Fill-in-the-Gaps Learning Modules

The Problem and Solution

For over 20 years GISTnet has been providing a variety of training courses focused on the knowledge needed by people engaged in international trade, cargo transportation and supply chain logistics, and especially freight forwarding and customs brokerage. But our training, and most other formal training, generally assumes the student has little or no prior understanding of the topic. A person who already has partial understanding of the topic will find such training boring at times and needlessly time consuming for learning what is not yet understood.

GISTnet now provides a solution to the above problem, which we refer to as Fill-in-the-Gaps learning. This new approach is specifically designed for people who have sufficient on the job experience to be productive at their routine work, but who seek to broaden their understanding in preparation to correctly process a wider range of customers, products and service offerings.

These learning modules:

Fill-in-the-gaps learning modules are a truly time and cost effective way to learn in an organized and accountable way.

Key Points for Experienced Knowledge Workers

You have been learning at work over time based on the products and customers you handle. Your training is primarily on-the-job (OJT). If you were fortunate, you have received some formal training along the way and perhaps have participated in occasional industry conferences and other learning opportunities. However, there will be new situations you may face at any time that fall within the larger industry body of knowledge, and that you should be prepared to handle but are not because they are outside your particular experience. And so, when new situations arise, you are not ready with the needed knowledge and task competency.

In an ideal world, employers would provide ongoing training to broaden your readiness to handle a wider range of customers, products and tasks. But this rarely occurs due to work time pressure and cost. Also, most formal industry training will include things you already know along with what you need to learn... not an efficient learning solution.

How can a busy person like yourself "fill in the gaps" in your knowledge to widen your competence and prepare for advancement? And how can you do this in a time-efficient, convenient and no-fault way? Use GISTnet Fill-in-the-Gaps learning modules! Use the "Enroll Now" button to purchase a module or request your company training administer to assign one.

Key Points for Employers

You are responsible for the performance, advancement and retention of your personnel. Many of your company's job assignments require considerable technical knowledge for a person to be considered fully competent, and even more knowledge to be ready for advancement.

If you hire entry-level trainees or reassign personnel to work for which they clearly have insufficient experience, you provide some type of formal training. But most of your people, indeed your most valuable ones, have been performing their current work for some time, perhaps years, and receive little or no ongoing training because they are apparently doing a good job.

However, the services you provide customers are growing in complexity, and your company's competitive success requires you to continually recruit new customers and provide an ever-widening scope of services.

Are your "experienced" people actually growing in knowledge sufficient to serve new customers with different challenges within your broader scope of service offerings? If not, you will likely experience difficulty and needless errors when taking on new business or adapting to changes in workflow or government regulations.

You may have documented standards for task competence and training by job assignment under a quality management or internal goals program, but how do you know who meets such standards? This can be a particular problem with personnel integration following acquisitions and mergers.

There are of course methods to assess in-service workers, identify limitations and areas for growth, and then apply remedial and advancement training. But these traditional methods are expensive, disruptive to normal operations, and raise needless anxiety among your staff.

Finally, employee satisfaction and retention often depend upon opportunity for advancement. Enabling advancement from within in turn depends on training and other means to help your people prepare for and demonstrate their readiness for advancement. You can and should provide a variety of formal training for new skills and task competence. But advancement training assumes a base of existing knowledge and competence in one's current job assignment. Yet your people whose primary learning to date has been "OJT" will have significant gaps in their knowledge and thus may not truly be ready for advancement.

How can you work with your very busy people to help them become more competent at what they should already know, without applying redundant and expensive training across all needed knowledge areas?

Use GISTnet Fill-in-the-Gaps learning modules, with the option of using our platform "job profiles" to pre-specify who needs what modules by job assignment and thereby streamline training administration.