
• Don’t be afraid to push the envelope on being creative in training. Every generation will appreciate the effort you make to engage them.
• Focus on the individual learner because not all learner behave according to the characteristics of their generation.

Learn more about Amber Aziza.

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VIEW TRANSCRIPT

Announcer 1: This is Powered by Learning, a podcast designed for learning leaders to hear the latest approaches to creating learning experiences that engage learners and achieve improved performance for individuals and organizations.

Announcer 2: Powered by Learning is brought to you by d'Vinci Interactive. For more than 25 years, d'Vinci has provided custom learning solutions to government agencies, corporations, medical education and certification organizations, and educational content providers. We collaborate with our clients to bring order and clarity to content and technology. Learn more at d'Vinci.com.

Susan Cort: Hello and welcome to Powered by Learning. I'm your host, Susan Court. With me today is d'Vinci Lead Project Manager, Instructional Designer, Angeline Evans. Today we're going to talk with Amber Aziza, an award-winning Certified Master Trainer and Speaker. Now Angeline, you suggested the idea of today's guest because you heard her speak before on the topic of training across generations.

Angeline Evans: Yes, I did. I heard Amber speak at an ATD event a few years ago and I was honestly just blown away by how she was really able to just engage with the audience the entire time. She had such a great message and it really resonated with me and stuck with me as one of my favorite speakers I got to see. I think just because she really had a way of just putting in the right anecdotes, she had the whole crowd laughing, and she really just knew her stuff.

As training and development professionals, getting to know our audience is such a critical first step for us before we begin creating a learning solution. One of the factors we look at when we try to answer that question, who is our learner, is the demographics of the audience, along with, of course, what their job role is, their years of experience, what motivates them. But I thought Amber could really offer some insights to that demographic piece and help us look at the different generational dynamics when we evaluate our audience, and hopefully, maybe dispel some myths and misconceptions that I think a lot of us might have when we look at training learners across different generations.

Susan: Amber consults with organizations worldwide in multi-generational workforce engagement, onboarding and off-boarding, diversity, equity and inclusion, and business acceleration. Let's now welcome Amber Aziza who joins us now from her office in Nashville, Tennessee. Welcome, Amber.

Amber Aziza: Thank you for having me, happy to be here.

Susan: Well, tell us a little bit about yourself and your business.

Amber: Sure. I am the founder and CEO of AAE Corporation, which houses multiple subsidiaries that focus on the people side of business. I started my career well over 18 years ago. I was a corporate training intern and grew my way quickly up the ladder into becoming an executive director of organizational development and an ED of training. I really made my mark on the millennial side of things as a millennial. I would have executives dragging their millennial employees to my office saying, "Please, please fix them," with the realization that there was this generation there that was so foreign to a lot of folks who had been in the workforce for so long.

I really made it my mission to help organizations understand and to collaborate and to accept the millennials in their workforce. I've been able to build a team of consultants. We have over a hundred plus employees worldwide with offices in Nashville and London, and now we focus on the full spectrum of employees, but we still specialize with that hint of millennial flare and now zillennials, now that they're in the workforce.

Angeline: I guess to start, could you tell us a little bit more about like, as we look at all of the generations that are in the workforce now, and I know you said you started your career 18 years ago, so of course, millennials were the ones entering the workforce. What do you see a lot as new generations enter the workforce? Are there certain biases that you see present as each generation comes into play and you see the different generations communicate? Can you tell us a little bit more about that?

Amber: Absolutely. I think that every generation has their own bias as to what the next generation is going to be or bring to the table. Every generation believes that what they bring to the table is better or more than what the next generation is going to bring. Oftentimes, what the biggest factor in that is, is technology and whether or not technology was native to them in their formative years. So, you have the baby boomers who had technology as television. It was like, ooh, wow look at us, we're in color, everything's great. Then you have Gen-X who were brought up on the video game consoles and they consider themselves super techie.

