When is the last time you had a close look at your training program to determine if it’s still applicable and relevant to your workers? Are you seeing behaviour changes in your employees as a result of training? If your responses to these questions are, “Gosh, I don’t know” or “Not really,” then it might be time to evolve the way you train. We have five strategies to consider:
1. Do away with long courses for a broad audience and move to specialized, micro-learning for a specific audience.
Think about it, if you run a company, does your sales team need the same information as your technicians? Do the office managers need the same information as the field workers? In some cases, such as compliance, maybe they do. However, more often than not, specific roles need specific information in order to do their jobs. Instead of requiring everyone to take the same 90-minute training course, think about how the content can be broken into chunks for specific audiences. When it comes to learning, longer training sessions does not lead to better retention. In fact, it’s often worse.
2. Focus on “Need to Know” rather than “Nice to Know”
This goes along with the first point. Even after you’ve chunked the content into specific audiences, focus on what the learner needs to know. Simply having an audience’s attention for a period of time doesn’t mean it’s a good opportunity to provide an information dump. Adult learners prefer to learn what they need to know to do their jobs well. Give them that.
3. Provide training when the learners need it, not when it’s convenient for you to provide it.
Adult learners prefer just-in-time training. They don’t want to figure something out for themselves only to be trained on it months later. Or, receive training well in advance of a product or process being available. You will see the greatest knowledge retention and behaviour change when learners are given what they need, when they need it.
4. Create a Post-Training Plan
Training is not a “one and done” activity. Whether it’s a 4-day workshop or a 15-minute eLearning, think of how you will sustain the learning with your team. Learners need time to practice what they’ve learned, receive feedback, and practice again. If it’s true behaviour change you seek, plan for check-ins or observation opportunities.
5. Build a Learning Culture
How many times a day do you refer to Google for an answer? That’s learning! Your company should have a culture where learning is a natural part of daily work. There are programs such as Degreed that seamlessly integrate into your existing systems and make it easy for employees to track daily learning, skill development, share what they learn with others, and ensure your people are getting what they need when they need it.
All training needs to evolve overtime. With technology continuing to advance, along with shifts in your local and global economy, reviewing the training you do have in place will only enhance your business.
Need help with your revamping your existing
training? We can help!
We have over 25 years’ experience developing successful online training, onboarding, and orientation content from documents, presentations, and videos.
We’ve developed ProcessLMS™, our learning management system specially designed to manage, track, and deliver courses online.
Reach out and we can chat about the right onboarding solution for your organization.