I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard a trainer say, “I don’t understand why (insert employee name here) did that, I told her/him not to do that myself. I tell every class not to do that,” and every time the response is, “The employee says you never trained him/her on that.”
There are many reasons this conversation repeats including but not limited to: cognitive overload, classroom distractions, time it was trained, improper emphasis; even, they just plain forgot.
As instructors we want to dissect, diagnose, and understand the reasons (and sometimes we can address the cause straight on). The truth here is from the trainee's standpoint most of the time the reasons don’t really matter. Their action (or often inaction) is a symptom of ineffective training.
If the instructor's “I told them” defense is cross checked with “Did they show you they understood?” most of the time the answer is no. There are many ways trainees can show their understanding from role playing in class to actual task analysis on the work environment. (Many times a paper test does not show that a trainee is going to do Something differently.)
So since this is a discussion let me ask you, how you handle it when you hear someone say they were never trained on something your records say they were trained on?