Technical Writer salary - small gains in 6 years
We came up on this factoid in one of our 2003 newsletters:
According to a recent survey (March 2003) by Business 2.0 magazine, the average salary for a technical writer in America is $52,875.00. Just out of curiosity we looked up “today’s salary” at Glassdoor.com – which was updated 27 May – and found the national average to now be $57,000.
By the way, Business 2.0 no longer exists; it was bought by CNNMoney in 2007.
Prompting Learning
The brain is a complex piece of machinery. It’s capable of keeping track of a myriad of things – your first grade teacher’s name, your upcoming flight itinerary, how much is left in your checking account, all your sibling’s birthdays. . . and then it is capable of completely purging what you learned in that training class last week.
Part of the reason that we purge things is that they hold no meaning for us. One of the tricks we can use to help our learners to retain information is to enable them to encode meaning to the topic. When people associate some kind of personal meaning to new information, it is much more likely they will remember it.
Here are some ideas:
When teaching a sales class, give participants 10 or 15 minutes to write the script they will use for their upcoming conversation with Client X. Don’t give them a generic assignment of writing the script, but a more personal assignment of, “Choose a client you intend to call on next week. Write the script with him in mind.”
When teaching a new hire, ask them, “How is this similar (or different) to what you did at your last job?”
When teaching leadership skills, ask “Who can bring this concept to life with an example from your own work as a new supervisor or manager?”
Ed Betof - Leaders As Teachers
Ed Betof is a senior fellow and academic director of executive programs in Workplace Learning Leadership at the University of Pennsylvania and also teaches in the Wharton Executive Education High Potential Leadership program. Ed’s newest book is entitled, “Leaders as Teachers, Unleashing the Teaching Potential of your Best and your Brightest.”
T/D: The title of your book is a very compelling title and one that I am proponent of. What’s the major concept behind, “Leaders as Teachers”? It’s not new, right?
EB: The idea is not new. In fact, the idea of leaders serving as teachers goes back centuries. If you think of elders, shamans, and artisans bringing up apprentices behind them, and today, so many different organizations that are human service organizations such as scouts and 4-H, you’ll see it, too. But in the corporate world, it’s very inconsistent.
I decided to build on some initial concepts and principles put forward a number of years ago by Noel Tichy and build a book that was both a strategic book as well as a how-to book.
T/D: Noel Tichy used to be the Director of the Leadership Development Center for GE years ago.
EB: Yes and he is a professor at the University of Michigan.
T/D: My very first thought when I read the title of your book, “Leaders as Teachers”, was Jack Welch. He was so well known for going to his up-and-coming managers training programs and being an interactive part of their leadership development. Who can argue with the success of GE? Why hasn’t the concept of leaders as teachers taken off as much? I assume the book is filled with examples.
EB: The book is filled with hundreds of examples of ways that it can be done. They actually fall into just over 50 categories. I call them 5 buckets and about 50 categories within the buckets. One of the reasons that it is inconsistent is that when people think of a leader as teacher, they think of somebody maybe teaching a whole course or standing up and lecturing for an hour or hours on end - it’s quite to the contrary. The approaches that we suggest in the book are very practical. They’re forms of active teaching, active training, and active learning and we know that they work because I spent the last ten and a half years of my corporate career building a leaders-as-teachers process at Becton Dickinson and Company where we had over 550 leaders, managers, and professionals teaching around the world. Not that many years before, we had only 9.
T/D: Who’s perspective is the book written from? Is it from a trainer’s perspective that you need to harness the value of the leaders in your organization or is it speaking to the leader saying, you need to add value to your organization by contributing to the development of people?
EB: That’s an excellent question! I’ve tried to write the book so that it could be read in several voices by several different types of people. On one hand, senior executives could read this book and it could help them reach out into their organizations. In fact, the forward of the book is written by the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at BD, Ed Ludwig, who to me, epitomizes a senior level leader-teacher.
On the other hand, a very major audience for the book would be learning executives, learning leaders, and day-to-day people who are training, and trying to involve others in their organizations to be involved in that training, learning, teaching process.
T/D: You just gave an example of someone that you say epitomizes a senior leader in a teaching position. Tell us what that looks like.