Then you have millennials who were brought up with learning how to do email in school. Now you have Gen Z that have cell phones at the age of five years old, and so technology is really a huge factor in what changes the perspective of that particular generation. But just because their technology may make it easier or simpler for them to do certain things, doesn't necessarily mean that their contribution is lesser than because it's easier to do. A lot of biases that come up in various generations of the younger generations coming in, tend to have to do with, oh they're lazy, when really, it's just technology has made it simpler for them.

Angeline: Okay. Could you break that down a little bit more? What sort of things would be considered like a simpler task and have that type of perception?

Amber: Absolutely. There was a study done a couple of years ago by Pew Research Group where they asked the group of millennials a series of questions about how tech-savvy do you think you are? How social do you think you are? All of the questions that we really worry about in the workspace. Then they asked the group of non-millennials in the workspace, specifically HR professionals, the same questions about millennials, and the differences were huge.

The biggest difference was one of the things that HR professionals said millennials struggled with was the ability to communicate properly, whereas millennials scored themselves very high in communication, and really what was the difference? It was just simply, what do you deem as communication? Millennials deem communication as I can text you, I can send you a message via DM very quickly. I can send you all of the files and everything you need without ever having to actually speak to you or see you face to face, right?

Angeline: Interesting, yes.

Amber: The HR professionals are like, they never set up a meeting for this, I never talk to them, no one spoke to me about it. I just received these files and it said, hey, tell me what edits you want. While the HR professionals are looking at it as no, status quo aside, you have to go through these steps, millennials are saying, well, why would I do all that when I can just send you the file? It's really just a matter of what are you defining as the various traits.

Millennials scored themselves very low as being technologically savvy, whereas HR professionals scored millennials very high. What was the difference? Millennials view technologically savvy as the ability to code, whereas HR professionals view it as the ability to operate the computer. It's very, different in terms of perspectives.

Susan: Amber, I have a question. As we try then to understand each other in terms of how we communicate and how we maybe like to be trained, how do we avoid stereotyping each other and putting each other in buckets and just assuming that because you're from one generation, that you like to communicate a certain way or you like to be trained a certain way?

Amber: That's a great question and it's one that I think a lot of organizations struggle with is, they'll bring in a millennial trainer, they'll bring us in to train on millennial engagement or zillennial engagement. Then it's like, okay, broad strokes, every millennial and zillennial is now going to be in this bucket and this is how we should approach them. But you have to remember they're individuals and every person in your company is an individual and you have to approach it as such.

You have to understand and know what's the best way that the individuals in your company learn. It's important to know in the back of your mind, have it filed the way that, you know millennials are more likely to have various tendency or preferences, but it's also important to note that you may have baby boomers who learn the exact same way.

I have millennial friends who really just fought tooth and nail having to get a smartphone until they literally stopped making the other type of phone. I have friends who are literally not on Facebook or social media or Instagram or any of that, and so I would never try to use the same millennial training approach with them because they would be so frustrated with the fact that they have to do all of these devices now.

It's important to understand and to note that the individuals in your company are just that and you have to approach their training styles on individual levels of understanding how they learn. Constantly doing surveys will help, asking them how do you prefer to learn, asking them what's the best way to get through information to you? Do you prefer to watch it? Do you prefer to do it? Do you prefer to hear it? And really just digging into what the preferences are and that'll give you a greater insight to your organization than just putting everyone in these broad buckets of what generation they particularly were born in.

Angeline: Would you say, like, as we look at the generations, it really has a lot to do with their years of experience and their confidence level in their job role. Would you say that informs a more what their learning style could be at a given moment in time than the type of technology or life events that they experienced in their generation?

Amber: Absolutely. I would say that years of experience is a big, big deal. I would also say that with the younger generations, millennials, and zillennials, and sometimes even the younger generation of Gen Xers, confidence does not necessarily match the amount of years they've been in the workforce.

