Your Chief Virtual Learning Architect

Learning to Performance

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Custom Design & Delivery

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Predictive Evaluation

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Enterprise Learning Strategy

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Dave Basarab Consulting has elevated the training experience, offering an end-to-end comprehensive approach that includes training strategy, instructional design, development, delivery , post program training transfer, and evaluation (via the unique Predictive Evaluation methodology). Virtual Chief Architect Dave Basarab has combined all of these individual training elements with his user-friendly, comprehensive Learning to Performance approach, which significantly increases companies' training ROI.

Why we are different

Innovation: Our primary focus is creating learning programs using a Learning to Performance approach.
Expertise: Dave offers the depth and breadth of his experience, including working internally at prestigious companies (Motorola, Ingersoll Rand and Pitney Bowes) as well as his knowledge and expertise as a highly-respected, sought-after consultant.
Partnership: Basarab collaborates with companies, serving as their own Chief Learning Officer whenever they need to plan, strategize, or implement training initiatives.

Training Services

Enterprise Learning Strategy

Enterprise Learning Strategy

At Dave Basarab Consulting, we're experts in creating Enterprise Learning Plans. We work with you to develop your company's learning strategy and direction.

Custom Design, Development, & Delivery

Custom Design, Development, & Delivery

Custom training is an effective way of developing the capability required to execute your strategy. We are a custom design house that creates programs specific to your business.

Learning Burst Development

Learning Burst Development

We can create and deliver your courses via our unique Learning Burst Method - keeping your employees at their jobs while receiving world-class training.

Predictive Evaluation

Predictive Evaluation

We predict the ROI for your courses and establish success gates. We then evaluate the course against the success gates to show value realized and continually improve results.

Leadership Development

Leadership Development

Turn-key virtual custom leadership development program that combines world-class leadership speakers/educators with post-event personalized coaching to provide you with a cadre of highly skilled leaders.

Predictive Evaluation

Seasonal Learning Strategy For Australia’s Changing Business Cycles

A learning strategy should reflect how work actually happens across the year. Demand, staffing, customer behaviour and operational risk rarely remain steady, so a programme built around one annual training window can become irrelevant during the periods that matter most.

Building a learning strategy that accounts for seasonal business cycles means matching capability development to commercial pressure. In Australia, that may involve the end-of-financial-year rush, summer trading, tourism peaks, harvest periods or public holiday staffing patterns. The aim is to prepare people before demand rises, reinforce skills during busy periods and evaluate business impact afterwards.

Read The Commercial Calendar

Start with the organisation’s operating calendar rather than its training calendar. Map sales peaks, product launches, school holidays, major events, contract renewals and quieter periods. A retailer in Sydney may need customer-service readiness before Christmas, while a tourism operator in Cairns may prepare for winter visitation and manage different staffing needs during the wet season.

The Australian end of financial year on 30 June is another significant planning point. Finance, professional services and many business-to-business teams face compressed deadlines in May and June, making that period unsuitable for lengthy workshops. Learning leaders should schedule core development earlier, then use brief performance support during the peak.

Segment Roles And Risk

Seasonality affects roles differently. Frontline employees may need rapid onboarding before a hiring surge, supervisors may require coaching in rostering and wellbeing, and senior leaders may need scenario planning for supply, labour or revenue volatility. Grouping learners by job demands creates a more useful capability map than assigning one course to everyone.

Risk should guide the order of work. Identify which tasks affect safety, legal compliance, customer trust or financial performance when temporary staff and inexperienced employees join. Fair Work obligations, workplace health and safety requirements, and industry-specific rules should be reflected in both the content and the delivery schedule.

Build Learning Around Workload

Learning is easier to apply when it arrives close to the moment of need. A pre-season pathway might include core knowledge, practical simulations, manager briefings and short refreshers delivered through a learning platform or mobile device. During the busy period, quick reference guides and five-minute learning bursts can support performance without taking people away from customers.

After the peak, teams need time to reflect. Debriefs can reveal which procedures failed under pressure, where managers lacked confidence and which customer issues appeared repeatedly. These findings should inform the next cycle, turning seasonal experience into an improving capability system rather than a series of disconnected courses.

Planning Moves That Protect Peak Performance

A practical annual rhythm can make learning capacity visible to operational leaders:

Use quiet periods for foundational learning, practice and manager development.
Schedule mandatory training before temporary or transferred employees enter high-risk work.
Reserve peak periods for short refreshers, coaching and job aids.
Build contingency capacity for unexpected demand, absences or weather events.

This approach also helps protect attendance. A face-to-face workshop may work well for a Melbourne office during a slower quarter, while distributed teams across regional Queensland or Western Australia may need asynchronous modules and virtual facilitation. The delivery method should follow workforce conditions, not the preferences of the learning team.

Design For Compliance And Context

Highly regulated sectors require more than generic content with a company logo added. Procedures, terminology, evidence requirements and escalation pathways must reflect the actual work environment. For a deeper approach to custom instructional design, learning teams can connect regulatory expectations with realistic decisions employees make during busy periods.

Seasonal hiring increases the need for clear assessment. New employees should demonstrate safe and compliant performance, rather than simply confirm that they opened a module. Supervisors can use observation checklists, structured practice and targeted feedback to identify gaps before those gaps affect customers, patients, passengers or colleagues.

Measure Adoption Across The Year

Evaluation should compare learning activity with operational conditions. Completion rates alone may look strong while usage falls during a peak, or while managers quietly compensate for weak capability. Establish baseline measures before delivery and monitor adoption, performance and business outcomes through each seasonal phase.

Seasonal phase	Learning priority	Useful evidence
Pre-peak	Prepare and practise	Assessment results, readiness checks, manager confidence
Peak	Support execution	Error rates, service measures, coaching activity
Post-peak	Reinforce and improve	Retention checks, incident themes, productivity trends
Off-season	Redesign and scale	Cost per capable employee, transfer measures, ROI forecast

A predictive evaluation approach can help forecast whether a programme is likely to be adopted and produce value before resources are committed at scale. For Australian organisations managing dispersed sites, casual workforces or tight budgets, this creates a stronger basis for deciding what to expand, revise or retire.

Review And Refresh The Strategy

Seasonal planning should be treated as a repeating operating cycle. Hold a structured review after each major period, involving operations, people leaders, risk specialists and representative employees. Compare planned participation with actual participation, then connect learning evidence to customer, safety, quality and financial results.

A simple review agenda can keep the process focused:

Which capabilities supported performance when demand was highest?
Where did staff rely on workarounds, escalation or manager intervention?
Which resources were used in the flow of work?
What should be redesigned before the next cycle?

Training for regulated environments may also need periodic content validation as policies, technology and legislation change. Guidance on designing custom training can help teams maintain relevance while preserving consistency across locations and employment types.

The first concrete step is to place the next twelve months of demand, staffing and compliance events on one shared calendar, then identify the learning intervention required before each major peak.

Learning to Performance

Learning to Performance, a complete training approach, gives companies world-class training to drive significant return. This approach includes upfront work (Impact Mapping, design), training (for staff and company executives), and post-training efforts to ensure training transfer. This unique recipe - the key for successful training and adoption - is changing the way companies implement training. This methodology could work with any content for organizations in any industry.