How to Make Training Effective

Want to make your training more effective?

To start and make training more effective, which areas need the most help now? Do you know how you will measure training effectiveness? A helpful answer is: measure knowledge, time, and knowledge over time. It’s helpful when you can see how much your employees know, and if your training is helping them grow.

How can you measure training efficacy?

Here’s some key areas you can monitor, track, and work to improve:

• Investment (Time & Money)
  • Content creation & preparation
  • Training kickoff & delivery
  • Content consumption
• Behavior & Reaction (Engagement)
  • Who’s engaged
  • Do they like it?
  • Who isn’t & why not?
• Learning (Knowledge)
  • Before training starts
  • After training activites
  • Across periods of time
• Results (Outcomes)
  • Track key performance indicators
  • Average metrics before training
  • Check actual results after

What can you do to make training effective?

Once you’re ready to measure how effective your training could be, then you’re ready to set goals and try some new techniques. The goal should be to get people to know more over longer periods of time, with less money and time invested.

Here’s seven tips to help you make training effective:

1. Optimize the amount of time that’s required for employees to start learning
2. Reduce the total time it takes to create and deliver new training content
3. Make sure training content is delivered in a format that is easy & engaging
4. Repeat training over time to reinforce what employees are learning
5. Hold employees accountable to participating which drives learning
6. Support individual learning, since people forget different things
7. Question all learning & training tools, are they really helping?

Why getting straight to the point with training works!

These days, there’s information available everywhere. Employees can learn from anywhere. They can be on the road, at home, in the office, in a classroom or logged into a learning management system. And, while information everywhere sounds nice, it might be part of the problem. Most employees appreciate the specifics. When you give employees training that teaches them exactly what they need to know in as little time as possible, they’ll engage. When they engage, they learn. More engagement and more learning are two indicators that your efforts to make training more effective are working.

The key areas above are influenced by Donald Kirkpatrick‘s Four Levels of Learning Evaluation (Reaction, Learning, Behavior and Results). This methodology was developed with training courses in mind, but what’s missing is investment in money and time. Reaction & behavior are can be measured in engagement. Results and outcomes indirectly measure behavior.