Best Practices in Designing Employee Training Courses

1. Determine Your Objective 

When you undertake the challenging job of designing an employee training course, the first thing you need to do is – determine your objective. Ask yourself why do you want to design a course? Is it meant to solve a particular problem or do you aspire to achieve a certain goal with it? Develop a clear picture of what your final aim with the course is. 

Having such an objective to guide your course structure will help you create a detailed training timeline. This timeline can then serve as the basis for chalking out an integrated syllabus, covering key informational aspects, and following a logical presentation sequence. 

However, make sure that you don’t rush through the course design. Give it both adequate time and proper attention. 

2. Understand Your Audience

Once you have identified the precise objective that your employee training course intends to achieve, focus on trying to understand your audience. Think about who your employees are and where they come from. Are they beginners, who have just graduated from business school, or are they veterans who have years of experience behind them?

Based on your understanding, design a course that suits each one of their learning styles and learning needs. For example, recent college graduates will respond better to kinaesthetic aids like interactive quizzes and activities while older employees would prefer credible, written material. 

Ensure that every member of your audience is exposed to personalized training formats so that the overall workflow of your business can be improved. 

3. Employ Audio-Visual Aids

Including audio-visual aids and real-life practical scenarios within your course design can prove to be a boon for the learning curve of your employees. Presenting them with an interactive story that they can relate to and engage with, gives your employees the exclusive chance to get actively involved with the nooks and crannies of your training program. 

Research says that this can help them accurately retain almost 65% of the information presented, for as long as a year! More so, introducing real-life scenarios through gamification can equip your employees to enhance their problem-solving skills without having to bear any negative consequences. 

In other words, including audio-visual aids as a tool for employee training will work wonderfully to increase the knowledge retention rates of all your employees. 

4. Use Variable Techniques

The biggest mistake which most organizations make while designing their employee training courses is to include didactic teaching as the sole form of information delivery. Although this type of teaching does have its own set of benefits, it does not cast any lasting effect. This is why it is vital to club and consolidate variable teaching techniques within the course design.  

These techniques can largely range from cooperative learning, visualization, and behavior management to inquiry-based instruction, webinars, conferences, or conventions. Such great diversity will allow you to leverage your employees’ interests and thereby improve their learning capability. 

5. Assess the Outcomes

Last but certainly not the least, make sure that your employee training course is designed to gather feedback and assess outcomes on a real-time basis. These outcomes can either be assessed on formative or summative grounds. 

Formative assessments include self-reviews and objective tests, which can give you a detailed idea about how your employees are progressing on the learning curve. Summative assessments, alternately, allow you to find out specific areas of difficulty and make course corrections accordingly. 

In either case, these assessments, when properly undertaken, can easily help you boost performance levels and raise learning outcomes in an instant.

Also Read: 5 Employee Training Management Software that You Must Consider