Training the Trainer: Corporate Workshops to Demystify Performance Reviews

Press Release • Dec 2, 2014

Trainings on performance reviews are a shrewd investment to help managers advance company goals and improve the bottom line. Write It Well offers a guide with scripts to help corporate trainers lead dynamic workshops on clear performance objectives.

Oakland, CA, December 2, 2014 (Newswire.com) - The consulting and training firm Write It Well offers a guide book for a corporate trainer to improve managers’ written performance documentation. The guide helps trainings run smoothly—whether or not the trainer has managerial experience.

The guide is based on the book Writing Performance Reviews, and an extended guide excerpt is available here. Trainers can use the book to help a group of managers master these writing tasks:

With the increased pace of business, writing effective performance evaluations is becoming a lost art. This book reminds people how to write an evaluation that will stay useful to you as a manager and be a welcome development tool for your employees.

Craig Pampeyan, Director, Business Operations, Hewlett-Packard

Write performance reviews quickly
Clearly describe what happens next:
- What employees need to improve
- What strengths employees can continue to build on

Natasha Terk is the author of the book; she has been Write It Well’s managing director since 2004. The firm’s instructional designers and trainers have 35 years of experience in helping clients streamline their work and deliver effective messages. All the titles in The Write It Well Series on Business Writing reflect that expertise.

Corporate trainers can use this guide in workshops, for small-group study, or in individual coaching programs. Although it’s helpful for a trainer to have experience with the performance review process and with a company’s distinctive software, that kind of experience isn’t necessary to succeed with this program.

PowerPoint slides accompany the guide. Along with copies of the Writing Performance Review paperback, the companion slides and guide book provide all the content and activities a trainer needs to conduct a successful learning program. Clear scripts show when the trainer should speak and when participants should read aloud from the print book.

The trainer guide is organized into three major units:

Introductory guidelines to help prepare for the training
Step-by-step lesson modules
Appendices containing sample letters, checklists, and FAQs

The guide shares a variety of useful techniques with trainers:

To engage participants in the learning process
To articulate clear, relevant behavioral objectives
To use job-relevant writing illustrations so participants can immediately apply workshop techniques to their own processes for helping employees perform well

The guides encourage questions and discussion, and they also explain what a workshop doesn’t cover. The guides include tips on budgeting time and adapting agendas to a variety of factors:

Participants who know more or less about the performance review process
Stakeholders who want to tailor training exercises to include specific review samples and to reach departmental performance goals
Opportunities for prework and individual coaching
Longer or shorter training time frames
Various training settings:
- Workshops and other classroom trainings
- Small-group trainings and study groups
- Individual coaching programs or tutorials
- Webinars

The guide thoroughly prepares a trainer to share all of the book’s practical writing techniques. These techniques promote the kinds of efficient, effective work that companies need from each of their employees. Corporate trainers can rely on the guide to help managers save writing time, improve performance results, and boost a company’s bottom line.