EB: It could range from Jack Welch coming in and teaching as part of leadership programs, to conducting town meetings, to facilitating sessions, to being involved ahead of time in needs assessments in the organization. There are a few different ways that leaders can contribute as teachers and they break down into five categories. One is the identification of learning needs and the design of learning solutions and programs, and working with those who are professionals to do that by providing a lot of input.
T/D: I won’t stop you from telling us about the other four but I want to ask, how time intensive is that role?
EB: It can be very small to more significant. One of the objections that people frequently hear in organizations is, “I don’t have time to teach.”
T/D: But I would think to help design it, that’s too minutia for a leader.
EB: I would say quite to the contrary because in today’s organizations, Noel Tichy and his original work back in the 90’s made the point that teaching organizations are winning organizations and I couldn’t emphasize that point more. In companies that believe that their leaders have a responsibility to teach, to coach, and to mentor others, that is not only part of their job, it’s a very significant part of their job. So my answer to the question of how much time does it take is, “it depends;” but I don’t answer in percentages, I answer as what role does a leader have and how is that best carried out? Part of that role should be a teaching, coaching, mentoring role
T/D: What are the other buckets?
EB: I started with the identification of learning needs and design of learning solutions and programs. Second is live teaching. There’s probably 20 different ways or more that that could take place. Teaching through the use of media or technology. A good example for that is an interview like this, or in some organizations where they will do a video of leaders and stream it, or podcasts and things like that.’
The fourth category I call pre-program and post-program teaching and coaching to help ensure applications. Very frequently somebody will attend a training or learning course and they don’t even know why they’re there. But if you pre-coach a person before they leave for that learning process we know very clearly that there will be impact and follow through on learning. The “pre” part is much more important than we ever even knew..
The fifth category is training, coaching, and mentoring leader teachers. So after one becomes experienced themselves in teaching, facilitation or in any of these categories or buckets that we’re discussing right now, then we want multiples of yourself. Just like you’re developing a pipeline of talent in technology, a pipeline of talent in leadership, develop a pipeline of teachers in your organization.
TD: The book is full of ideas to help you get that pipeline started to grow exponentially.
Organizations don't need training...
Formal, discrete learning programmes are the exact opposite of what organisations need.
Quote: Perry Timms. TrainingZone.co.uk
Are you ready for the 'unseen' worker?
According to IDC (International Data Corp), by 2013, 75 percent of the US workforce will have the ability to work remotely through mobile technology; which will put pressure on employers to adapt on-boarding and training methods....
Adult Learning Theory
At 8:00am today you can learn all about Adult Learning Theory in less than 30 minutes.
Where: Training2012 in Atlanta. See you there!
Make strategic decisions about training needs
Oftentimes, when training fails, the Training Department appears to be responsible; but WE know that's not the case. We can forestall a poor reputation by asking a number of strategic questions before committing to providing the training. We like to call it....The 60 minute Needs Analysis
The questions fall in to 3 categories:
Questions of Stakeholders
Questions about the learners
Questions about the intended curriculum
Want to learn more? Come see us at Training 2013 in Orlando FL, February 18 - 20.Here is a $200 discount code: CT2SP
The Lone-Ranger Trainer, an interview with Jane Bozarth
T/D: If you’re the first trainer or a one person training department, how would you get started? How would you set up?
JB: I think especially for the first one, there’s a temptation to think that there’s nothing already in place but very often there is. Perhaps there was some kind of mandatory training done five years ago or there’s been some kind of tutorial for using the company telephone, for example.
The first-time trainer walks in and it’s just so overwhelming. They don’t know where to start because they've got all these different people making different demands. As a quick exercise I would invite the reader to answer the following questions.1. What do you believe your job is? What is your job in this organization? 2. What does your boss or the person who hired you think your job is and what your role in the organization is? And 3, What do your co-workers think your job is?
It’s really critical that you are very clear on the different expectations of the different people with whom you’ll be interacting. I have seen trainers go into an organization and make big mistakes by not being really clear on what their boss wanted them to do or what their co-workers thought they were there to do.
The other thing that I would warn you about is to find out what promises have already been made. If your not the first trainer the organization has ever had, it's important to know who your predecessor was. Different trainers have different styles and they have different approaches. Are you trying to fill big shoes and are people looking to you to fill the same shoes? Or perhaps the new trainer may have been brought in intentionally to correct deficiencies the prior trainer had or to do things the prior trainer didn't do.
