Why Your Current Employee Training Doesn’t Work (And How To Fix It) – Part 2

Snappy, engaging bursts of knowledge are revolutionizing the training landscape

In the first installment of our two-part series on corporate training, we explained how development opportunities are key to attracting and retaining top talent. Nearly 60 percent of Millennials say finding a company that offers regular chances to sharpen their skills is extremely important when applying for a job, followed by 44 percent of Generation Xers and 41 percent of Baby Boomers.

More than 90 percent of workers also assert that proper training is critical to feeling engaged at work. Inadequate training causes frustration and makes it difficult for employees to perform their jobs well, impacting the quality of work, productivity, and customer satisfaction.

But traditional classroom sessions alone miss the training mark by omitting critical opportunities for repetition and reinforcement. People forget half the information presented in a typical training event within one hour – and 90 percent of the information within one week, according to a LearningSolutions report titled “The Forgetting Curve.” Nearly half of employees spend a minimum of 15 minutes a week looking up information that was shared at a company training session.

Simply replacing the classroom with solitary, online – but still deskbound – experiences doesn’t go much farther in helping employees retain the information you share. It’s also likely for them to become distracted if they are viewing the training outside of the office.

One secret to effective training

A new trend is revolutionizing the training landscape that engages employees with a continuous stream of snappy learning opportunities that fit seamlessly into their workday. New knowledge is re-introduced until it becomes second nature. Much of it is delivered “just in time” – a hands-on approach that helps workers retain their training because they immediately apply it to their work.

But it’s not the only method, and different workers have different styles of learning. Here are four more forward-thinking ways to deliver the kind of training that engages your staff:

1. Utilize familiar technologies. Think about how often you check social media, use a mobile device, or search for answers on Google. Company learning shouldn’t feel like school; instead, take advantage of technologies that your employees are comfortable using. Combine bursts of microlearning with the platforms your employees use every day to transform company training into the convenient and quick delivery of knowledge they rely on in the rest of their life. And make more extensive training resources available for those who want a deeper dive.
2. Fit training into the regular workday. If your staff can only spare one percent of their work week for company training, it’s critical that you make it count. Many companies are abandoning the traditional event-style approach and fitting continuous training opportunities into their employees’ regular day. Bloomingdale’s reports that it saved $2.2 million in safety-related costs in 2015 – and achieved 90 percent voluntary employee participation – by delivering training via three- to five-minute, bite-sized bursts every day.
3. Keep your staff engaged. New training tools offer many opportunities to engage your staff in learning. Gamification techniques – from simple leaderboards to all-out virtual reality simulations – make learning fun, make lessons easy to remember, and take advantage of natural motivators like competition and rewards.Personalize learning to stay focused on the “need to know.” Nothing will disengage your staff more quickly than the feeling that they are wasting their time with information they already learned or don’t need. Consider tools that adapt your training to address individual gaps or challenge workers who are ready to move past your regular content.
4. Make learning opportunities available at the moment your employees need them. Instead of overwhelming new employees with lengthy onboarding training up front, simply let them know where the information they need is located so they can access it at their own pace. Not only will digesting the information when it’s needed help them absorb it better but using it as soon as it’s learned makes it much more likely to stick.

Classroom-style instruction may work for children, but it’s sometimes not the most effective learning method for adults in the workplace. A quick, hands-on approach that directly impacts the work your staff is doing is much more likely to endure, while “one and done” lectures that deliver large amounts of information can be forgotten. That said, it’s important to remember that different people learn, well, differently. Thus, options for old-school learners as well as those who demand just-in-time knowledge will ensure that you are meeting everyone’s needs.

Effective employee training is vital to maintaining a productive and engaged staff – and if you choose the right approach, it will offer big returns on your investment.

To learn more about how to more effectively engage and develop employees, contact Karp HR Solutions today for a free consultation.