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How to Help Your Employees Make the Most of Training Opportunity
By Roz Published on March 6, 2017
Regardless of whether you are delivering training material through a seminar, eLearning system, webinar or mobile learning, getting your staff fully engaged in the learning process remains a challenge.
Here are 6 ways to get higher engagement from course participants.
1. Gather feedback before you start.
Consult with employees, formally or informally, and find out what they feel they need to learn. What you are considering as important may not match what they are urgently seeking. Is there a demand for a certain new skill or a refreshment on a process? Do they want to aid to their collection of soft skills like team-building, leadership development and personal growth? If there is a subject your management team feels need to be the focus of an employee training program, talk to your employees and gain insight on what they need to know most about this topic. This will be useful in devising your curriculum and the way you are going to teach the subject matter.
2. Give the employees who will be participating in the new training some advance work to do before the course starts.
It may be as simple as encouraging them to consider what they personally want to take away from the course. Or you may ask them to bring forward for the first day of the training period one example of something they really want to know about the subject at hand. This has two benefits. First, it ensures that you have the material to cover the key points that are important to the employees. Second, it solidifies in their mind what they want out of the training, and when they are able to accomplish that, they will have a great sense of accomplishment.
3. With every training session, wait about one week and then ask for feedback on how the employee is able to use the material they learned at the session.
This is helpful in determining memory retention in future programs and figuring out what worked and what didn’t.
4. Try to deliver the material customized to the employee’s personal learning style.
Some may learn by doing, so you offer hands-on training. Some may learn by reading, so create an excellent workshop for each program you are offering. Some may learn in a classroom setting, some from mentors and some from taking eLearning courses from the comfort of their homes. A huge part of successful training is figuring out how your employees learn. Try to offer more than one style if you have the resources, to ensure that you meet different learning styles.
5. Schedule a period of reflection the day after any training program is delivered.
It doesn’t have to be long, just a 15 minute meeting with participants will do. Ask what they remember most from their training, and from what they learned, how can they see an application for it in their workplace today. Ask them as well if they did anything differently today than they did yesterday, before they had their training.
6. Ensure that you use the notes you collect in follow-up conversations (informal or formal).
Use these notes to determine what was the most effective in training, and what appeared to have little impact. Try to get specifics, such as one process that changed because of their training, or one attitude that changed. Your goal is to ensure that whatever training is provided leads to immediate implementation within the workplace.
Hi there – nice article but a couple of typos. #4 Hands training should be hands-on training, and #5 As should be ask. With fixed typos I will share with my network! Thanks!
Hi Martha, thanks for your comment. The changes have been made!
Hi,
According to me, participating in a training is a lot like eating vegetables. Although, employees know it’s good for them, but it’s not always easy to force it down. However, it’s essential for employees to stay up to date on a myriad of information, from products and services to technology and consumer trends. Workers who are more knowledgeable are usually more engaged and productive, which leads to better customer experiences and higher sales.
By making it mandatory, you can’t ensure its success. I feel the choice of the training medium plays a huge role in making it successful.
I am not in favor of using traditional training methods because nowadays it doesn’t work anymore. The reason is simple. As the world becomes ever more digital, people are relying on their smartphones for everything from entertainment, to the weekly shop, manage their finances and apply for jobs. With the easy accessibility and user-friendly nature of smart phones, they are now the go-to technology for just about every aspect of daily life.
In such a scenario, if a company continue using traditional training methods, employees will never feel motivated to go for it. But when you are using an online training tool like ProProfs Training Maker, you can ensure that your training is mobile-ready. It means your employees can access the training module not just from office but also from anywhere (home, gym, coffee shop etc).
Apart from being mobile-ready, when an LMS tool like ProProfs Training Maker is used, offering bite-sized learning becomes reality. Believe it or not, unless learners implement what they’ve learned straight away they can forget up to 50% of it. The use of bite-sized learning allows the learner to learn fast and makes it manageable for trainers as well. “Easy to digest” content chunks work great. Tackling learning in bite-sized pieces builds anticipation and enhances engagement.
I have been using ProProfs Training Maker for the last two years and my students love it completely. While it makes their life easy, it is a boon for a non-technical trainer like me because it allows me to author courses and tracks learner’s progress at the same time.
I would say choose an elearning tool to make your training stand out.