For instance, I once replaced a trainer who was very, very popular but she never did any training. She saw herself as the organization’s one-on-one HR consultant. People would call her day in and day out with questions about the performance management policy or leave procedures - things that I was never going to do. Therefore, finding out who you’re replacing, whether they were formally in a training role or not, can be really important. Also finding out if you’re replacing someone who’s weak can be a great thing; capitalize on that.
T/D: This is wonderful information. Is there other information that’s useful to a new trainer when they’re just getting started?
JB: The biggest mistake I see new trainers make is that they go into their offices or their cubicles with piles of policy manuals and prior training materials and perhaps whatever else has been dumped on them and they don't actually do any further research.
Don’t be a little office mole. Get out. Find out what the standing meetings are and get invited to those if only to come in and say, “Hi I’m Jane.” Find out who the key players are and make a point of introducing yourself to them.
I had a new boss one time who had been in place for a couple of months who stopped me in the hallway to ask who somebody was that was walking by. It was one of our senior managers. He was someone she should have met the first week she was there and remembered his name – she should have made it a point to speak to him when she saw him.
You’re never going to get credibility or get a foothold in the organization if you’re not informed. Find out who the players are. Find out what their needs and problems are and find out how to support their projects.
For more information on Jane Bozarth, visit www.bozarthzone.com. To hear the complete hour-long interview you can order the CD or downloadable Mp3 at The Accidental Trainer Store on our website.
The Training Doctor is the sponsor of our free “Accidental Trainer Power Interviews.” Remember when you can’t find it off the shelf The Training Doctor is your custom instructional design and solution and you can find us at www.theaccidentaltrainer.com.
What do you earn?
Click here to learn how your earnings compare with other training professionals across the US. Here’s a preview:
Overall salaries if you’ve been in the profession:
Three years or less: $70,881
Four to seven years: $76,285
Eight to twelve years: $78,581
Thirteen year or more: $92,815
(link this to the click here)
Who gets trained the most? Surprised?
According to Training Magazine’s 2011 Training Industry Report, the highest level of training expenditures goes to non-exempt employees (41%).
Is there always a right answer?
Is there always a “right” answer when testing our employees after training? With the proliferation of learning management systems, many organizations are now creating tests and quizzes to be administered post-training. Those types of quizzes often DO have one right answer, but our economy has moved away from task-oriented training and more toward a knowledge-based economy, and that type of work performance may not have a ‘right answer.’
When you are determining if someone is thinking or reasoning appropriately, it’s impossible to give a paper and pencil test. So what are we left to do? Do we follow people around and ask them to explain what they are doing? Do we look at the end result and assume the steps that got them there were correct?
How do we assess problem solving, reasoning and decision making?
Training: Interrupted
We were recently introduced to a study written and conducted by 3 professors from the University of CA at Irvine. The study, published in 2005, discusses the amount of interruptions a ‘knowledge worker’ experiences in a typical day.
The study determined that there are two types of interruptions:
External interruptions are those that stem from events in the environment, such as a phone ringing, a colleague entering one’s cubicle, or an email signal. Internal interruptions are those in which one stops a task of their own volition.
The study goes on to analyze and discuss how long it takes one to return to the task they were completing before the interruption (typically there are 2 intervening tasks before resumption) and how the interrupted tasks start to “nest” and pile upon one another.
While all this is fascinating and disturbing, what struck us was this idea:
Is it important for us, as trainers, to teach people how to do their job while interrupted? The study focuses particularly on information or knowledge workers – in other words, people who have to think. If we teach our participants to do something in a particular way, in a supported environment and a predictable order, are we really helping them to learn to perform the same task on the job?
Are you developing training that is already "out there?"
Are you in charge of your employees learning? Perhaps not, but consider these facts:
People watch 2 billion You Tube videos per day
There are 2 million Google searches per minute
There are close to 2,000 tweets per second
There’s a lot of learning “out there,” perhaps it’s our job to lead people to it, rather than develop it.
We're speaking at... TechKnowledge
Wondering how to move your classroom-based classes to the live online environment? Join us at ASTD’s Tech Knowledge conference in Las Vegas later this month for a 3-hour workshop titled: Synchronous Instructional Design.
More info here: tk12.astd.org