Mixed Practice Review

ILT Activity

Overview

Audience: Newly employed personal bankers, to be completed towards the end of training.

Responsibilities: Instructional Design
In the general retail banking industry, the onboarding and training process of frontline job roles, such as personal bankers, is imperative to the success of any organization. Frontline employees must be armed with the knowledge of products/services their institution offers, along with the customer service standards in their daily interactions with their client base.
Different financial institutions have different methods of determining the "readiness" of a frontline employee to help their clientele. Some institutions deem that passing a final test/exam through training being sufficient, while others support the new hire for a specific time back on the job. Others segment training, starting with the organizations Learning & Development team, then going back on-the-job to learn and reinforce skills acquired, ultimately returning for further training.

In completing the Mixed Practice Review, newly hired personal bankers would have sufficient knowledge and confidence to handle some of the most common transactions and interactions they would conduct on a daily basis. It was an item added to already existing onboarding training to augment the transfer of learning back on the job, and provide a higher level of understanding by having learns actively practice and role play specific scenarios in an instructor-led training session.

Process

In this example, I created a Mixed Practice Review, which is used towards the end of a newly hired personal banker's training. This training encompasses various skills a newly hired personal banker would use daily in helping clientele, including:
For this financial institution, we conducted observations on frontline staff and interviewed frontline management to determine the most commonly conducted requests. Through our findings, we determined we needed to include the following into this review:
As all of the above examples are heavily system-drive, those were incorporated as scenarios for the learner to complete within a specific period of time. The instructor can then check for accuracy and understanding after time is up, and address any gaps in learning by directing learners to the policies/procedures. Follow-up questions after each scenario also reinforce the policies and procedures utilized for each.
Following the scenarios above, I then created several more examples that also covered common requests, but also allowed them to practice with their peers through role-playing. The role play scenarios I created revolved around two common inquiries a client my have:
In both examples, certain aspects of the transaction are scripted where the personal banker would conduct the transactions on the system during the role play. After each example, the class would reconvene, discuss the scenario and provide feedback. There are also follow-up questions within the workbook to reinforce some of the policies and procedures that were utilized. Click here to see a copy of the Mixed Practice Review.

Results & Takeaways

In implementing this mixed practice review into our new hire training, we received positive feedback from both newly hired personal bankers and their management staff, as they felt more confident conducting transactions for actual people. Personal bankers were able to conduct transactions through the system while being able to hold a conversation with the clients they are assisting. Being able to incorporate this mixed practice review into training also helps to cater to all types of learning (audio, visual, and kinesthetic), keeping them engaged on one of the final items of their formal L&D training.
©2024 Anthony DeGuzman
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