Mike Ballas with Raymond's award

The chapter of a society of learning and development professionals has recognised Raymond Corp with the group's highest honour for the company's course manager training and development program.

The Central New York (CNY) chapter of the American Society of Training & Development recognises excellence in learning and performance practices with the CNY best learning and performance awards. For the seventh annual competition, a panel of local and national judges evaluated nominations from a wide range of organisations. The chapter has more than 150 members.

"Raymond makes it a priority to deliver superior maintenance support through our comprehensive customer service programs," says Dave Norton, vice president of customer solutions at Raymond. "In recent years, we have designed a technician development program that is self-paced, learner-centred and performance-based - providing best-in-class learning and development opportunities to Raymond employees."

To ensure the technician development program is facilitated properly, trainers of the Raymond program are required to have a new skill set and also a new title - course manager. The program provides trainers with the opportunity to learn, practice and receive feedback on needed higher competencies such as facilitation, coaching, Socratic questioning, observation and group dynamics.

Mike Ballas is senior instructional designer at Raymond and lead for its technician development program.

Greene-based Raymond offers manual and electric forklift trucks including pallet trucks, walkie stackers, counterbalance trucks, reach trucks, order pickers and turret trucks and software tools for the management of forklift truck fleets, labour efficiencies and warehouses. Raymond is an operation of the Toyota Material Handling North America organisation within the materials handling division of Kariya, Japan-based Toyota Industries Corp.