Because we're generations that were raised in the, everyone gets a trophy. You exist, good job, here's a trophy. You showed up, awesome job, buddy. It's really boosted collectively our self-esteem as a whole in terms of our ability to say, "Yes, I can do this.," And it's like, no, you can't, you don't even know what this is. You're just thinking you can do it because you truly believe that if I say I can do it, I can do it.

I caution employers to not necessarily put as much weight into their confidence in their own ability to do something versus their experience and the types of projects they've worked on before, and the types of things that they've done and the types of positions that they've held. In those you're able to really create a great coaching program or a training program that will allow them to get to the next level that they need to in order to be a best asset for the organization.

Angeline: That's such a great point. As far as those surveys that you spoke about, as trainers we always evaluate, we do tons of pretests and post-tests to evaluate the effectiveness of a single training. But if we're looking at an organization as a whole, you had mentioned doing quarterly or bi-annual surveys, just to check in with your organization and their learning styles, not necessarily- you meant not necessarily related to a specific initiative, correct?

Amber: Correct. When we do initiative-specific surveys, we tend to lean the questions, even the most experienced trainer will tend to lean the questions towards that particular initiative. Doing one that's separate and apart that focuses on their learning styles and how they best comprehend information will allow you to really get a true unbiased view of what needs to happen for your training programs across the board.

Susan: I would think too, in addition to those surveys of the workforce, that the onus is in part on the manager to make sure that his or her team members are being trained properly and that the team member also communicates to the manager how they like to be trained.

Amber: Absolutely. I believe wholeheartedly that managers should play a very large role in the training of their team members because they work with them day-to-day. One of the key questions we ask when we're asked to come on board and to help revamp management, the key questions we ask managers is what's your management style? Before we hire a team to come in and work with you, what's your management style? And just like, they need to know their management style. They need to know their employees' learning style and their ability to be managed style.

Once they know that, then they can really tap into the highest potential of that employee and also assist the training team in knowing, okay, I can tell you, if you give John this training in this format, he may not do as well with it. So let's possibly make adjustments, or let me see if we can do some coaching before he takes that training, so that we really can make sure that it's really going to be advantageous for him to take it.

Angeline: That really speaks to the need to customize your different training approaches just to make sure that they're as effective as possible. What about those trainings, like your compliance trainings that are company-wide and they are what they are, what can we do to elevate those and make sure that we're still speaking to the different learning styles across the company?

Amber: Mix up the training styles. Oh, I know those compliance trainings can get… meh, because we have to specifically say certain things. We can't leave certain things out, it has to be approached in this way, and then when you get into fields like healthcare, or even the cannabis industry, then it gets really sticky as to what specifically you have to say, you cannot go off-script. I encourage those organizations to diversify their training types. Yes, do the standard training that everyone has to do, but then do follow-ups.

Send follow-up pop quizzes via email or via text and say, "Hey, remember that training we had two weeks ago? Can you text back what the number one thing you have to remember when you're checking money, when you're checking the validity of a check that comes in?" Have them respond and make it into an almost gamification, have a dashboard that shows which department is answering the questions the best, but add another layer into that really boring compliance training that we have to do. Adding in that extra layer allows you to make sure that, A, they understood it, and B it also lets you know if they didn't understand it.

Because my biggest issue with compliance trainings, is that oftentimes because they are set and pre-packaged and are mandated by whatever industry or government arm manages it, they tend to not necessarily worry about do people understand it? It's just, did we tell them, right? We told them not to do that. We gave them sexual harassment training. We told them not to do that, but did they truly grasp it? Did they truly understand or were they just sitting there making a grocery list in their head the whole time? You really have to understand and create ways for you to be able to really determine if they truly understand the information that you gave them, or if they glazed over.

