Training Best Practices/Leveraging SMEs as Full Time employees

Fulltime SMEs vs Technical Trainers – Why and How
Performance Improvement focus drives need for full time SMEs Alignment of SME role with career path To affectively address the cultural and technical challenges within each discipline top performing SMEs with credibility within the disciplines were needed to staff the core team. For Performance Improvement in HPT model part time SMEs would not suffice Existing career taxonomy included 7 major engineering disciplines all with unique challenges and cultural differences Align with discipline leaders to function as the board of directors (and partners) of the new organization Leadership Team Members are the managers of the HP SMEs we wanted

Designing the right role for high performing SMEs
Discipline leadership teams and HPT organization joined with HR to develop new Career Stage Profiles and Competencies Part of new career profiles included experiences that broadened scope for senior level engineers Training had to be a component of role but to a degree that it was a plus and not the entire role Research into technical and process challenges had to be part of the role Working deeply with key line engineers on a daily basis needed to be maintained Developed the three core quadrants for the Knowledge Engineer role and ensured it mapped well to the experiences for senior engineers looking for a great challenge Make the job rotational

Key learnings, good and bad
Invest in HPT and training development early in rotation The core learning effectiveness organization needed to be very strong to support so many untrained knowledge engineers Need proof of role as career accelerator, had to give up some team talent to prove it was good for new crop. Need to let engineers be engineers even when in an HPT organization Too much training will burn the engineer out and limit their career growth Line organizations will still fight you to keep the best of their best Some engineers cannot make the transition into the new role so be selective You can lose your top talent too soon to other organizations, other companies and other opportunities