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Six steps to increase the stickiness of employee training sessions

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by Keris Lahiff

Training employees can often eat into an organisation’s productivity. However, without successfully training your staff in the procedures and culture of your business, the costs in the long run far outweigh any short-term inconvenience.

Take the time and effort to invest in staff training to better systemise and streamline your business’ operations.

Here are six tips to increase the ‘stickiness’ of your training sessions (and make sure the lessons are lessons learnt).

Keep theory to a minimum. Create a practical training course where employees can be hands-on. If your training session involves simply showing how something is done, or worse, lengthy monologues, the amount of information your staff will retain will be limited. And, more downtime means the higher the chance of daydreaming sessions.
Reiterate the practical application of the training lessons. If an employee knows how the training is applicable to their role, they are more likely to employ it when it’s go-time.
Offer measurable goals and objectives. What is the purpose of the training session and what is the end-goal? If employees know what they are working towards, a team mentality is achieved with a higher likelihood of each individual’s participation in the effort.
Keep it entertaining. Depending on the content of the training, this could be a difficult task but mixing in an entertaining element will allow employees to easily engage with the session.
Whet employees’ appetite beforehand. Outline the what and why of the session a couple of days in advance so employees can mentally prepare and come in knowing what to expect and why they are there.
Evaluate the training session afterwards and get feedback from those who participated in it. This way you can prepare for next time, avoiding previous mistakes or information blind spots.

By investing your time and resources into adequate education for your employees, the greater skilled your workforce will be. Providing these opportunities will mean your staff are better equipped when it comes to real-life situations outside the training.

Published on: Friday, October 28, 2011