This gives you an opportunity to create some coaching opportunities for the managers with their employees. If you're noticing every time Joe responds back, it's a complete wrong answer. That lets you say, okay, Joe, let's talk to your manager about getting you additional training that may help you understand in your specific way, without necessarily having to deviate from the compliance training that we have to do.

Angeline: Do you feel that having to customize training across different formats for different learning styles is impacting training budgets for companies because they might have to do a training in some alternate formats or have those additional materials? Is that something that you've encountered that has been an obstacle for a selling piece for you?

Amber: I would say it's really for organizations that don't want to be creative with it. You can find some really inexpensive solutions to allow you to be able to reach and teach in different ways as opposed to buying an additional LMS or an additional texting system or an audience response system. You don't have to go that big, sometimes you can make really creative options that are DIY so to speak, that won't impact your budget negatively.

Angeline: Absolutely. I think it's important that we take opportunities to think outside the box and just see if we can accomplish something in a simple but effective manner that gets the job done there. I really want to hear a little bit more about millennials and Gen Zs. Is there a need and is there a way to make learning solutions stand out from all of the noise that they might be encountering in the job as far as all of the tasks they have to do? I know they're a generation of multitaskers I've heard, so how can we make training a priority for them and make it really top of mind?

Amber: It sounds old school to say because this was popular maybe about five or six years ago, but gamification is still a very big thing with millennials and zillennials. The more competition you can add into something, the better they're going to love it. I highly recommend adding in a level of gamification to your trainings. I would also say start leveraging AI technology. It's something that the zillennials specifically are so familiar and comfortable with that when you can add those pieces into it, it makes things so much easier for them to prioritize the training.

Then also, constant feedback, we all know that millennials love constant feedback, zillennials thrive on constant feedback. They need to know how am I doing and am I where I'm supposed to be in terms of my learning and my training. Give them a roadmap. Don't just tell them, "Oh, hey, you'll get training again in six months after your first day." Give them a roadmap and let them tick it off and say, okay, I did this, I did this, oh, I should be working on these three things before I get to this type of training. I should have worked on these types of projects before I can apply for this kind of position, and really map it out for them. It makes it so much easier.

Then last but not least, look at what's popular for their generation and basically replicate it. TikTok's very popular, with the zillennials and millennials and the Gen Xers as well. It's really just short-form video, that's all it really is. Start making TikToks for your employees with specific training, quick hits. We have a client that what we did was we had a TikTok account and we didn't actually post it on TikTok, we just saved the TikTok and posted it internally on their dashboards. It would simply cover-- They had a training series on anti-money laundering. It simply hit the main four factors that they needed to know and we just created TikTok videos that were funny and humorous that really drove home the points that we wanted them to have.

It was wildly popular. It didn't take a ton of time because millennials and zillennials, they don't want to sit all day and take a training. I don't think actually any generation.

Susan: I'm just going to jump in. As an actual baby boomer, I don't want to sit through all-day training either, so bring on the TikTok videos.

Amber: So as easy and digestible and granular as you can make the training, make it. It will be so much easier for them to say, this is a priority I need to do and I need to check it out, as opposed to, "Oh, an hour and a half training, let me look at that later." I find then you're emailing them constantly, "Hey, take that training, take that training," it's just so much easier when you can make it granular.

Angeline: Absolutely. As far as talking about it being granular, when we develop e-learning, we always try to keep it a little bit more on the micromodule level, just because of seat time. No one has time to sit for an hour. What do you think the total time is that someone's willing to sit and watch an online training, in that generation I guess, or all generations today?

Amber: I would say that baby boomers tend to be more likely and more willing to sit for up to an hour, hour and a half if they need to, because typically, they're going to understand the value it brings to their job and to the organization. Baby boomers as a generation tend to have a higher level of loyalty to the organization. If it's going to make the organization look good or do better, okay I'll take one for the team, I'll take it on the chin. Gen Xers will do the same but you're going to hear about it. If you look back at every email complaint you've gotten about training, nine times out of ten, it came from someone at the end of baby boomer or a Gen Xer. They are not afraid to say, I didn't like that, I had to sit there. Why did you waste my time? So you better make sure it really counts.

When you get to the millennial and zillennial generations, they can sit for an hour and a half. They can sit for three hours for the last Avengers movie. It's not a matter of how long can they sit or will they be willing to sit, it's how interactive and engaging is your training going to be to make it not feel like they're sitting for a training. When we build trainings out for our clients, we build them so that they are just insanely and wildly interactive and insanely and wildly entertaining.

It takes a little bit more effort, it takes a little bit more time to build those elements in, but it's worth it because you end up reducing the amount of times you have to touch them after the training, or rather after the deadline of the training to get them to take it. Also, it allows them to truly, comprehend the information and take it in and just really own it.

We often, especially in a warehouse environment or a manufacturing environment where they just don't have the time to give to people to sit down for those long periods of time, we'll break it up into 30-minute chunks. We'll say, week one, you get this 30 minutes, week two, you get this 30 minutes. So being more flexible in that manner for environments that just aren't conducive to having team members gone for an hour and a half at a computer.

Susan: Amber, I'm wondering your thoughts when you have a workforce that is generationally diverse and you need to put training out that's going to reach across the generations. Do you pick something in the middle that you think will be received well by all versus leaning toward a more long-form or more short form? How do that you can try to hit the sweet spot for all of your learners if they do come from different generations?

Amber: That's a wonderful question. One of the things that we do when we build trainings is we have our generational checklists, and it sounds really cheesy. Our Gen Z employees have been quick to tell us it's very cheesy, but we're okay with that. The checklist is basically every training we create, is it going to have some elements from every generation that they're going to feel comfortable with? Oftentimes, like I said with the follow-up trainings or the follow-up pieces that you just do the, hey did you understand this?

That's usually geared towards our millennial, zillennial employees.

When you get to the baby boomers and the Gen Xers, we like to put those elements in the main training, because as a whole, they tend to be less likely to want to have to keep being bombarded with that same training over and over again. It's like, "Okay, I took it. Why are you keeping asking me about it?" Whereas millennials and zillennials, they're like, "Yes, woohoo. Okay, I got this because I totally understand this. I'm better than everybody else and I'm going to let everybody else know that I am better than them. Let me go ahead and respond and tell them how awesome I am, because I remembered everything."

Whereas Gen Xers are going to be like, "I took it and I don't-- Did I not do well? Why are you asking me this again?" We try to put those elements as more of a follow-up because that's where millennials and zillennials really learn the most, whereas baby boomers and Gen Xers are going to learn the most from the meat and potatoes in the training. We have a checklist to say, does this training have elements that will appeal to all of those generations?

Then we also have the checklist that says will this training appeal to all of the folks who may have various learning disabilities? Does it have captions? Does it have the ability to raise and lower the audio? Does it have a visual description audio for those who may be vision impaired? We really go the extra mile to make sure that our learning is not just generationally friendly but that it's fully inclusive.

Angeline: As we look at the communication across generations in the workforce, do you find like with the clients you work with, that there's barriers among teams that are generationally diverse, and if so, how do we break down those barriers to create stronger collaborative teams?

Amber: Absolutely, there are oftentimes barriers. Communication's a tough one because as I said earlier, it's often a matter of what I think I'm saying isn't what you're hearing, and how you communicate is very different. There was a huge debate recently and probably still ongoing about how you should post on LinkedIn, what you should post on LinkedIn. Don't use emojis on LinkedIn, it's LinkedIn, and don't post a profile picture with you and your kid, it's LinkedIn. The reality is that those were the more formative years of LinkedIn, but now we're in a newer age.

A good way to approach this in your team is A, have standard language. Oftentimes, people will use abbreviations or use terms that really only they are familiar with or their generation is familiar with. Have certain things almost like a rubric of, hey, if you put this, this is what this means. If you put that, this is what we're talking about. Also, open up the ability to question what was said. I think that's a big thing is that people don't want to seem silly or like they didn't understand it so they won't just say, I don't know what you're asking me or I don't know what you're trying to explain to me.

For example, we asked our interns to make a pitch deck as one of their projects, and what they presented to us, we thought, oh, no, that's not what we meant at all. Not at all, we need something we can send to the client, I don't know what this is. But for them in their collaborative mind, they were like, yes, this is what they wanted. We realized we needed to explain what a pitch deck was to our organization, because otherwise, what did they do? They Googled it. I asked them, "What's the first thing you did?" "Googled it." "Oh, so you didn't ask me what a pitch deck was, you just Googled it."

To them, it made sense. I'm just going to Google it. I don't want to seem like I'm incompetent and I don't know what I'm doing, so I'm just going to ask my good friend Google and they will give me the answers. Sometimes Google is right and oftentimes Google is not right. Normalize the ability to ask questions. Make it a comfortable, open communication environment where team members feel comfortable saying, I don't understand, or, what is that. That way you're going to end up eliminating some of those barriers that you have when it comes to communication.

Angeline: Got it. So really it's empowering them to have that culture of giving and receiving feedback and having that comfort with asking questions, and not having it feel like it's going to be frowned upon.

Amber: Exactly.

Angeline: Amber, final question. What advice would you offer organizations about training different generations and just some final tips to keep in mind to make sure they're really reaching each of the individuals at their organization?

Amber: The best way to create the best training that's going to be impactful and reach all the generations in your workforce is to have a diverse training team. When I say diverse, I mean people from different backgrounds, people from different experiences. Have someone who maybe spent most of their career in accounting, they're going to tell you how accountants learn. Have someone who maybe spent most of their time in marketing, they're going to be able to give you that marketing perspective.

I even encourage training departments to have an advisory board, so to speak. A panel of employees from different departments that can review your trainings before they go out and say, "Yes, that's great." Or, "Hey, in accounting, we were doing something totally different." This will allow you to get those different perspectives, but it also allows you, if you pick the right generational mix, to get different perspectives generationally.

I would also say, don't be afraid to try something new and look silly. I think a lot of training departments, they don't venture into the things that are popular for the various generations because they don't want to look silly, they don't want to appear foolish or make a misstep, but sometimes you have to do that in order to make a breakthrough. So don't be afraid to be innovative in that matter.

Angeline: I love that. I think that's such a true statement too because I think we are afraid to look silly sometimes, and sometimes that is the step in creating something really unique and that's going to just touch each audience member.

Susan: Meaningful training that's going to have an impact. Amber, thank you so much for joining us today. This was really interesting and something that we all think about but sometimes have a hard time trying to put in focus. I hope that your points today will really provide some great takeaways for all the trainers listening and the different corporations listening to make their learning efforts even more meaningful across the generations.

Amber: Thank you for having me.

Angeline: Thanks, Amber, it was so great talking to you.

Susan: Thanks for joining us today Angeline, and for suggesting that we chat with Amber. I think she's really got some great insights that are going to make a difference for our listeners.

Angeline: I do too. I really felt like everything she shared was so interesting and will really help us evaluate our learners next time when we're looking at the demographics and the different generational dynamics in our audience. I thought it was super helpful. I hope our listeners felt the same.

Susan: Thank you. If you have any questions about what we talked about today, you can also reach out to us on d'Vinci's social channels, through our website d'Vinci.com, or by emailing us at poweredbylearning@d'Vinci.com.

Speaker: Powered by Learning is brought to you by d'Vinci Interactive. For more than 25 years, d'Vinci has provided custom learning solutions to government agencies, corporations, medical education and certification organizations, and educational content providers. We collaborate with our clients to bring order and clarity to content and technology. Learn more at d'Vinci.com.